Bans

This document shall clarify in what cases staff of the Xertion IRC network are allowed to handle bans of any sort. "You" shall refer to any client entity that was banned from the respective location (be it a channel or the network). "The channel" shall refer to a channel that you were banned from; likewise, "the network" shall refer to the Xertion IRC network and "the network staff" shall refer to any and all IRC Operators, regardless of rank, on the Xertion IRC network.

Claiming ignorance or inability to comprehend any of the text on this page does not protect you from any punishment as described in these policies in any way.

Channel Bans
As a rule of thumb, if you wind up banned from a channel, the network staff may not help you in any way.

This rule may be broken if and only if the member of the network staff who is helping you is also a member of the staff of the channel; in that case, the respective staff member may deal with your ban at their own discretion, which means that they cannot be held liable for their actions as part of the network. Their actions are to be seen as those of an individual, regular user of the network in that context.

In the process of a staff member of the network dealing with a channel ban, he or she must have legitimate access to any and all commands that are used. If this is not the case, the Network Owners of the network are permitted to revert any change to the ban list of the channel and to take disciplinary action on the offending operator at their own discretion.

Channel Ban Evasion
Please be aware that this section deals with channel operators evading bans on a channel. This is only a last resort; channel staff are expected to manage their channel to the best technical degree possible. Reporting channel ban evasion too early and/or too frequently may lead to punishment of the person who keeps sending reports and/or, at the discretion of the network staff, action against the channel in question. The definitions at the beginning of this document save "the network" are considered invalid in this section and have a different context.

Any op from a channel is permitted to report channel ban evasion to the #help channel on the network. Criteria for a channel ban evasion are:
 * The last evasion must have happened in the last 24 hours.
 * There must have been at least three evasions in total.
 * The evading party must have been banned every time that he/she appeared in the channel.
 * You must have set the smartest possible ban in order to keep the user out. Staff in #help will reject your claim if there is a simple ban that keeps the user out.

You are expected to collect logs of the individual bans with sufficient context that makes their time and date clear before you report it. The network staff reserves the right to reject taking action for any reason whatsoever, including none. The type and duration of punishment (if any) shall not be revealed to the channel staff. Once a ban evasion is escalated to the network layer, the channel staff are no longer able to influence disciplinary action and any decision made by the network staff is to stay between the staff and the evading party.

Network Bans
===SPECIAL NOTICE FOR BSNL INDIA USERS - PLEASE READ FIRST! === Due to known reliability and connectivity issues for most BSNL users in India when connecting to Xertion's US servers, we have opted to disallow BSNL customers from connecting to any of Xertion's US servers. These are not true "bans" in the sense of someone doing anything "wrong", but more that we lack a better mechanism to deal with the issue on our end. If you use BSNL as your provider, PLEASE connect to [ircs://irc.ap.xertion.org irc.ap.xertion.org] which may give you better connectivity. Or, alternatively, you can connect to a Xertion EU server by directing your IRC client to connect to [ircs://irc.eu.xertion.org irc.eu.xertion.org] . We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this causes you. 'PLEASE NOTE THAT, OBVIOUSLY, THIS RESTRICTION HAS ONLY BEEN PLACED ON US-BASED SERVERS! YOU CAN FREELY CONNECT TO ANY XERTION SERVER IN THE EU OR ASIA-PACIFIC REGIONS!' ===Introduction === Any full Global Operator or higher on the network is permitted to add and remove bans as they see fit. If you find yourself in the situation that you are banned from the network, you are not to connect to the network in order to appeal your ban - this would constitute ban evasion, which could be met with increased ban time. Instead, follow our appeals process to correctly appeal a ban.

Appealing a network ban
In most cases, it is possible for you to appeal a ban. You will need to send an email to [mailto:admin@xertion.org admin@xertion.org] with your ban message and an explanation as to why you believe that you should be unbanned. Network staff will debate your appeal request and will return a decision by email. If it is decided to accept your appeal, your ban will be removed and you can then connect to the network again. However, if the response is no, then you are not to connect to the network until the ban expires on its own. Filing repeated appeals after this point will likely result in your ban time being extended. When we say no, we mean no, and that's the end of it.

Open Proxies
As per our network policy, and as allowed by United States law, our system does scanning for open (unsafe) proxies to ensure both your security as well as the security of our users. If one is found on your IP, you will be automatically banned. If this happens to you, you will see the ban message mentioning something along the lines of "insecure open proxy on your IP". If this is the case, you'll need to address the problem before appealing your ban - ensure you are not running any software that is openly allowing anyone to proxy through it, and be sure that you yourself are not using an open proxy anywhere on your system. Once you have ensured these things, you may appeal, but be aware we will be checking your IP upon appeal to ensure the problem has indeed been corrected.

Blacklist detections
In addition to checking for open proxies, we also look your IP address up on numerous blacklists. If your IP is found on one of these blacklists, you will be automatically banned. The ban message WILL mention the specific blacklist your IP is listed on - you will need to go there to find out why you were listed, which should help you find and fix the problem. The link to each blacklist will be in the ban message, use that link to see more information on your detection. Appeals for these types of bans will only be accepted after you have (a) addressed the issue that got you listed + (b) you have requested delisting AND they have accepted your request to delist + (c) have waited at least 24 hours after requesting delisting.

IT IS POSSIBLE that your IP ends up listed on more than one of the blacklists we use at the same time. If this is the case you will need to address ALL active listings before requesting an appeal.

Tor detections
The Xertion IRC Network DOES NOT permit use of Tor anywhere on the network. While we do support the idea of anonymity and privacy online, we were forced to enact this policy due to extremely large amounts of abuse from malicious actors and other unsavory types. Tor exit nodes are banned upon sight - these CANNOT be appealed, no exceptions. You will have to either stop using Tor entirely while you are on IRC, or use a legitimate and trustworthy paid VPN service (preferred). This restriction DOES NOT APPLY to Tor relays - feel free to contribute your connection to the Tor network as a relay. Tor exit nodes with exit policies that allow connection to IRC are PROHIBITED.

Other restrictions
While your network ban is in effect, you are no longer entitled to anything you own on the network. This includes (but is not limited to) your owned channels and nicknames. If your ban lasts longer than the expiration time on any of these owned entities, you automatically forfeit ownership of them. They will be permitted to expire naturally and will not be given out even if your ban time is longer than its expiry time. You broke the rules so why should you get to keep your things?

In the case of services abuse - whereby you used services for malicious purposes and obtained any kind of entity in order to do so - your entities will be removed immediately in addition to being banned network-wide by network staff.

Disclaimer
The network is able to change these policies at any time for any reason whatsoever, including none, at any given point of time, the users must be notified when any change took place using a /WALLOPS message. Should a situation occur that has not been considered in these policies, the network staff are allowed to come up with decisions as necessary and update this document afterwards. The section called "Too Long; Didn't Read" at the very end of this document only serves as a summary of these policies; its content does not have the same binding affect as all other sections.

Too Long; Didn't Read
IRC operators on Xertion won't unban you from channels unless they themselves are opped there. You may appeal network bans at [mailto:admin.xertion.org admin@xertion.org], if your appeal is rejected, don't ask again or you'll get a longer ban. And most important of all - DON'T BAN EVADE!

Network Ban Appeal Form
In case you wish to e-mail us, here is a template form to fill in with the information we need:

IP address banned from the network: Your IRC nick (if you are not a first-time user): Ban message shown on-connect: Time and date of the first occurrence of the ban: Why you believe that you should be unbanned:

See also: Rules