Rules Notices & Bans: What You Need To Know

I know this is a topic that many do not like reading about, and I understand why as I don't like writing about it. However, it is something we need to address, and for the sake of transparency, I want everyone to know about what would result in a warning or ban here.

Before I go on, I want to say that we keep our rules as loose as we can considering this is a black hat forum where we all like to skirt the rules elsewhere. We do this because our belief is that it's better to show others why this forum is different and do our best to keep members than it is to forcibly remove them from the platform. Therefore, if you're here to genuinely be a part of the community, then know that it's really hard to get banned from here.

At the same time, as much as we don't want to do this, warnings and bans will inevitably issued to some people. However, we've done our best to ensure that the warning system we have in place is

Notices
This is what our warnings are called here. To keep things simple, our notice system is in line with our terms of service. That means that you'll only get a notice for what's clearly a violation for one of the following from our TOS:

• User-Generated Content
• Prohibited Content and Activities
• Discussion Restrictions
• User Conduct
• Marketplace Guidelines
• Account Usage
• Enforcement and Compliance

Please be aware that if you receive a notice for sales-based or spam reasons, our staff may mark your account as being ineligible to purchase Sapphire Status.

Notice Points
These are points applied to your account whenever you violate a rule on this platform. Whilst these points are active, you will be unable to purchase Sapphire Status.

Active warning points only last for a limited amount of time (1 month to 3 months). If you receive warning points whilst another one is active, this duration is automatically extended by the length of time of the most recent warning.

Once a notice expires, the notice points become inactive and no longer count toward your total.

You can receive up to 12 active notice points before you'll be permanently banned from this platform.

Permanent Bans
Permanent bans are a last resort and are only issued under the following circumstances

• Automatically after a user has 20 active notice points on their account
• A malicious user joins the forum. This includes someone who is here to do the following:
  • Cause harm to the community
  • Upload malware or other harmful material

Additionally, if we identify someone is a previously banned member of this platform (not another one), then we'll reapply the ban. If a previously banned member does want to come back, they can use our Support Desk to reach out to us.

Temporary Bans

• Automatically applied after a user reaches 6 active notice points and lasts 3 days.
• Automatically applied after reaching 9 active notice points and lasts for 1 week.
• This one is a little subjective, but if a user is drunk posting on the forum and acting very out of character, we may use the temporary ban function on their account for 12 hours just to give them time to sober up.

Update to Notices

I posted this announcement thread today as we updated our notices.

As always, I want to make these changes visible to the community, so you can read them in the quote below.

Zwielicht said:

We've made some changes to the notice system (what many of you will know as "warnings").

Thankfully, we rarely have to give out notices here (seriously, we only have to give out one every month at the most), so this won't affect the majority of you.

Active Notices Now Result in Sapphire Ineligibility
As our forum continues gaining new members every day, we wanted to pre-emptively deal with an issue we're all very much familiar with: people signing up, spamming, and purchasing membership just to sell.

I've mentioned before that we really don't want anyone doing this for two reasons:

1. The spam will put people off of this forum.
2. We want people who sell here to be part of the community and not just traders.

That's why we've updated our notices to make anyone who receives one ineligible to purchase Sapphire until their notice expires.

Length of Time of Active Notices Increased
Because notices are rarely issued, we've also increased the length of time that the more egregious ones are active. For instance, AI spam, member abuse,

Malware Distribution Notice Adjusted
Malware distribution (i.e., deliberately spreading malware) is now an automatic ban and not just 3 points for 3 weeks.

The site guide on notices and bans has been updated to reflect these changes.

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