Reputation, Warnings and Banning

[stryder]

We are experimenting with a slightly different way of handling how people should be dealt with if they play up within the forum.

Warnings, Infractions and Banning
While on the one hand we have an Infraction system that the staff will attempt to use to keep the peace.  The system itself can still be better balanced with your help.  The following image is the current warning types available to the staff.

A user can reach up to 100 warning points before a permanent ban (unless a staff member expedites the ban in certain cases)  Feel free to suggest any alterations to the number of points and time periods.  (Expiry: Never is used to log extreme warnings, do it's understood what a member or ex-member has done.)

[Image: settings1.png]

While the above issues the points, the next image is what decides the fate of a person based upon the points they accumulate.

[Image: settings2.png]

Again if you have any suggests for the changes here feel free to post them.  As you can see we've limited Temp and Permanent bans to the most severe cases.  (A member would have to get 70 points to get even a temporary ban.)

Even with this software encoded infraction system there will always be the potential for an Administrator to override the software either to ban someone before such points have been accrued or to reduce the points in some circumstances.

Reputation System and Promotions/Demotions
The reputation method is purely upon you the membership to accumulate positive points and award both positive and negative points to other members as you deem fit. 

If you get too low a reputation, you will find yourself locked in the "Sin-bin" one single sub-forum where you still have posting rights.  While there it will be up to you to post quality content to get your reputation back up based upon the membership (reputation points do not decay with time, they merely change based upon the current positive vs negative)

It is possible for an Administrator to nullify points that have been abusively placed in the rare cases where the system might get misused.

If you achieve high levels of reputation over time then there will likely be rewards like being able to post threads in a strict science subforum (rather than only being able to reply to already created threads)