The community guidelines apply to all members equally, regardless of their seniority or position (even admins and mods must follow them). Having said that, we may weigh in a member's overall efforts in the community when deciding on an administrative action.

We have a system of increasing levels of action for a member who continually violates the community guidelines. It starts with a warning. We often give second and third warnings after that, if the behavior continues and is not severe enough for anything else. After that, when it's clear the member either can't bring their behavior inline with the community guidelines or refuses to do so, they may get a short account suspension (1-3 days). We can do this community-wide, or we can do it for chat-only.

If the member still isn't getting the message about the seriousness of their behavior and how it is disrupting the community and negatively affecting other members, the suspensions increase. We usually quit after 2-4 week suspensions, since it has become clear at that point that no amount of time away from the community is going to help the situation.

We never, ever do an account suspension lightly, and wait to hear from most members of the community support team before taking such a serious action.

You do not know why an account has been suspended. It is likely not because of something relatively mild they said on the forums or in chat (because we just don't do that). We cannot go into specific detail about specific members because it would violate their privacy (and our community guidelines).

Hope this sheds some light on the process.

Best,
DocJohn