[RussEfarmer]

All of the servers on this network use permanent bans as a very common form of punishment: hacking, mass RDM, trolling, harassment, or just to get that person off of the server after they've continually caused problems. While I believe that banning people is a necessary part of keeping troublemakers off of the server, I believe that the permanent ban as a punishment is used far too often when compared to any other length of ban. I used to think differently, and would look at someone deliberately causing problems and think "He's just here to ruin everyone's day. Why would we EVER let him back here when he clearly doesn't care?", and I think a lot of other people that manage bans think the same way.

I want you to understand my perspective on this: A permanent ban is PERMANENT unless appealed. When you permaban a player, that player will NEVER, EVER get to join the game again on that account unless they find this forum, apologize, wait a few days and wait for everyone to judge them, and then they can rejoin. While MAKING the player appeal and apologize for their actions if they want to rejoin the server is a good approach for major infractions such as player harassment, many infractions that we permaban for don't call for this at all.

To reiterate, permanent bans are PERMANENT. Why though? I think it would be much better to have very long temporary bans (multiple months or a year) instead of permanently banning players for infractions such as ghosting, hacking and RDM. Realistically, a player who waited multiple months to rejoin will most likely not only not remember their ban, but have a drastic change in behavior. People change over time, they don't come back as the same exact person as when you banned them. You have to think, maybe that guy that mass RDM'd didn't really care what he was doing, or he saw someone else do it on Youtube and thought it was funny, and after six months, he probably didn't remember or really care about that microscopic detail that he killed three people on a garry's mod server, and grew out of it.

Obviously things like player harassment would be kept at permanent bans, or a long list of repeated offenses where we would actually want a reason and an apology when they return after doing it, but killing 3 people in a row in a first person shooter should not be as harsh of a ban as it is currently.
(yes, this thread is mostly about mass RDM bans, but the concept still applies. Just food for thought)

TL;DR, we permanently ban people for really dumb stuff sometimes, when a longer temporary ban would have sent the same message and meant that player would be able to physically return to the server after their punishment, even if it was a year later.