@Gareth Your current activity is not connected to whether an account has a ban or not.
Nukes, which you may see on newer accounts, are mostly for bot/spam control as they will remove all the thread information and automatically ban the account. For some reason at the moment there's a few dining table ones coming through but that could be because the source hasn't registered as a known spam source yet. For those, we can drop a Nuke and do manual control of these accounts.
For older accounts they will require a standard ban as some bots will hide in the shadows for a few years and activate later. Dunno why, but that just happens sometimes.
When it comes to regular members, these bans are typically for rulebreaking to a point where they need a time out from the forum, or an outright removal. Users can appeal the bans if they feel so, but in order to receive a temporary ban you would have to break the rules several times prior, or just be an absolute dick to the point where a warning would not aid in deescalating the conflict.
I personally have only ever permabanned two members who I never wish to see on the forum again, both for material that related to sexual content and underage minors. There have been a few other members who have received extended bans and we would hope that by the time the ban has lifted that those members would have a change in attitude. Again, these people are free to appeal their bans but we typically have a discussion with them before lifting it.
Going to lock this thread here as any other points should probably be raised through the PM system with a moderator or admin. I hope this helps shed some light.
