Infractions / 3-strikes system

I thought I would try to explain the new infraction system that we have implemented on the board. Not much will change in how we actually moderate except that we now have a better system to track infractions allowing us to more precisely control our 3-strikes system. There are no new rules that members have to follow. Just make sure that if you're given an infraction, you respond appropriately. Moderators reserve the right to give warnings instead of infraction points at their discretion.

This is just a more formal "3-strikes" system that allows us to assign points and/or warnings to members who decide to violate our policies. The charts at the bottom explains the points a member will receive if they violate specific rules. The second chart shows how many "strikes" you have at certain points levels. This information will also be contained in the FAQ pages.

The infraction system allows moderators to flexibly reprimand problem users. Infractions will represent any type of rules violation on the board. Each infraction has a weight (points) and an option to allow it to be applied only as a warning, which alerts the user to their violation but doesn’t give them any points. Additionally, the points given to a user for a violation *may* be automatically removed after a specified amount of time in the chart below. Depending on the response of the member to the infraction, moderators can determine how to proceed or extend the infraction points if necessary.

The points are used to remove permissions from users that reach specific thresholds. [i]We also still reserve the right to ban any user at any time for any reason we deem appropriate[/i], but the standardized system is what we will try to rely on for most offenses.

When an administrator or moderator applies an infraction to a user, a private message wil be sent to the user with more information about the violation.

In addition to receiving a PM about an infraction/warning, users are alerted to new infractions in their User control panel.