Discipline

Staff hope that they and other players can all enjoy their time on Velvet Room MUSH without incident. However, sometimes things do happen, and so we have a set of policies in place to handle disciplinary matters. It's important to establish expectations and illustrate how we intend to generally handle things. However, take note:

The staff reserves the right to take any disciplinary action we see fit at any time to protect the game and/or its players, up to and including permanent bans.

The point of our policy isn't to establish a judiciary system but to set expectations around discipline. This can be modified in practice as needed, because each situation is different.

The One Rule

Our most basic rule is this: treat people politely and with respect. If you don't know how to do that, that's a bigger problem than we can solve; if you aren't sure if a particular behavior is respectful, you can ask. However, we can't ultimately lay out a legalistic approach to behavior that will always work--and we don't want to.

We'll be happy to explain the 'spirit' of our decisions, but we will not be entertaining rules lawyering designed to get around the letter of the law. We also aren't personal behavior coaches, social workers, or counselors; it falls to players to figure out how to behave within the norms of the community.

Disciplinary Escalation

If there is a disciplinary matter at hand, we will generally begin by warning the player in question. This is informal, but continued problems will result in more formal measures.

For more serious problems, we use a three-strikes rule. Strikes expire at our discretion, typically after about a year. Players will be informed when a strike expires.

Temporary bans may accompany strikes. Violation of a temporary ban will result in a permanent ban. Players will always be told of the duration of a temporary ban.

Characters with three strikes are added to a 'probationary' list for a set period of time (typically three months, never shorter), after which point any infraction can result in loss of character or a permanent ban. Some players will start at this status. Rarely, someone's previous behavior requires us to analyze them more harshly, but we prefer to give such individuals a chance.

Firing

Loss of character is rare. A good way to lose your character is to lie to staff, to disrupt your cast (as an OC or an FC), or to actively cheat--deliberately editing formulas in the spreadsheet to get around combat code rules, for instance. This can be done for other serious reasons, at the discretion of staff.

Keep in mind, accidentally clicking around the spreadsheet and changing something isn't the same as going into the formulas tab and messing around. If you hit a wrong button by accident, just let staff know ASAP.

Banning

Permanent bans are much rarer. Some players may merit this treatment, and some players are pre-emptively banned for previous behavior that we deem sufficiently unacceptable that we will not be giving them a chance on our game. These people, by and large, likely already know who they are.

We won't publish the list of people who are pre-banned or preemptively put on probation; if players in either category list apply, they will be informed of their bans at that time.