A couple of quick questions related to forum rules

[DdmrDdmr]

A few day’s ago, I got a PM from a Newbie that was also a Copper Member. It seemed odd that a Newbie could send me a PM,  since I had the "allow newbies to send you PMs" disabled. I asked some related questions on another post, but I only got an answer from a @Nnuego who tried to guess the answers to his best knowledge, but wasn’t really sure either.

These are the questions that I'd like to get an answer to:

-   Are Copper Members meant to be able to bypass the Newbie PM restriction?

-   If so, shouldn’t this perhaps be revised after the Jr. Member demotions and (presumably) increase of Copper Member purchases by Newbies?


In addition, I’ve had a third one in the back of my mind for some time, that is related to the timeframe applicable to the forum rules:

-   Can someone get banned for plagiarism (or else), for a post written let’s say two or three years ago? (or even longer).

Thanks.

[S_Therapist]

-   Are Copper Members meant to be able to bypass the Newbie PM restriction?

Here-

In response to the annoying PM spam, you now have to opt into receiving PMs from newbies. The option is in your PM preferences. You also can't send PMs to newbies if you haven't opted in. Copper members are exempt, but only if you're wearing the copper membership.

Can someone get banned for plagiarism (or else), for a post written let’s say two or three years ago? (or even longer).

If it's copy paste issue, user should definitely be banned, IMO.

[LoyceV]

-   Are Copper Members meant to be able to bypass the Newbie PM restriction?

-   If so, shouldn’t this perhaps be revised after the Jr. Member demotions and (presumably) increase of Copper Member purchases by Newbies?

The Newbie PM-restrictions were implemented at a time I received many spam-PMs from Newbies. Since it's implemented, that stopped (even though I allow PMs from Newbies).
Copper Membership gives a spammer something to lose. I haven't received any spam from one of them, so I don't think the rules should be changed.

-   Can someone get banned for plagiarism (or else), for a post written let’s say two or three years ago? (or even longer).

Yes:

• Plagiarism: If you copy some text from somewhere, then you should have a good reason for it, and you must link to the source. Doing otherwise is plagiarism. Changing a few words around doesn't matter. If we find that you plagiarized, then you absolutely will be permanently banned, even if we find it years after you did it.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I started a thread about this exact issue last month when I, too, was surprised to get a PM from a Newbie with a copper membership.  It annoys me that that loophole exists, but apparently Theymos won't do anything about it unless it becomes problematic.  Oh, well.

Theymos's reply was:

How the code is currently written makes copper members equal to either whitelisted newbies or Members, both of which bypass ignore-newbie-pms IIRC. If it becomes a problem, I could change it, but for now: if it's spam, just report it and know that they wasted $10 spamming you.

[DdmrDdmr]

Ok thanks, I got the answers I was looking for, so I will proceed to locking the thread now.

The Copper Member Newbie bypass I figure is not too much of an issue (yet), but I wasn’t sure if it was a loophole or something left on purpose (being the latter the correct answer).

The timeframe related to rules, specifically to plagiarism, was a curiosity, wondering essentially if some people would/could at some point go through the trouble of searching people’s posts from day one to find such cases.