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Banishment is where the buck stops. To find out where
it started, first read "City Hall & Duct Tape",
followed by "What's Bad Behavior in Whyville?"
And make sure you read the Callbox Instructions
and your user
agreements, too.
Banishment
Finally, we come to one of the most serious punishments of all: banishment from Whyville.
Banishment means you can never return to Whyville on that account; never get
your clams, salary, or face parts back! I get really hurt when I heard from a
recent Times submission that the author believes City Hall
unfairly banishes people. Every banishment takes a lot of time and thought, and
is ultimately done to secure the
safety of the community.
The fact is, do you want someone who is
constantly asking for passwords -- despite repeated warnings -- to stay in
Whyville? I'm thinking most of you do not because you realize that its unsafe and someone
who is always asking for passwords knowing its wrong can only have so many
chances. Or, what about someone who asks for personal information
many times? We have to wonder if that person is a predator or not -- to
protect you!
Yes, there have been some complaints about banishments over
usernames; we don't allow a lot of bad names, but some slip by sometimes and we
have to deal with them when we can. However, why did those people
choose an inappropriate username to begin with? Were they thinking about
the little 8 year old sibling watching over the computer? Well, we
are. People who continuously break the rules and laws at Whyville don't always
seem get the idea: we need to keep Whyville clean and safe, and
folks who break the rules are preventing us from doing that!
We always reserve the right to banish people (you should read your user
agreements!) for whatever reason that we see fit -- which will always be about keeping
our citizens safe -- and I hope you all remember that. If someone gets
banished, they are always free to email
city-management@whyville.net
from their original parental address
to inquire why they got banished. The funny thing is that most banished
users rarely do, since they almost always know they've done inappropriate things
to earn a banishment.
Keep in mind, harassing
City Hall by sending us an excess number of emails or using threatening language
gives us the right to contact your email service (like Hotmail), Internet
Service Provider, etc. (You wouldn't like getting your inbox flooded with
redundant emails -- so why would we?) Actually, for a lot of the offenses that
we banish for, we can contact the ISP to warn them
of what type of activity originates from their service. If they ignore it,
they're actually legally responsible -- so it's a pretty big
thing! We take it seriously, and so should you.
Anyway, I hope these articles help everyone understand a little better about City Hall's
worst job. None of us like giving out punishments, but we all have
to. After reading these articles, the Callbox Instructions,
and your user
agreements, and thus being more educated in the way Whyville does things,
I hope you have sympathy for what this job involves, the severity of the job, and the
mind-set we have about doing it. It's a pretty serious task -- just like the law enforcement in your hometown. We don't have to be like policemen, but we
do have to run a decently tight ship.If everyone does his job, and that includes you
citizens, we can all make Whyville an even *better* place to be!
-cyranojoe
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