It’s flawed. Why can’t we view the forums at all when we are banned and unable to view the message from the moderator explaining why we got banned? What if we wanted to appeal the ban? We can’t message anyone.
I think this needs to be fixed.
I’d agree that the person that recieved the ban should be able to recieve a PM of why. However, in no way should someone who got banned be able to see anything on the forums. What is the point of the ban if your able to do everything but reply?
That behavior seems to be part of the forum software, and could be tricky to change/fix. It is rather frustrating to see the “You have a message, click to view” thing popup, and when you click it finding it’s just a trap.
I haven’t tested this, but it may be possible to view the forums in another browser if you are not signed in there. Then as long as you aren’t posting in all the threads ever at the same time, you can try to check the last few you remember posting in. And seeing if you get one of those nice “This has been edited by moderators” additions to your posts which would tell you what happened. As far as appealing the ban I guess you can’t. They could try to set up an email address to use, like whyamibanned@live.com, but checking/keeping up with that would be a pain for mods/anybody to check and not really necessary depending on the duration of most bans.
> What is the point of the ban if your able to do everything but reply?
It’s one of those things that really doesn’t matter but what if something is announced and this is the only place it’s being discussed/announced? I’m not going to sign out to view the forums as Waypoint uses WLID and so does xbox.com Bungie.net which I always visit.
Well maybe that concern is supposed to make you try to get banned less frequently, so you don’t miss stuff and can contribute to the discussions and/or panic as appropriate. Though announcements would be on the main waypoint page which I don’t think is affected by a forum ban. And some articles have comments enabled, those might also be independent from the forums.
Also, if you use a different browser (a browser is something like internet explorer, firefox, chrome, safari, opera, netscape, etc), you can have a different logged in/out state on each browser so wouldn’t have to sign out of xbox.com/bungie/anything else. Though I’m not entirely sure if your username/account is banned (so you are unable to post when banned) or if it’s your ip, in which case other browser shouldn’t help (so you won’t be able to post or read). Maybe I’ll try to find out next time I can get myself banned.
> I’d agree that the person that recieved the ban should be able to recieve a PM of why. However, in no way should someone who got banned be able to see anything on the forums. What is the point of the ban if your able to do everything but reply?
Well, you can just sign out of your windows live id and view everything anyway, so the real question is what’s the point in not allowing people to view things on the site. The ban should apply to only posting abilities.
I also think we should definitely be able to pm mods if we get banned to ask why certain actions were ban-worthy. My most recent ban came in a post where one mod told me it was fine since it wasn’t directed at any one person, but according to another mod was not only worthy of an edit, but a full week ban. Mods should see eye to eye on what is and is t ban worthy, and if one tells me something is ok, and then another bans me for it, I should be able to appeal that ban before it is lifted.
There are already multiple topics on this subject. One reason given is that the banned member has time to cool down, and return to the forums in a more mature mood. That may not be the actual reason, but it is a nice side-effect.
> I also think we should definitely be able to pm mods if we get banned to ask why certain actions were ban-worthy. My most recent ban came in a post where one mod told me it was fine since it wasn’t directed at any one person, but according to another mod was not only worthy of an edit, but a full week ban. Mods should see eye to eye on what is and is t ban worthy, and if one tells me something is ok, and then another bans me for it, I should be able to appeal that ban before it is lifted.
You are always welcome to shoot us a message on twitter or XBL as well.
Well I know that now, as you were kind enough to tell me after this was brought up durin my last ban, but not everyone is aware that the mods are open to receiving messages and answering questions via XBL or twitter.
Also, since technically people cannot see the forums while being banned, how are they supposed to know a mods specific GT or twitter account? This especially comes into play for those of us who only use phones or other mobile devices to look at this site - seeing as forum ranks (which would include mods) are not visible on the mobile version of waypoint, and we aren’t given the option to view the full site on said mobile devices.
Well considering our usernames are our GT’s that should be fairly straight forward. 
And as for twitter, that’s why we have our twitter handles in our siggies. I know not everyone uses twitter but XBL is always an option.
I see your point about mobile browsing and unfortunately, I don’t have an answer for that. I also don’t have an answer for the inability to access PM’s while banned as that is something that is entirely out of our control. Trust me when I say I have my own laundry list of complaints about the mod specific side of the forums that would rival the normal member’s list.