A few folks have asked me about infraction points and what they mean. Since Fringe is back on the horizon, it's a good time to clarify:

INFRACTION POINTS & WHAT THEY MEAN TO MEMBERS

When a member breaks our rules, they will be given an infraction. Infractions take the form of points which are assigned to a member every time they break a rule. When you receive an infraction, you will be PM'd a message detailing the reason for your infraction, and how many points you have received as a result of that infraction.

If you accumulate 6 or more infraction points over a 'rolling' 12 month period, you will receive a ban from all areas of the forum. This means that you will not be able to log into your account. If you try to create a new account to get around your ban, you run the risk of facing a lifetime ban or lifetime IP ban from the forum -- which means you will not be able to view the site even as a guest.

Infractions allow staff and members to view a 'trail' past offences. Only staff and the individual member concerned will be able to see infraction history. (In other words, members will only be able to see their OWN infraction history). Infractions are also designed to be fair -- staff members cannot 'pick and choose' who to give infractions to, we don't do discrimination. Please bear that in mind.

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Different rule breaks carry different number of points. For example, posting a spoiler incorrectly carries a 2 point infraction. So you can see that incorrectly posting 3 spoilers over a 12 month period will land you a ban.

*Depending on the nature of the spoiler, if it is a first time offense, staff may decide to issue you with a warning instead of a infraction -- but do not rely on this, read our rules and think before you post!

Ban Periods

Ban periods for infractions are 10 days. This means that if you reach 6 infraction points over the course of a year (i.e. from the time of your first infraction to the moment you reach 6 infraction points), you will be automatically issued a 10 day ban.

Infraction points are automatically removed after 1 year. This is a rolling feature related to each individual infraction from the time it was issued.

Once your ban is over, if you receive another infraction before your infraction level has dropped below 6, OR, if your new rule-break infraction takes your infraction level back up to 6 or above, you may be issued with a lifetime ban for repeated offenses.

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Please bear in mind, it takes a lot of time and energy to moderate these boards -- we are all about having fun and exploring the possibilities with Fringe and genre, but we also operate to high standards. Therefore we require that our members do the same by following our rules and guidelines. (They are there to help you!). Doing so not only makes life easier for staff, but it means that we can spend more time taking the site forward to the next level.

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Please also note that in extreme cases, we may issue automatic lifetime bans to rule breakers. We are not bound by infraction points -- in some cases we will simply outright ban a member if we feel that they are not here with positive intent. Examples of what might land a member an automatic ban are: racism, homophobia, spamming, advertising, pornographic content, insulting members of staff, etc. This list is not exhaustive.

If you have concerns over how a moderator is using the infraction system, feel free to PM me in confidence. If you have concerns over how I use the infraction system, feel free to PM me in confidence.

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Hopefully this is a little clearer now -- if you have any further questions on this, please don't hesitate to contact a member of staff.



-- Roco