Editing WS Ban

[[File:WS Ban message.png|thumb|Kick message when joining a server when having an active WS Ban]]
A '''WS Ban''' is the name of a ban, which is issued by WS Staff on a King of the Hill server of an officially partnered community. The ban can be both permanent or for a specified timespan.

== Nature of a WS Ban ==
WS bans are different from both server or community bans.

''Server bans'' usually apply only for the single server they were issued at. ''Community bans'' usually apply for all King of the Hill servers a specific partnered community provides.

''WS Bans'' however can be either local to a specific community or span the whole King of the Hill community, which means they apply to all servers of all communities (even the ones provided through a [[Game-Service-Provider]]‏‎). Such bans are then called a global King of the Hill ban.

== Types of WS Bans ==
WS Bans are issued for different types of violations. The most common ones are Rules and Cheater bans.

=== Rule bans ===
Rule bans usually apply to the community they were issued at, only, and do not sync with servers of other communities. They can be issued for all sort of rule violations, depending on what server rules the community applies to their servers.

=== Cheater bans ===
Players, who were caught of cheating receive a cheater ban, which is automatically global and synchronized to all King of the Hill by Sa-Matra servers. Cheater bans are usually permanent, except for Lag switching, which usually receives a 150 day ban for the first offense.

== Duration ==
The duration of a ban is individual. While the WS staff (which is issuing the ban) has internal banning guidelines, they're not made public. The time left of the ban is usually shown in the kick message when a player is banned. It can also be inspected by showing the details of the ban in the King of the Hill & Wasteland discord (see the appeal section of this page).

== Appealing a WS Ban ==
It is possible to appeal a WS Ban. However, the appealing player should have a good reason why they think it would be valuable for the King of the Hill community to unban a banned player before the ban time is served. Unbanning is usually up to the discretion of the admin, who banned the player, or by another WS staff member.

Appealing a ban is done by providing the WS Ban number or the Steam UID in the <code>#ban-appeals</code> channel of the [https://discord.armakoth.com/ King of the Hill & Wasteland discord]. You can issue the following command to inspect the ban details and appeal your ban:<syntaxhighlight lang="shell">
!ws ban <banId | steamUid>
</syntaxhighlight>While replacing the <code><banId | steamUid></code> part with either the WS Ban number or your Steam UID.

=== Cheater bans ===
Appealing a cheater ban, while still possible, is usually not promising. Cheater bans are permanent and only made with good backing evidence. An appeal of such a ban is usually denied to protect the legitimate player base. There're only some rare cases, where cheater bans are actually revised, however, mostly as the evidence didn't stand a second review, so the player never actually was proven to have cheated, not because a cheater was unbanned.

WS Staff is also not providing evidence on the ban, which would allow an actual cheater to improve their cheats, in order to bypass the detection methods. This policy is often criticized as being unfair against the appealing player.

=== Evading a WS Ban ===
Given a player was WS banned and the appeal was denied, some of them try to join a King of the Hill server again using a fresh steam account with a newly bought copy of ArmA 3. However, trying to bypass an active WS ban with a new steam account will result in both accounts being banned and the ban time is usually set to perm or doubled, depending on the original ban reason.

== WS Bans outside King of the Hill by Sa-Matra ==
Apart from not being able to join a King of the Hill server anymore, an active cheater WS Ban may only have other consequences for the banned player. Some other communities (e.g. some ArmA 3 role play servers) trust the WS ban list and use them on their servers as well. The same applies to [https://infistar.de/ InfiSTAR], which uses the cheater bans of King of the Hill as well,. This means, that a player banned for cheating may also not be able to join some role play servers and InfiSTAR protected servers, as well.
[[Category:General]]