Email banned users

[1-alex98]

Very often users do not know they are banned and what for to make this more transparent we should email banned users and tell them the reason and duration for the ban.

[1-alex98]

[Rackover]

When someone is banned he gets the message of why he has been banned upon connection. So people know very well why they are ban.
Even better : they know who banned them. so if they want more details, they can simply ask. Each one of the moderator can be contacted

• On discord
• On Aeolus using external irc client
• On the forums (this is the optimal way)
  at litterally any time.
  So no, I don't think users need an email.

[1-alex98]

oh ok cool did not know that. However I am not sure if an average user is on our discord nor does he probably know how to use an external IRC client and does he even know the forums.
Before I started developing faf I knew none of these options.... Are you sure that this is displayed on login? Does the java-client do that as well?

[1-alex98]

And further more if it says @Rackover banned me and I look on Discord then who are you, you are called different there.

[VoRGoR]

Then contact any mod; we tell everyone how to contact the irc mod group on the forum and link the report form extensively
Thomas is lying about literally everything; he knows why he is banned and how to get unbanned, he simply doesn't want to.
I don't know if java client displays this.

[1-alex98]

ok good to know ;) But still would you not think it would be good idea to send out an email?

[Rackover]

All of this is pinned ontop of #aeolus : "How to appeal"...
I don't think an email will be any better. It will just add insult to injury if anything.

[ThomasHiatt]

How am I lying about literally everything? I specifically said that I know why I am banned and how to get unbanned. It is right there in the screenshot. It is true that I have not been told that I am banned. Maybe if I tried to log in to the client it would say I am banned, but I deleted the client before I was banned, so I have not received the message. And there are multiple clients which are open source, so any user could easily write their own client. Relying on a client to deliver the message of a player being banned is a bad practice. I was not saying my ban is unfair, I was just pointing out how silly it is that you are not emailed when your account is banned, yet when I get a forum PM from yet another Feather smurf I am immediately sent an email.

In this case I did deliberately get myself banned, but consider this hypothetical scenario: I go on vacation. Someone like Feather uses my PC or discovers my FAF password and uses it to rename my account. There is no email saying my username has changed. I am banned from FAF, still no email. I come back from vacation, I don't know my username because someone changed it so I cannot log into the client, so I do not see the "How to appeal". I may or may not know about the Discord or how to find a moderator on the forum.

Admittedly this is not that likely to ever happen. But it also wasn't likely that I would randomly rename to something outrageous and get myself banned on purpose.

I think sending an email when an event like your login information being changed, or your account being banned is totally reasonable. Why is relying on a 3rd party application like a client to deliver the information better than using an official email?

Again, it isn't a big deal and I was only pointing out what I believe is a flaw in the system, and how funny it is that you prioritize Feathers private forum messages over changes to my account status and information. And I wouldn't have bothered writing this wall of text if Gorton wasn't randomly calling me a liar.

[Rackover]

• We are not in control of what the forums sends or says exactly
• The "you are banned" message doesn't come from the client, but from the server, so any client will receive it the same way.
• Clients are not 3rd party applications, actually your email client is. Clients are how you're supposed to use the FAF service in the first way - which is, may I remind you, the client and server to play SCFA, not the website or the forum.
• What do you mean by "Prioritizing feathers private forum messages" exactly ? I don't remember the moderator group has received a single request of you on the forum at all, so it would be hard for me to prioritize you over anything, since you sent nothing.

[1-alex98]

I think I email would not hurt but if moderator team wishes differently...

[1-alex98]

https://faforever.slack.com/files/U3KSDC5L7/FCP7RMLAX/image.png

Java client only shows reason

[ThomasHiatt]

I mean that I received 1 email from "admin@faforever.com" informing me that Feather had sent me a forum PM with one of his nice drawings, and that I recieved 0 emails informing me that my username was changed and my account has been banned from FAF. Therefor, it appears to me that "admin@faforever.com" cares more about messages sent by Feather on the forums than it does about informing me that my account has been modified and consequently banned. Now I notice that in this email it does say that I requested to be notified of this, maybe I did, I don't remember. It still seems odd that I am emailed in this case and not the other.

If I were to change something about my twitter, steam, discord, google or whatever account I would be emailed notifying me that something happened to my account, even If I just log in from a new IP address I would be notified via email. Email is widely accepted as the reliable way to communicate with people on the internet, and it is common practice to use it to inform users when something about their account is changed, such as their username being changed or their account being banned.

Yes you have to use a client of some kind to play on FAF. FAF and the clients are open source so anyone is allowed to modify them or write their own, that's the whole idea. So you cannot guarantee that a client will tell the user they are banned, why they are banned, and how to appeal their ban. Maybe the 2 most popular clients do. What about any other clients people might create or use? You (Rackover) are working on some C++ client as a side project right? Does it tell the user when they are banned and why they are banned and how to appeal their ban? If my neighbor wrote a FAF client and gave it to me, can you guarantee their client will tell me? No you cannot. But you can send an email to the email address which I used to create my account, you made me verify my that email when creating my account to ensure it is a real email that actually works. So you can reasonably expect that it will still work in order to tell me all the relevant information about username changes and bans. This is once again a hypothetical scenario that is unlikely to happen, only because the FAF community is so small that nobody is likely to use their own client. So it really doesn't matter, but I still see sending an email as the correct solution.

[1-alex98]

Actually that all seems reasonable to be mails on account changes

[Rackover]

I'm not actually against sending mails to users on account change. I was just pointing out most of ThomasHiatt's message was wrong and/or misleading.
"What if someone makes a client that decides to not show the ban reason sent by the server, and that it could perfectly display if it wanted to ?" Well, I don't know. What if your mail client deliberately hides to you the mails sent by FAF, eh ? What you're pointing out is a non-issue.

[VoRGoR]

To be clear someone would need to code this. That's the reason it does not exist.
Realistically there is no pressing need for it, but if it was created it would be good.

[1-alex98]

sending emails is super easy

[1-alex98]

And emails on bans?

[VoRGoR]

If it can be done, do it, it's fine.