Proposed addition to Forum Rule 5.

[John]

For those that can't be bothered to check, forum rule 5 is the one that deals with Policing (i.e. warnings and bans).

The current rules allow 2 warnings before a ban (i.e. a temporary ban on the third, permanent on the fourth).

This works great for new members who need a little training, but with this forum now being almost/over 10 years old, we have a number of users that have been here a while. This approach works somewhat less well - and as a moderator recently discovered, we are all humans and all occasionally make mistakes. Even when we never intended to offend. There is no acknowledgment for years of good "communityship" in the discipline process.


As such, I propose an alteration to rule 5 to include an expiry date on warnings. Something along the lines of:

Third Warning: If you receive a third warning within an 18 month time period, you will be banned for a period of one week.


Yes, I appreciate the fact that the current "(unless otherwise decided upon by the administrators' discretion)" is sufficiently vague that it allows historic warnings on established members to essentially be ignored should they make an innocent mistake - but if that is the case, why not have it in writing?

[Lord Aro]

i would second this.

however, i believe (don't quote me on this) that the 'warnings' are listed in some sort of phpbb table, which would need a mod[ification] to empty out the out-of-date warnings

of course, i may be entirely wrong on that

[orudge]

Actually, they're much more low-tech than that. We just have a topic in the private area (dating back to the phpBB 2.0 days before phpBB had built-in warning support).

I'll have a think about this and discuss it with others. It doesn't sound like a bad idea.