Update to our General Rules & Punishment Guidelines - Reintroduction of Timed Bans

[Osborn]

Eclipse Community,

We've updated the formatting of our General Rules to eliminate the previous bullet point system. Instead, we've opted to make individual sections for each server rule, and better clarified several rules. Although it will be more to read, it'll hopefully help players, especially newer players, understand our server rules better. 

This new formatting will allow us to go more into depth with future changes. It's our goal to make rules understandable to all players, both new and experienced. 

We may adopt this formatting for our other rules as well in the near future. 

Notable Changes:

• Illegitimate Transfers and RWT have been separated and better explained.
• The NCZ list has been updated to reflect on recent changes to police, medic, and sheriff stations. It's more clear which area we consider an NCZ now. If any are missing, they will be added. 
• Ignoring faction duties has been moved from Powergaming to Non-RP.
• Being able to speak in different languages In-Character privately has been removed and is no longer permitted. 
• The definition of Powergaming has been updated slightly to make it clear that it's different from Non-RP. 
• Added a few more examples to our rules to help our newer players understand them better.
• The entire Disrupting Server Operations section has been updated. 

Furthermore, we've also revised our internal punishment guidelines;

• Timed Bans reintroduced to Deathmatching, Metagaming, Non-RP, and OOC Behavior. This means that there now are additional steps before an indefinite ban is placed. Timed Bans do not need to be appealed as they expire automatically, but can still be appealed if you feel the decision was wrong. 
• Real World Trading is no longer a permanent ban by default, but will still result in a lengthy ban and full account assets wipe for those involved. (players will still need to appeal and an individual decision will be taken on the appeal itself)
• Illegitimate Transfers are no longer an indefinite ban by default for the first violation but will still result in the involved assets being removed. 
• Deathmatching punishments will now also have a low/medium/high severity identifier. This is primarily for Senior Staff in the event of an appeal, to help us better understand the situation. Although, we've also further clarified that situations deemed as low severity could have other options explored than punishment, to solve the situation if possible. 

Note: Our decision to consider certain non-severe punishments as old after 1 year is still active, it hasn't changed.

I'd also like to clarify; if you know of someone who is banned for a serious offense that also resulted in them being banned from all areas of our community, they will need to reach out to a member of Senior Staff for a potential unban of our forums to appeal their ban, not make a new account. It is however going to be near impossible if the ban revolved around staff/player harassment, doxxing, cheating, DDoSing, ban evading, or other severe actions considered Disrupting Server Operations.

Edit:

Any change is for the future, not the past. If players are banned, they have to appeal as per usual.