WARNING POINTS
When forum staff issue a warning, the warning includes warning points. Most warnings include one warning point, which will expire after one month. Some warnings have a different amount of warning points or expiry date. Forum staff can use their own judgement to change the warning points or expiry date before issuing the warning.
The forum will automatically ban you if you have too many active warning points. You can have too many warning points from a single warning which had many warning points, or through multiple active warnings where the individual warning points will add together. You can have two active warning points with no automatic action.
After this, you will receive an automatic ban, as listed below:
When your warning points expire, the warning itself will still be on your account, unless an appeal has been won, or the forum management review the warning and find it to be incorrect, where it will be deleted. Deleted warnings will remove all records of the warning and warning points from your account. Even with warnings on your account, you should not be worried, expired warnings will largely fade away and be forgotten about.
APPEALS
Before you appeal, you must consider if you have a genuine reason to do so. Please do not appeal just because you can, where it may be better for you to take accountability for your actions, understand why you received the discipline, and simply carry on.
Generally, there are four main reasons why you may wish to consider appealing your discipline.
These are:
We will:
To appeal:
SHADOWBANNING
Shadowbanning is where you can see the content that you have posted, but it is actually being hidden from everyone else. If you have been shadowbanned, you will usually think everything is normal, until one day you wonder why nobody has interacted with your content. When you try to find your content online while being logged out of your account, you cannot find it, or when you share a link to your content to someone else, they will ask you why you sent them an invalid link. Google and Reddit are particularly bad at shadowbanning. You may have posted 1,000 thoughtful reviews on Google Maps, for them to suddenly hide all of your reviews. You can fill in a form to request a review, but you will never hear back. If you get shadowbanned on Reddit, you will have to create a new account. In both examples you will never find out what caused the shadowban.
We believe this is an awful approach. You may have contributed loads of genuine content, only for one thing that they did not like to mean all of your content will suddenly vanish without you knowing? Shadowbanning confuses the membership and lacks any form of transparency. We believe if you have broken the rules, you should be told about it, and given an opportunity to appeal. TFUK will never shadowban you. You can either post normally, or you cannot post normally but you will know why.
When forum staff issue a warning, the warning includes warning points. Most warnings include one warning point, which will expire after one month. Some warnings have a different amount of warning points or expiry date. Forum staff can use their own judgement to change the warning points or expiry date before issuing the warning.
The forum will automatically ban you if you have too many active warning points. You can have too many warning points from a single warning which had many warning points, or through multiple active warnings where the individual warning points will add together. You can have two active warning points with no automatic action.
After this, you will receive an automatic ban, as listed below:
- If you get 3 total active warning points, you will be banned for 1 day.
- If you get 4 total active warning points, you will be banned for 1 week.
- If you get 5 total active warning points, you will be banned for 1 month.
- If you get 6 total active warning points, you will be banned for 1 year.
When your warning points expire, the warning itself will still be on your account, unless an appeal has been won, or the forum management review the warning and find it to be incorrect, where it will be deleted. Deleted warnings will remove all records of the warning and warning points from your account. Even with warnings on your account, you should not be worried, expired warnings will largely fade away and be forgotten about.
APPEALS
Before you appeal, you must consider if you have a genuine reason to do so. Please do not appeal just because you can, where it may be better for you to take accountability for your actions, understand why you received the discipline, and simply carry on.
Generally, there are four main reasons why you may wish to consider appealing your discipline.
These are:
- Biased enforcement (someone else who did something similar received different treatment)
- Disproportionate (the discipline doesn't fit the offence, such as a lifetime ban for one swear)
- Misunderstanding (something was read in a different way than you intended)
- Policy unclear (you followed the guidance but you accidentally broke it because it wasn't clear enough)
We will:
- Ensure that your appeal is reviewed by someone previously uninvolved (where possible)
- Never automatically side with our forum staff, and will discipline them where required
- Give you a full reply as to what we have reviewed, and why we have reached our outcome
- Not rush, but equally not take any longer to handle your appeal as absolutely required
To appeal:
- You must wait at least 1 hour after you became aware of the discipline before you appeal.
- You must use the appeals form, linked in the main menu. Appeals through other methods will be ignored.
- You must appeal within 96 hours of the discipline. You can still appeal after this time with a satisfactory reason.
- We will respond to your appeal within 24 hours, even if it is to tell you we need more time to review your appeal.
SHADOWBANNING
Shadowbanning is where you can see the content that you have posted, but it is actually being hidden from everyone else. If you have been shadowbanned, you will usually think everything is normal, until one day you wonder why nobody has interacted with your content. When you try to find your content online while being logged out of your account, you cannot find it, or when you share a link to your content to someone else, they will ask you why you sent them an invalid link. Google and Reddit are particularly bad at shadowbanning. You may have posted 1,000 thoughtful reviews on Google Maps, for them to suddenly hide all of your reviews. You can fill in a form to request a review, but you will never hear back. If you get shadowbanned on Reddit, you will have to create a new account. In both examples you will never find out what caused the shadowban.
We believe this is an awful approach. You may have contributed loads of genuine content, only for one thing that they did not like to mean all of your content will suddenly vanish without you knowing? Shadowbanning confuses the membership and lacks any form of transparency. We believe if you have broken the rules, you should be told about it, and given an opportunity to appeal. TFUK will never shadowban you. You can either post normally, or you cannot post normally but you will know why.
