In the real world, an eighteen year old is usually well-versed in what crimes are: they know that there's no reason to hit someone unless you have no choice and didn't instigate that interaction, that shoplifting is a big no-no, etc. They are, however, given due lenience relative to their situation. A person with a poor education, financial troubles, a troubled childhood, a mental disorder, can and will have their rehabilitation into society facilitated, or be given a less harsh sentence. Whereas an older person or someone who is clearly more well-versed in the rule of law - through higher education or previous run-ins - will not usually be treated with the same empathy. That is on a much larger scale, and thus I don't think that EMC has reason to not scale the harshness of a punishment depending on player's age/playtime, and give lighter punishments to newer players. As long as the offender is clearly educated on what they did wrong (I quite like Azoundria's suggestion on how to do that) and doesn't do it again, I see no issue. I'll use myself as an example: throughout 2017, I had basically morphed my main/former account into a troll account. Having already been banned before multiple times (different reasons), I should have known not to be so brash and abrasive because it was against the rules that I was so well-acquainted with - as someone who was on the Contribution Team on the original (unofficial) EMC Wiki, someone who was on the Contribution Team on the (official) EMC Wiki, and as someone who had been banned before and forced to read back up on the rules. On top of all of that, at the time I had been playing for nearing six years. I knew the rules like the back of my hand even without all of the experience. Now, obviously, I still have this account that I'm posting on as of right now. But it has been one year and almost five months since I was last able to log into Synth_Apparition on the forums (and in-game). I was granted what can be deemed a mercy by being allowed to log into this account (I promised 'occasionally'... oops), and then I went into self-imposed exile from the forums for five months and have still semi-exiled myself from the in-game despite the rediscovered love for Minecraft that I have. Is that right? As much as I hate that I don't have my account with all of my PMs since 2012 and all of my dozen thousand posts, the same... 'name recognition' (I guess is how to describe it? It's 3AM leave me alone), the memories attached to it... I think it's right for that to have happened. I'd really really love to get all of it back, but I acted obscenely and I paid for it with the loss of all of that and I do not object to the fact that it was deserved. There was a player here some several months ago (I will not name names) who did stuff very similar to what I did. They got banned and had a much more lenient sentence than I, and they were allowed to return after some time had passed on the very same account. They were, of course, a much younger account. Perhaps they thought that this was a community with a much more carefree atmosphere than it actually has (that comes with the family friendly aspect of EMC, that's not a malicious dig lol) and just needed to realise that it wasn't. Maybe they would be more careful with their behaviour following the ban. I think they deserved that chance. They continued to act as they had before the ban and were, as the kids say, BANHAMMERED INTO THE NEXT DECADE, but that's not the point. The point is their sentence was way less harsh than mine for the same crime, because they were eighteen and I was fifty (I'm actually almost nineteen IRL I'm not actually fifty), and I think that's okay and justified.
