Why was he banned. (And will I be next, me and ducky?)
teddy
You, teddy
Perish the thought my good man
.
Due to privacy reasons we are unable to divulge all the gory details of why a member was banned. The forum has specific rules and policies (aka TOS) that are found in the
FAQ: Guidelines and Terms of Service and when the rules are broken, official warnings and then infractions are issued by the forum staff.
Official 'warnings' are just that ... a written reprimand that does not have any 'infraction points' accompanying it. There is no penalty, but the warning remains as part of that users permanent records.
For infractions, we use the 'point' system from zero to 12 points. Each infraction level has a certain 'point' value accompanied by a specific time duration after which the points accrued will drop to zero. However, if one accumulates 12 points within those specific time durations, they are automatically banned.
For example, say a user received an infraction for Spam. That infraction carries 6 points and has a duration of 3 months. After the 3 month time has elapsed, and there are no additional infractions, the users infraction points revert back to zero. If, however, the user ignored the infraction and continued to Spam this forum, they would receive another 6 point infraction, and thus would have accumulated a total of 12 points (or more) and would be banned.
To answer the question if infractions or bans can be reversed, the simple answer is
Yes. I think that has happened once or maybe twice since I joined the staff in early 2007, so the conditions for a reversal would be extremely rare.
With the exception of outright SPAMMERS (who are immediately banned), the forum staff follows a standard protocol dealing with TOS violations, to ensure that each and every user here is treated exactly the same when these rule violations occur.
Your forum staff always works together as a team. Robin, Eric and myself (although we have never met in person) seem to always be on the 'same wave length' when it comes to forum matters. We do have internal discussions (on a hidden forum) and in an extreme emergency, we can contact each other (including Frederik) via phone.