Banning And Punishment Policy

Definitions

**Warning/Low-Severity Note**: Informal warning given to a player for any reason, usually when a minor rule has been broken or was almost broken. 

**Strike/Medium-Severity Note**: Permanent, formal warning given to a player when a rule has been broken. Strikes should always be clearly communicated to their recipient. When receiving their third strike (or more), they should instead receive a ban. Admins may use their own discretion to ban a player before three strikes are reached if their actions are deemed as bad faith, malicious, or in violation of a zero-tolerance policy. A third strike should **always** result in a ban.

**Ban**: Temporary exclusion of a player from an aspect of the game, reserved as punishment for failing to follow server rules. This includes game bans and role bans, which may be either timed/temporary or permanent/appeal-only.
    **Game Ban**: Ban from all game functions, including connection to the game lobby.
    **Role Ban**: Ban from being able to join the game as selected roles.
   **Temporary Ban**: A timed ban, usually in the range of a few hours (“take a break”), 24-72 hours, 1-2 weeks, or a month. Generally, if a ban in excess of a month is being considered, it should be appeal-only instead.
    **Appeal-only Ban**: Permanent ban which can only be removed through an appeal through the ticket system in the discord. 

Handling rule breaks

When dealing with potential rule breaks, admins are expected to take the necessary steps to get an overview of the situation. This includes asking for context from other admins who may have witnessed what happened, reading game logs, or ahelping involved players.

Players found to have broken a rule should be contacted via an ahelp and questioned on the situation. After doing so, the ruling admin may choose how to proceed. They may issue a warning, strike, or ban.

All admin intervention, including benign warnings, should be permanently and publicly noted once concluded, unless special circumstances arise. Secret notes should be used sparingly, as they are very hard to act upon later in a way that affords players a complete understanding of why admin action was taken.

Using Notes

All admin actions should be followed by a note. There is no format saying what to put in the note, but it is encouraged to be as detailed as possible. Information on what kind of warning was issued, what was told to them and what their reaction was is very useful.

**Low severity notes** refer to rule breaks which are not considered strikes. The ruling admin may choose to administer those instead of a medium severity note if they do not believe that the infraction is considered significant enough to administer a strike over.
**Medium severity notes** are strikes. On the third strike, the ruling admin is heavily encouraged to ban the player instead.
**High severity notes** are reserved for bans.
**Message notes** are severity-agnostic and by default expire after a week. Message notes do not replace regular notes, but may accompany a note if the player could not be contacted regularly due to having disconnected.
**Watchlists** are severity-agnostic *secret* notes used for inter-administrator communication, usually to inform others of potential problem players. If an administrator notices fishy behavior or suspects that a rule may have been consistently broken, they may decide to administer a watchlist. When a player joins the server, the contents of the watchlist note will appear alongside the join notice adminside.

Note Format

As an example, a note can typically follow this format:

(Round Number) (Rules broken/Ahelp topic)

As a (non-antagonist/antagonist) (relevant role), thing they did that broke a rule. 
This is what they were spoken to about in the ahelp, what was suggested, and if they were receptive/how they responded.

It's absolutely up to your discretion if you want to use this format or a different one, so long as enough information is provided for future reference. As a minimum, try and include the round number, the rule, the issue, and the resolution.