- Official Post
This post contains the instructions, guidelines and the template you must follow if you wish to appeal a Long-Term Ban. If you are not banned from the TotalFreedom Forum, you are required to post your ban appeal in the ban appeal section of the forum. You can access the Ban Appeals section of the form here. Before appealing your ban, it is important to make sure you meet all conditions of your ban (which are generally posted on the list of indefinitely banned players spreadsheet).
E-Mail Appeal Instructions (if you are forum banned)
If you are banned from the Total Freedom Forum, send your ban appeal by email to banappeals@totalfreedom.me using the template provided at the bottom of this post.
Self-Requested Ban Appeal Instructions
As per the Self-Requested Long-Term Ban policy, there is no required template for these types of bans and they can be appealed at any time by simply contacting the Ban Manager and requesting for your Self-Requested ban to be removed.
General Long-Term Ban Appeal Instructions
When appealing your ban, it is recommended to verify that you have met all conditions of your ban such as a minimum duration of the ban before you are eligible to appeal, if applicable. In those conditions, if you appeal before your minimum time has elapsed or fail to meet the conditions of the ban determined by the Ban Manager when the request for your ban was approved before appealing, your appeal will automatically be denied. If you do not have a minimum duration of the ban applied, it is recommended to wait at least a minimum of 30 to 60 days before submitting an appeal unless you feel you have been banned wrongly and have concrete evidence to support this fact. If you do not wait the minimum time, you risk having your appeal being denied for it being too short of a duration you are banned.
Notes:
- Make sure you are actually banned before filing a long-term ban appeal. If you try to connect to the server and it states you're indefinitely banned, then file a long-term ban appeal. Otherwise, file a regular ban appeal in the forum or wait up to a day as regular bans generally last 24 hours. For admins who find themselves indefinitely banned for no cause (and still have admin perms on the forum), please post your appeals in the admin section of the forum.
- If you're banned from the TotalFreedom Forums and you are found to be bypassing the ban using a VPN or any other means and you appeal your ban anyways, it will be considered invalid and automatically denied as you bypassed your original ban instead of normally appealing through the email address listed above.
- In the event the long-term ban list gets corrupted for whatever reason or you find yourself unbanned without your appeal being processed and you decide to join the server, do not continue to play on the server and check the status of your appeal. If your appeal wasn't approved and you continue to play, you will be treated as a ban bypasser and your appeal will be denied and you will have to re-appeal your ban. To avoid this, either contact the ban manager or have someone else do so and report the incident.
- Using any form of AI/ChatGPT to answer any part of your appeal, especially Question 4 will result in an automatic denial. That simply proves you are not sincere and ready to be unbanned.
- If you are found to have undesirable conduct/name-calling/rudeness while you are appealing your ban, your appeal will likely be prematurely processed and rejected as you are demonstrating to the Ban Manager and other members of the community that you are not ready to return and have not learned your lesson.
- If you bypass a Self-Requested ban, your offence will be treated as a normal ban bypass and you will be required to appeal via the template below and meet all the eligibility requirements while also risking being issued a normal long-term ban for your offence.
- The Ban Manager holds the final decision on the status of your appeal regardless of votes.
The template to be used when appealing a Long-Term Ban from the TotalFreedom server is located below. If approved for removal from the long-term ban list, the following conditions will apply:
- Except for those who were improperly placed on the indefinite ban list, those who get released from an indefinite ban are subject to being placed back on the indefinite ban list more easily than those who were never on the indefinite ban list.
- If your ban appeal is approved and you were also banned from the forum, you will be permitted access to the forum.
- If you were also banned from discord as part of the conditions of the ban, you are required to state this fact on Question 5 and if your ban appeal is approved, your discord ban will be removed alongside your in-game ban.
- If you were an admin, you can apply for reinstatement 30 days after release from the indefinite ban (or earlier if the Admin Officer approves) and you must note the circumstances of your indefinite ban in the reinstatement request.
Long-Term Ban Appeal Voting Guidelines
As part of the restructuring of the Long-Term Ban Appeal process, there are new changes to the voting procedure.
Vouch/Object is not entirely forbidden but, people are going to have to actually provide some form of actual reasoning to their votes from now on which reflects a general change in voting procedures on the server. Votes will also no longer be the sole defining factor in getting someone unbanned as they are simply "suggestions" for convincing the Ban Manager to unban the player appealing the ban. Below are some tips for voting.
- Votes with just "vouch/object" and no reasoning will be disregarded entirely.
- Votes with "vouch he's cool", "vouch I guess", etc. will be disregarded entirely.
- Votes found to be written with AI/ChatGPT will be disregarded entirely.
- If objecting, it's often beneficial to include evidence of additional wrongdoings (if possible, but not required) or otherwise explain why they don't deserve to be unbanned (such as attitude, etc.)
Long-Term Ban Release Template
1. Minecraft name:
2. Discord username and discriminator (username#discriminator) (if any):
3. Approximate date of long-term ban:
4. Reason for a long-term ban. Please do not lie, and try to be sincere and apologize as applicable:
5. Is this ban appeal also for a discord ban issued with the long-term ban (yes/no, if applicable)
6. Do you agree to follow our community guidelines (https://forum.totalfreedom.me/d/2961) and all the conditions stated above?