Since receiving some feedback from the membership of the site I've come up with a few more standard policies to follow with regards to user and moderator punishments. They will follow a similar idea but play out slightly differently. I'll explain both separately.

Users - starting effective today (Feb 2016) each user is given 2 sets of "3 strikes". The first 3 are warnings and the 2nd 3 are bans. It would work something like this.

A user spams/flames etc either in chat or on the forum and they would receive a warning from a moderator. The same user does this again and receives a 2nd warning about the behavior. The third time a warning would need to be sent it will include a short ban (1 or 3 days depending on the broken rule). This ban starts you first of 3 ban strikes. If another rule is broken after this first ban then you would get a longer ban (3 or 7 days depending on the broken rule). That is your second strike. Once you get to your third strike you are running the risk of a permanent ban. It is becoming obvious that the rules and warnings are not being heeded by this user and the next time a rule is broken either another 7 day ban or a "permanent" ban is handed out. This permanent ban may or may not have a time limit attached to it. That would depend on the user and the broken rules. However, if this situation gets this far it is likely going to be 3 months or more time away because changes aren't being made. I hope this is simple enough to understand.

There are obvious exception to this normal course of action. Posting porn, extreme flaming (racism etc.) or other extremely over the top rule breaking may get an instant permanent ban. Also, ban avoidance (by re-registering) can result in a permanent ban.

In all cases of warnings and punishments staff consult each other and decide what punishments to hand out. With this system in place we hope to make it a more consistent method of how warnings and punishments are decided. A more comprehensive set of instructions has been given to the moderators but I felt it fair to explain to the general membership of the site how things will go from here.

Moderators - moderators will be under a similar 3-strike system except that they only get 3 strikes and they are out.

The system would work something like this: a moderator breaks a rule of the site and gets reported by someone to the power level above them (local to global, global to geeogree). This can be anything from spamming or flaming to not following the warning rule above. If you feel that a moderator is not doing a good job then please let us know and provide as much information as you can. Once the report has been made the complaint will be investigated from both sides (your story versus their story) and then a decision will be made as to whether or not a strike is in need. If I (or the globals) feel a strike is warranted then the moderator in question will be consulted about that and better ways to handle similar situations will be discussed. A log of these incidents and "best practices" will be compiled for future moderators to make use of as well. If a moderator gets 3 strikes then they will be demoted. Any for anyone who questions whether or not I will demote people I point to the 6 local mods and 3 global mods who have been demoted in the last 9-12 months for various reasons as proof that I will keep my word on this.

If anyone has any questions or concerns about these changes please feel free to raise them here or PM me directly.

Nice baseball-reference. But I have a question. I read it all twice, and I don't understand something:

Does the bans ban that account or restrict that particular IP address from accessing that account? Because I know some people that will take advantage of the account being banned without being linked to their IP.

Don't worry, though, because I intend to a gold-star stude- I mean member!

TheTrueUlti : That's not technically a reference because that's the actual thing, 3 strikes is what you get with anything, even with the police, it's an official thing in most places.

users can get bans from both accounts and IP's, and an IP ban would probably only be needed if that user does in fact end up trying to make another account, so it would most likely be a normal ban at first.

geeogree : I like this rule, the 3 strikes (Or 6 strikes in total) is a easy to understand system that almost anyone can understand. I will be sure to make sure I get infinite Home Runs.

Thank you, the rules are very clear. Not that it would ever happen to me - I avoid subjects that could cause a flaming war - but if it does I know that the course of events might be.

Isn't the three strike system a feature carried over from the original Acmlm boards or is this an entirely different/new feature.

Pokemonfan1000 : Uh, no. The 3 strike system is used literally everywhere.

zanderlex : That's right. How did I forget about that.

Any chance we could see how many strikes we have?

I know I have a few of them.

Oldschool777 :

How many times have you been warned or banned by a moderator?

There's your answer.

The thing is,that has been a while ago.

Mods,may I please smack him for being a smarta$$?

I personally think it'd be helpful if there was a (private) stat on your profile that lists how many strikes you have.

You know, incorporate it into the site's code.

It might make it more present for someone while on Vizzed and make it easier to know how many strikes you have at any given time.

But that's up to David to code

ZeroTails : I agree! Make a strike box that only you can see. I think Vbulletin has something like this in their forum software (But they call it infractions there)