Hello. I've been using this account to sign into the playroom for many years. About 6 months ago, I believe I accidentally logged into the playroom while I was connected to a VPN. This was not intentional. Ever since, I receive a message about being banned from the playroom as a result of having a stupid nickname. I believe that my IP was associated with a player who had already been banned. Is there any way this could be looked into so that I can resume enjoying this wonderful platform? Any feedback is appreciated. Thank you.

Hi. I think your name has been associated with mine, as I was banned when I was a kid for doing different things that violated the rules of the playroom. Unfortunately, though, bans here aren't being solved that easily, so I'm not sure how will you be able to continue using this platform. Good luck, though.

Hello,
As you correctly wrote in your post @Stormy, it's not your account that is banned, but the VPN that someone has used in the past to create an account with a controversial, offensive or otherwise problematic username, and you just happen to be using the same VPN.
You shouldn't be directly affected by this ban if you log in with your own IP address, which is not banned.
I'm sure we've addressed this problem together in the past, and that you've informed us that everything is working fine after we had provided the same explanation.
I again repeat, your account is not at all banned and there is nothing that can be done from our side as helpers/moderators to unban it, because technically it is not banned on the system.
So the bottom line is, please stop logging in with your VPN and everything will work fine. If you still face issues after dropping the VPN, feel free to get back to us and we'll be happy to help.
I understand that the reason for the banning is a bit confusing, but I hope it is now clear.

I believe there was a misunderstanding when we last spoke about this issue. I haven't logged into the playroom while using a VPN since this entire situation began. I've been using my normal IP address ever since, but the issue still remains. I can log into the web client, but the local client that I have installed still will not allow me to log in. No VPn is enabled.
ErrorYou have been banned from the server for the following reason: Stupid nickname.
This ban ends in 1236 days, 23 hours and 9 minutes.
I've tried reinstalling the client and creating a new account, but I haven't had any success. I was considering joining the team to help develop new games, but I wouldn't be able to do much without being able to log in.

Hello,
you have the same computer id as another person who has been banned. I already had this problem, .
but a helper from the French playroom . succeeded in me reactivate.
have a good day.

Hi Stormy,

We will try to contact you through F4 when you're online. It would help if you'd write to us since we have no alert system, so we'll keep checking until we can reach you.
If it fails then expect an inbox from us since we need more information. That is indeed so strange and sadly we could do nothing from our side as helpers. However, we will contact the admins with the information we have meanwhile, and update them when we can reach you.
Thanks.

Stupid nickname isn't even a legit reaso for a ban.

If you say this delmarbarry, then what about this? Some of my friends are in a scool, and the school IP is banned for the following reason: fuck off. Yes, you heard it right. Lol.

Hello,
not trying to speak in the name of anyone from staff, but some of these ban reasons are probably very old permanent bans, even from 2015 / earlier days, when the English Playroom had no helpers and when the only moderation on the English side was done by the French administrators, who themselves admited not being very comfortable at English back then.
More importantly however, you get such reasons for really serious spammers who come to Playroom and constantly create multiple accounts and receive daily bans. As a member of the staff you would probably get annoyed after a while as well constantly having to deal with same people every day.

Still, I would limit such reasons to account bans and avoid them when banning an IP, since it is entirely possible that someone completely innocent will receive such a message and get confused.
I do however assume that this reasoning has completely been eliminated with the current staff and that such incidents rarely, if ever happen.

I hope the case in the first post gets resolved. Unfortunately, these IP / PC bans sometimes have collateral damage of banning someone completely unintended, as seen above especially applying to public places such as schools where multiple people share a given connection.

Hello,
@Stormy your ban now should hopefully be lifted.
Please let us know if you still face any problems.
Thank you

I'm sorry, but even if someone is not comfortable with english, "fuck off" and "stupid nickname" isn't a valid reason for banning someone. I'm also not comfortable with russian yet but I don't swear around on random platforms just because I can. I can understand the situation, but not the provided reasons.

If others have had the same issue then they can report the problem just like the player did here. If it is one or two then they should be sorted and if it is a big problem then some kind of amnesty should be looked into.

