One of my friends was banned from an early Internet forum in 1996, he was age 15 at the time.

Last year, in 2011, after being elected to his municipality's parks board, he was able to ask for, and receive without problem, his permaban to be overturned.

This raises two questions and two situations in my mind. Both of which are very very silly. I'd like to know which one STO endorses.


1 - Permabans are truly Permanent.
If someone who is 13 does something and gets permabanned, this person will still be banned at age 31, and, at age 81. Even if this person's twin brother commits murder, he has a better chance of getting out of prison by age 81 than this guy does of having his ban reversed. This, of course, is very very silly.

2 - Permabans are not Permanent
If someone who is 40 does something and gets permabanned, he could petition to be unbanned even the very next year so long as he could prove that he's improved his behaviour. This of course means that the "permanent" part of a "permanent" ban is nothing more than letters, which is of course, very very silly.

Like most mmorpg's, a perma ban is a perma ban. The only time in various mmo's I've ever seen ban's lifted are when they were done by accident on the company side of things in error.

As far as STO's goes, perma is perma. But also keep in mind it's F2P now, so it's really not hard for someone to just sign up a new account and continue playing.

Well, a friend of mine has a ticket (that has been unanswered for 3 months) asking for his permaban to be removed from I believe November, and they haven't even bothered to answer the ticket.

but, some of our current forum regs have been at one time or another permabanned, and here they are. Naming names isn't allowed under the rules, but I'm sure we all know a couple of them.

I think it's a shame that certain people have been permabanned. Perhaps they brought it on themselves, but I think a temporary ban, or even a long term ban (six months) to one year might have been more appropriate. At least it would give people a chance to learn their lesson.

If the game is still going in 10+ years, then maybe there would be a reason to consider amnesty for offenses old enough, but for now, your 18 and 68 year examples simply aren't applicable.

As for whether a permaban in the first place, we have no idea what was done to receive it, or if there were prior temporary bans, or anything, and it isn't like Cryptic or any other company is going to start going into specifics of any given ban.

If, say, it was an individual you annoyed to that level, would you expect forgiveness, even after decades, regardless of what was done or said? Hope for, sure. Ask for, sure... expect though?

Most internet forums, except perhaps government ones, are privately run (including this one). So any administrator who's 'permabanned' anyone can decide to 'unban' whenever they wish. You didn't mention whether your 'friend' was banned from a government or private forum, but it's really not relevant to this.

This is PWE's forum. They, and they alone, can decide when or if a 'permaban' is removed. As a privately run board, there's no obligation for them to remove or not remove a permaban.

Of course, since you've decided that both upholding and not upholding permabans is 'very very silly', the whole point is moot, I suppose. Unless we're discussing 'Schrödinger's Permaban', then there are some very theoretic issues.

The idea of a permaban is silly.

I'd even be willing to back a decade long ban over a permaban as at least the latter has an end-date.

There's a third group that has to be considered. The ones who get permabanned for telling the truth and for backing it up with proof, and would tell the admins of whatever forum they got banned from what to go do with themselves if they offered to lift the permaban.

It's not silly. I have been active on the forum for over 2 years and have never received even a single infraction. The are warnings, and time-outs first before you get a permaban.

I know someone who was permabanned here by a former employee of Atari, who now posts here again regularly.

I also know multiple people who were "permabanned" over at the WoW forums, who all came back from permaban.

Permaban is relative.