Let me try to summarize and clarify a few things...
With any game or service, you typically need to agree to abide by the rules governing its use.
For those of you that have been on these forums for any length of time you probably already know how this works.
We don't ban people for swearing or criticizing us or EA.
We often opt to remove the more colorful language (and replace with a 'removed' notice) in order to keep the post alive, rather than deleting a post or the thread. And as a friendly reminder to the poster of expected conduct.
If someone is persistent in an infraction, we will warn them via private message. Often, this is done several times and may include talking with that person to clearly identify what they need to change in their behavior to others.
Where necessary, when continuing to break the rules, we will temporarily ban the person from this community site. This has no impact on any other EA site, nor the game, or otherwise limit the account in any way.
Once the ban passes, if they continue to break the rules we will temporarily ban them for a longer period of time.
If this problem continues, then we will escalate and request to permanently ban them from the site.
In rare cases, we may escalate further - at this point it would impact the account more substantially, including preventing the ability to access a game's online features. It should not prevent a player from playing their game offline.
It is possible to further escalate this to the extent that it will affect all EA games/sites or disabling the account outright - but that is an extreme measure.
It is also possible to fast track through some of those levels mentioned above. We entrust our moderators and employees to use common sense in these cases - and this is typically done for rare situations where clearly the individual is out to abuse the system, impact other players, or for things like getting rid of spambots.
So normally, in order for someone to get to the level of impact we are talking about on their account, they REALLY need to be working purposefully, and systematically at it.
What happened in this case (the error in the sytem) was human error. We apologized to the player, and have fully reinstated the account once we were able to complete the investigation into it and realized what happened. And we are currently going over this incident very seriously internally to improve the process moving forward, including better training on this system.
To be clear - this was not an issue with any of our volunteer moderators here on the site (the folks with the moderator tags).
I do want to call that out specifically, as it would be hugely unfair to them, if any of you - our community members - felt any doubts about this group of highly dedicated individuals on this site based on this incident. And to take the opportunity for me to re-iterate our trust in these individuals.
Many of them have been with us a long time and have consistently shown that they embody the same core values, care and passion we do, in wanting to create a great community that welcomes any opinions - even when those are critical of what we do.
Lastly, the rules of this site have not changed with this incident. Every EA community may have its own quirks or house rules which we may not necessarilly follow or know about - but what is above is what you should essentially expect on our site. It is in-line with the general conduct rules you signed up to as part of creating your account, and part of our commitment to you.
F.
Modifié par Fernando Melo, 12 mars 2011 - 01:47 .