Unbanning “Too Young” Pokébase users after a year or two.

Question

So this suggestion is mainly because of my failed attempt to mentor Yoda_My_Cat and him ended up getting banned till he was older. But the thing is, while scrolling through questions I found a user that I don’t know the name(had a green Salamance gravatar and negative 26 points) who was banned a year ago for being too young for this site. I don’t think he’s ever been unbanned. That seems unfair to me. I know the Mods can’t remember every single user they’ve banned over the years, but I think these users should get another chance once they’re older, or in one-two years depending on their guessed age. I know there’s a list of banned users, so maybe put a description why each user was banned and like a timer for those banned for being too young. I don’t know. I just feel like these users are forgotten who could be helpful after they mature.

EDIT: I know that they’re sometimes unbanned. I just mean a way so the majority aren’t forgotten.

Comments

I would think that if you got banned from a site for a year, your interest in the site would be killed forever, so there isn’t much of a point. There is little to stop them from doing the same antics as well.

---

Also I think the Salamence person was banned for making rule-breaking posts after repeatedly being told to stop.

---

also, we don't know the actual ages. if they're banned when they're like 9, a year or two on isnt really going to make a lot of difference in the maturity department. i know not everyone can use discord but most can and they're able to message us directly about ban appeals.

---

Just to add onto the aforementioned posts, mainly fizz’s answer, if a kid were to come to us and be like “hi, this was my account, I was banned for xyz, I understand I did wrong and I won’t to it again”, we’ll highly consider unbanning them. It shows a lot of maturity to own up to what you did and apologize for it, and that’s what we want to see. It happens more often than you think, and it’s because we try not to advertise other people’s business. Staff also tends to be forgiving around dupe accounts if the person is honest about it, has grown, can’t remember their log-in info, can’t contact staff in any other way, etc. Look at me, for example. (Disclaimer: I do not condone dupe making to ban evade)

Answer 1

We have a process for people who want to come back from long-term bans. The people who follow this process tend to have very good outcomes.

I don't agree we should think up arbitrarily-long bans for these people. Anything longer than a few weeks might as well be permanent to the person who logs in one day to find out they're banned. We also cannot estimate when a child will realise everybody knows they're 10, or when a 16-year-old is going to quit being a weirdo (if ever). So we hand that responsibility off the person who will know best.

If https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/KindOfSalamence were to contact us using a coherent sentence asking if we would unban him, then we probably would. Until that time, we're not going to spend time thinking about whether he's matured enough this week compared to last week. If it helps put you at rest we can see he hasn't logged in for months.

Also, I expect (actually, I know) these kids may eventually make new accounts and we won't necessarily know unless they outright advertise they had an old account.

Comments

Okay. Hmmmm…..

---

I laughed when I pressed the link and it linked to me LOL