Scans_Daily

The "We don't ask about who people are" is an interpretation of the age old Scans_Daily rule of "You are your username". No one is ever beholden to justify who they are here, just as who you are elsewhere is your own business, and we will never pry into that.

In some cases people may have to abandon profiles and adopt new ones for reasons of their own and whether they choose to acknowledge their past self/selves is up to them. (and provided they're not doing it to get round an previous expulsion by the Mods)

Mod's also can't see the e-mail associated with an account, so we can't tell who is who in that way. We do have visibility of ISP numbers, but even that has a diluted relevance with the prevalence of VPN randomising and people using more than one means/network to access the site.

Creating a new user account to circumvent a Ban User so as to pick (or restart) fights is a "bad faith" move, and it would certainly trigger the disciplinary process.

The unique issue with Moderating the Ban User situation is that, even as Mods, we have no visibility of the intra-member Bans which might be in place at any moment. Nor can anyone see who has Banned them, until they try interacting with them.

So, unless we happen upon clearly egregious situation in passing, the Mods will be entirely reliant on members to let us know if something is up (Which we hope would happen anyway), and then decide whether it was done with malicious intent or not, and act accordingly.

Which is what Mods are expected to do, of course. But this adds a new wrinkle to it, since the arising issues are not "things which have concretely happened" which we can see, but "things which have not happened because of an invisible-to-everyone-else Ban being in place at the time", which we can't see... it's like Moderation Dark Matter.

We already have rules about using multiple accounts to "sockpuppet" conversations or fake support for a point.

The example you give of "Replying to people you have Banned but who have not returned the Ban" would also be influenced by the motivation for doing so and the impact on the recipient.

If you have Banned someone presumably you aren't that interested in interacting with them, so why are you replying to them?

Certainly, if you did so to insult them, or start an argument, in the knowledge they can't respond, then that would definitely be worthy of raising with a Mod if we haven't responded to it already, as picking a fight like that would not be acceptable, Ban or no Ban, but the deliberate use of Ban User would certainly be seen as aggravating things.

On the other hand if it's clearly a casual remark which isn't looking for a response, it's probably less of an issue, though the recipient might not think so, and we would weight their opinion into any decision.

The "unblock, comment and then reblock" move, which is attempting to have the last word by very dubious means, would definitely be regarded as a Conduct Fail by the Mods and treated accordingly.

In short, the sort of issues you raise would seem to be related to general conduct and behaviour, which we already have rules in place for, rather than something specific about the Ban function itself, though we would regard the use of Ban User as an aggravating factor.

Obviously we hope this isn't a situation we hope see come up very often, but when it does Mods and members will have to work together to address it on a case by case basis because it's new to us too, and there's just no other way to do it we can see.