Well, I'm going to start by expressing the fact that "stupid nickname" is a perfectly fine ban reason. I am rather sad that no one objected to this false statement thus far.

As other players have noted, ban with the reason "fuck off" belongs to different times. I can assure you that the current staff is much more scrupulous when it comes to communication with the players. With that said, when you are an innocent bystander and happened to see a ban message that was meant for someone else, it's going to be confusing irrespective of content of the message and its professionalism.
Fortunately, we can easily solve this if said bystander gets in touch like it was done here.
Unfortunately, IP bans are a thing pretty much in every platform and I'm afraid it is here to stay. In fact, now that 32.13% of the Internet adopted IPv6 as of Nov 4, 2021, even blanket bans over a range might become a common thing to see.

If you have any other concerns, please feel free to get in touch using various methods that are available to you

looks like i was not the only one banned in the past for unfair reasons,

A ban reason should be expressed professionally, and as far as I know, 99 percent of the reasons aren't done so. Just to clarify, if you are banned from only this forum, you don't even get a reason but if you press enter on send, it say "Exception!" you have to ask on f4 what has gone wrong and they'll quote your posts that they have deleted before. But, they can revive them for you if you'd ever question their decision. You can't prove if they edited your posts, they don't do it though, just a heads up. Be thankful you get a reason at least when you're banned from the whole platform.

Hello,
it is very important to answer to some misinformation.
I would like to demonstrate how you can't proove at all that your post was edited by someone from the staff.
You might remember an old attempt to organize a betting tournament. Please visit the topic located at https://qcsalon.net/en/forum49/topic70002

Now, pay very close attention to the first post. Its last line says:
"Latest edition by Mmarina, 24.11.2020 22:18"

This is not a part of the post but rather an automatically generated message. You will see this if you edit the post yourself as well, except then of course it will say your username rather than someone else's. So it is completely false that someone just edits your post and that remains completely hidden to you.

In regards to the mentioned exception when banned, you get that if you try to post from the client. That's rather a bug, and something that just wasn't implemented, rather than intentionally trying to avoid to tell you that you are banned.
If you go ahead and post a permanent message to someone but avoid typing the subject, you will receive no error at all and the sending will simply fail, meaning that the error handling on the forum / imbox via the client just isn't well implemented at the moment.
I would assume you are perfectly told about the ban if you try to reply from the Website. It is one of the things lacking on the forum via the client. If not, that is something only the developer can fix.

It's also rather interesting to me that you know how 99 percent of the bans are worded here and what are their reasons. The "Stupid nickname" reason is probably used for extremely obvious cases, for example insulting nicknames to the staff and as I already said above, intentional trolls.

In any case, I'm glad the original topic was solved. I was mainly interested in clarifying, before the rumor spreads that someone can't just edit your post and that remains hidden without anyone knowing.

A ban reason should be expressed professionally

What, exactly, makes you think ban reasons should be expressed professionally?

Let's look at the definition of professional in the sense you mean here:

worthy of or appropriate to a professional person

And let's see what "professional person" means:

engaged in a specified activity as one's main paid occupation rather than as a pastime.

Just in case if you are not aware, each and every staff, from administrators to helpers, question validators to translators are working on a volunteer basis. Therefore, none of them are obligated to act professionally, particularly to those who repeatedly violate rules of the platform. However, I have a sneaking suspician that if you're willing to pay accordingly, all 44 of them would be willing to compose professional ban messages 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

As far as I know, 99 percent of the reasons aren't done so.

OK, I'm not going to be too hard on you and just ask for approximation of the relevant numbers here:

• In your estimation, how many banned accounts are there in the platform?
• How many banned humans?
• Out of number of total bans, how many, exactly, have you read and classified as unprofessional?

At this point, I think it is fairly obvious that you have a personal vendetta and not actually interested in facts or improving the workings of the platform. Therefore, I am not going to individually respond to your other points. Special thanks to Nikola and others who took the time to do so.
Since this topic has ran its course, I'm going to close it. However, please feel free to post a separate topic if you are actually interested in learning and contributing, and not baseless accusations just because you can.