I feel now would be a good time to go over our preferred method conflict resolution. We feel civil discussion is a *necessary* ability in order to get community consensus. [Our preferred appeal methods.](https://voat.co/v/videosModTalk/1405328)

If we put up a sticky every time one user was upset, there would always be a sticky, and nobody would read it or care. @Violentlight said [it more eloquently](https://voat.co/v/videosModTalk/1393397/6776933) than I can.

Also, some have asked about the history of rules here, so I have begun making [a collection of old mod related posts](https://voat.co/v/videosModTalk/1404441). It is still missing some, as they can be hard to find, but much of it is there.

Now, to the point. This sticky is to determine whether spamming smail is considered spamming.

For the past year+ we have never differentiated spam by type. Posts, comments, spam reports, were all treated the same. If it is a user they get warnings followed by temp ban, followed by perma-ban. Bots/adspam gets instant perma-ban. Smail may be new, but spam reports are not. Nothing about this is new. We have warned many users over it. Many delicate types like to hit the report button when their feeling get hurt. We ask them to stop, then threaten them with a temp-ban. It almost always stops with the warning.

We've never received a complaint over this practice, until yesterday. The banned user is not appealing the ban. He doesn't care.

The community has been misled at times, and issues are conflated, for now we just want to answer the question of whether we continue with the ruleset as it has been, or if we need to change the ban policy.

A couple things to consider: -No user ever gets caught with a surprise ban. They are always warned, and made to understand before it gets to that point. -We have banned 'real' users before. I even made a [PV post where I asked them for help](https://voat.co/v/ProtectVoat/1070322) -Reasons and conversation that leads to a ban can always be found or watched at /v/videosModTalk. Transparency for everything. -Agenda driven trolls (eg. Spamalak), are persistent and malicious. If we allow them, things will decline. Sure, we can probably ignore one guy. But then we have to allow the hurt feelings, and the next trolls that show up. This removes one of our tools and will affect everyones experience.

A follow-up question, does the length of the temp-bans need to change?

**NOTE: Due to potential abuse, voats do not count for anything. Make a comment to share your opinion. Even if someone else has already said the same thing.** We will read every comment.