The utilitarian view is fine, of course, but at the same time it presents an inconsistency in the way that these matters are handled, and that's dangerous. Up to this point, alts have been permabanned out of hand, especially for ban dodging, and if it becomes a matter of certain members being able to get away with it while the majority do not, that is worrisome.

I don't know. One of my favorite posters on vgChartz has had roughly 4-6 accounts and gotten them all banned for being alts. I'm happy he's still here though as he's pretty fun to talk to and play with. He'll be around for sometime more then he'll shoot his mouth off and get banned again which is inconvenient to me because then I need to figure out who he is again (not hard really).

IMO there's less favoritism when it comes to ban-dodging/alts than there is with the bans in the first place. It's not uncommon to see some posters say things that would get others warned or even outright banned.

I have noticed the same, when it comes to people getting away with certain things - I would still report some posts in locked topics if I had the chance. That is something that needs to be remedied, too, but it will require a great deal of action and a possible re-examination of what exactly it is the moderatos are supposed to do.

This is more worrisome to me because the matter of alts is objective, and in this case it is very much out in the open, so it is flaunting the ways in which the system does not work.

Maybe but then it comes back to whether or not the ban served the purpose intended. If you view a ban as something to remove someone from the website then it did not. If you view a ban as something to make someone stop trolling or the like then it might have anyway. To me, alts are only a problem when someone makes new ones just to be spiteful or attack others. Of course then those get banned and the cycle continues until one side gets tired which is likely the person since clicking a couple buttons to ban someone is probably much easier than resigning up with new accounts.

Ahhhh. I think w have a different understanding of how bans are supposed to work, especially when it comes to perma-bans.

It has been my understanding that temporary bans are like putting a person in the cooler for a while so that they will learn their lesson, yes, but perma bans are generally an agreement that a person is no longer allowed to be here regardless of reform. If that is not the differentiation between them, then I have been operating under false assumptions in this conversation and probably need to step out.

vgChartz has the silly rule where ban time increases each ban which I don't really understand. The only difference between a 1 day ban and a 7 day ban is that it's far more likely the person will create an alt to get around the 7 day ban whereas they'll just twiddle their thumbs for the 1 day ban.

So basically I see there being only two kinds of bans 1 day/less than a day and longer than a day. One is a knock it off/cool off. The other is a "go away if you won't play nice."