What constitutes a permanent ban? Do these even exist? Why are people allowed back onto chat if they've been banned before? Would appreciate some answers thank you.

[DocJohn]

We generally do not ban members from the community (except obvious spammers). We do provide them with warnings (often 2, sometimes even more), and then a suspension to emphasize the seriousness of the infraction if they continue to ignore the warnings or are unable to bring their behavior into compliance.

Suspensions range from 3 days to a month depending upon the seriousness of the infraction. In the case of a member simply being unable to comply, they may face an indefinite suspension from either the community or the specific service (such as chat) that they are having problems in.

Last, for privacy reasons, we do not usually share with all parties what exactly has been done to help bring another member's behavior in line with our Community Guidelines. So it might be easy to make an assumption about something that simply isn't true.

DocJohn

Ok DocJohn thanks for the info.