In case you have been banned, know someone who is banned or otherwise wonder what banning on this server is about and how it works, please read on.

Rules & Violations

I make questionnaires that people have to fill out before they can join the server, and those are there to force people to read the rules. The questions should assure that people have to go through the instructions and the rules to know what they are getting into. From there on are two choices: Either you follow the rules, or you do not.

If you are banned, it means you violated the rules in a drastic manner. Based on the two choices above, it means that you either ignored a rule despite knowing it existed, or you ignored the rules altogether, thinking they are unimportant.

For example, I have banned 3 people so far because they had a Nazi skin. The Nazi skin is explicitly, individually mentioned as something that gets you banned immediately.  This means that someone actively tried to provoke or ignored the rules, and this results in a ban.

Trust

When you join the server you do two things: You first of all make use of the money I spend for the server and the time that I spend to make the server, the forum, the website, the plugins, updates, discussions with plugin authors, and more. Second of all, you join a living, working, long-lasting community of gamers. This community is based on mutual respect and an open and generally welcoming attitude towards all new people joining the server.

I let you, not knowing you at all, onto my server, which represents an advance in trust from me. People are friendly to you, which is an advance of trust from them. If you ignore the rules or break them intentionally, you prove to me that you did not deserve this trust in the first place.

Anyone who makes me ban them, abuses my advance of trust and the advance of the trust given to them by other players.

No second chance

I spend most of the time on this server enabling people to play in a fair, balanced and fun environment. If I have to spend time to ban people and set up security measures and the like, this is completely counterproductive. Anybody who causes trouble to others and makes me ban them, causes individual, additional, counterproductive work.

Anyone who makes me ban them, has wasted my time and my trust and that of other players.

This is why there is no “second chance” or appeals against a ban. I gave an advance of trust, which was abused. I put work into banning someone. I do not want to do more work to discuss the ban, haggle regarding consequences and live with the knowledge that there are people running around on my server that like to provoke or ignore the rules of the community they want to join. I do not need this kind of worry. I do not want to be “watching people” because I suspect they might repeat some crap I banned them for in the past. I already spend enough time watching some people because I suspect that they will cause trouble because of the way they behave.

No need for a second chance

I was once standing in a bar next to a completely drunk guy who claimed that the barkeeper was not his friend since he would not give him any more drinks. I told the guy that the barkeeper is not a welfare institution but instead a business man. If someone does not want to sell him drinks, he rather take his business to one of the many other bars, of if that fails to the 24h supermarket. You first do “business” with another and then, maybe become friends. Not the other way round.

Same goes for this server. I do not owe you anything when you just join the server. As of writing this, there are thousands of other servers available. If you made a bad impression here and got banned, chances are that people will not be very friendly to you, even if you were able to make an appeal and get unbanned. You have made enemies, including most likely the guy who is most often online, myself. It will be better for you if you move on and find yourself another server.