New Infraction / Warning System - Points for rule violations  

Over the many years that BYC has been around, weve worked hard to create a friendly and helpful environment where peeps can chat about chickens (and a bunch of other topics).   Over that time, weve also developed a bunch of rules that every member agrees to when joining our wonderful group.   After a member registers, they are responsible for adhering to the rules they agreed to when joining.

Our forum moderators do a fantastic job, but managing a community of tens of thousands of active members is really a tricky challenge, especially when it comes to remembering who did what, where, and when.

To help our moderators keep their sanity while helping us do a better job communicating with our members, weve implemented a new Warning / Infraction System feature.  This will allow for better and simplified moderation that is universal for all users and ultimately provides a better forum experience.

This new system allows us to better manage the behavior of our forum members and offers an easier way of issuing warnings, suspensions and, when absolutely necessary, bans.

It is important to keep in mind that an infraction / warning is not given to punish our members, but is a way for us to help our members better understand our community's rules and tone.  If you get an warning, please simply become better acquainted with our rules and try to understand why you received a warning and continue enjoying our wonderful community!


Here is how the system works:

If a user should earn a warning, a message will be sent to the user explaining why the warning was issued along with how many points they have "earned".   The more severe the infraction, the more points received. If you get an warning, you will receive a Private Message alerting you to the infraction along with details of why you received the warning.

If you gather too many infraction points, you will be prevented from using aspects of the forum for a certain amount of time. 

If you feel the infraction/warning was unfair then please contact a moderator; dont start a public thread as it will be locked/ removed and result in even more infraction points.

Sometimes a warning may be issued without infraction points; if this is the case, any further breaches of the rules will result in an infraction with points associated.

Almost every infractions points have an expiration to them, and they vary between types of infractions. 

You can see your infraction points and warning history in your user profile (Profile, Essentials, User activity).  Only you and forum staff can see your warnings.

Below is the current list of warnings and points.  Please keep in mind that this system is brand-new and we expect that we will need to continue evaluating and tweaking the warning, points per infraction, expiration dates, etc. 
http://www.backyardchickens.com/a/warning-types-for-the-infractions-system

We appreciate the members of our community that work hard to keep the forum rules and are very glad that this applies to the vast majority of you!   

Honestly, we hope that none of you will even have any interaction with this new system! 

Sorry, I should have included a link to the list (which I've now done in the first post).

Again, keep in mind this system is fresh off the computer presses, so there will be some tweaking done.

Also keep in mind that the points are just a general guideline, our moderators may give more or less points for an infraction depending on the context, etc.