[Demi Lovato's Heroin Spoon]

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Do u know what a criminal record is
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Yikes. That's an entire can of worms better left untouched.

The second argument you make is that warns cannot be classified as punishments.  They are not punishments, but are given alongside punishments (i.e gags, or kicks).  It is more of a way of keeping track of infractions for staff.  Warnings are usually given after the 3rd punishment and coincide with a kick, and then subsequently after that for continuing to break the rules.  We are not "trapping" players in breaking the rules, like I'm genuinely confused to what you even mean by this.  You yourself describe it as "self-sustained" meaning he is one who is keeping the cycle going, not the staff.  You know what he could do to not sustain the cycle? Not break the rules. :o

If he chooses to break the rules how are we trapping him???  It not like we're going "haha let's change the rules to prevent micspam without telling Ernie so he goes and unknowingly breaks them".  Like this argument of us trapping him, by him, independently, choosing to continuously break the rules and not listen to warnings given by staff is utterly non-sensible.  By being lenient we are allowing him more than enough chances to change how he was acting and not have it come to this, because he chose not to he was punished accordingly.

Some players can actively receive 1-4 warns per few map cycles without significant punishment, farming them pretty easily. These warns are turning into lazy reinforcement stickers. If you are allowing players to gain a large amount of warns within a short timeframe to punish them you are trapping them. A warning should be followed by punishment rather than allowing a player to gain multiple before an action is taken - huh, kinda like a crime. At the moment they're given very loosely to anybody who breaks a rule which is bizarre. As Garry's Mod players you notice players develop habitual gameplay that is positive or negative, so it's less about how they can stop rather than how can you address it. It's pretty bold to expect anything less from a game that's reminiscent of an MW2 lobby.

Displaying leniency in the form of warns and then justifying a large punishment as an effect of weak reprimand is the issue. They should work in conjunction rather than having a player need to reach a threshold that is easily gained. You're warned for 0.5 seconds of a loud microphone, a burp, a slur, and every other easily repeatable action. This is less about Ernie and rather how the staff team is throwing out empty disciplinary warns that don't accompany anything and then being shocked when a player continues their actions. If we're arguing criminal cases, then we should argue how disciplinary warnings in multiple court cases have been deemed not forms of punishment and were considered to not be lawfully used to justify punishment - oh wait, this is a game. This will most likely be locked, but feel free to message me on Discord because I can whip up a mean MS Paint chart.