Ban

For information relating to banning players from servers, please see ban and exception lists.

A ban is an action taken in order to block an addressed machine from accessing a certain area of interest, such as a forum, to hinder an individual's ability to participate in games or forums. This is usually done by testing all connections against a known blacklist of IP address.

Possible Reasons for Banning

An address can be banned due to one or more such actions as the following:

Persistently harassing others
Using cheats in games
Spaming and/or trolling (posting irrelevent materials, acting up, exasperating other individuals continuously)
Evading an already existing ban placed to block the same individual
Mounting offensive action (such as a DDoS) against any service

Drawbacks

Bans are not always the best solution to ridding of an individual from a community or place of interest. There are some cons; most notably the following:

A ban can only lock out a computer address, not the individual (the individual is still free to take advantage of the use of proxies and other computers)
Long ban lists require much storage and maintenance

Bans can yet be useful during certain instances as a means of discouragement of and prevention from behaving in an agreeably unfavorable manner; most often when an individual is simply not abiding by any crucial guideline of some sort and/or is shaping an unpleasant atmosphere for others.