A ban is imposed on a person or an action. It can be rescinded at any time, but remains in place until it is explicitly rescinded. An expiration can be included in the terms of the ban, which automatically rescinds the ban after a set duration. The base definition of “ban” implies nothing about duration. Without clarification, any assumption regarding duration is baseless. Such clarification can be direct, such as including a clear statement of the period for which the ban is in place during the issuance of the ban, or indirect, such as context clues regarding the severity of the infraction that led to the ban being issued.

A suspension is placed upon statuses, privileges, credentials, or the like. Suspension is, by nature, a transitory state. Examples include being suspended from a job pending investigation of behavior, having one’s club membership suspended until club dues are brought current, or having one’s login credentials suspended while one’s account appears to be compromised. The transitory nature of a suspension implies that it resolves upon completion (or inaction on) of a task related to the object of the suspension. Upon completion of the sub-task, status is either reinstated or terminated. In the previous examples: employment is terminated upon conclusion of an investigation that proves the employee acted inappropriately, club membership is reinstated once payment of the outstanding balance is verified, account credentials are reinstated with access limitations once the account owner proves they are in control of the account.

Suspension is a step along the path to termination or revocation, not to a ban. The two terms are not directly related in that way. There can be overlap, but they are not different degrees of the same concept.

The difference between ban and suspend isn’t a temporal difference. Here’s the Cambridge dictionary definition of “suspend”:

to stop something from being active, either temporarily or permanently (see: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/suspend)

Here’s the definition for “ban”:

to forbid (= refuse to allow) something, especially officially (see https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ban?q=Ban)

The difference between the two is the subject: an active process or service can be suspended, but something specific (e.g. an action, object or person) can be banned. Ban also implies a more official act in order to punish someone or prevent something (Johnny was banned from entering the bus), whereas a suspension doesn’t necessarily have that ‘negative’ context (e.g. the bus service was suspended, which doesn’t imply this happened because the bus driver was drunk or something).

In a more Lemmy-specific context, you could say you suspended someone’s access to the platform, or that you banned them from the platform. Neither way of saying it implies anything about the duration. You can’t however really say you suspended someone from the platform, that doesn’t really work.

In this context, I think the direct implication that a ban is handed out because someone did something bad is a lot clearer than when you use the word suspension. Because of that I believe ban to be the more context-appropriate word here. Suspend does not carry that connotation as something can be suspended for a whole host of reasons, none of which have to be related to rule-breaking. For example, federation with another instance could be suspended temporarily until the other instance does (or doesn’t do) something that is required for technical reasons.

Your definitions seem to explain it already.

A ban bars you from entry into a space. A temporary ban temporarily bars you from entry into a space. A Lemmy community in this instance is the space you are being barred from entering.

Either way you have been barred from entry, just some are short term, not all are permanent.

I think it is just semantics and you are overthinking it.

Ban on federated content being time limited is likely related to GDPR or something else EU. Lemmee prevents all interaction with banned communities including blocking, editing, deleting, or response to messages. Several of these would probably violate some law in that region.

To my mind, Ban has always meant permanent.

I’m not sure where you got that association from. Even the dictionary definition you gave says nothing about permanence.

Probably because “Ban” is shorter & easier to write

Net terminology just changed over time.

It used to be, both in games and on forums, that a ‘ban’ typically implied that it was permanent, or for a considerable amount of time, like multiple weeks or a month or more, or until removed from a banlist.

If a ban was temporary, it would be qualified by clarifying that it was a temporary ban.

Otherwise, just using ‘ban’ almost always meant a permanent ban.

A ‘kick’, on the other hand, usually meant direct ejection from a game in the moment, and maybe 15 or 30 minutes of inability to rejoin, or an inability to rejoin that temporary session… though the terminology varied more from forum to forum.

This was just the common lingo used by many earlier games and forums in their own code, in their own technical documentation for server administration.

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Likewise, ‘pm’ (private message) became ‘dm’ (direct message).

I’m pretty sure Discord is entirely responsible for that.

They started calling private chats ‘direct messages’ even though basically every forum or what have you up till Discord called them ‘private chats’ or ‘private messages’.

EDIT: Evidently Twitter actually started this trend 2 years before Discord, I did not know this as I have hated the concept of Twitter since its inception and never used it =P

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‘Mods’ / ‘Modding’ / ‘Modder’, as in game mods, used to exclusively mean that you (and others, in a multiplayer game) were using or creating additional community content that altered game mechanics, almost always in a constructive way that added to the game experience for everyone.

‘Warez’ / ‘Cheats’ / ‘Hacks’ used to specifically refer to … things that are arguably, technically ‘Mods’, but manipulate your experience of the game to give you a (theoretically) covert series of advantages over the game such that competiton is now blatantly unfair.

Those terms are still used to mean that… but, as less and less games support modding, and more and more switched away from having server browsers to just having a ‘find match’ button… with a whole lot of those kinds of games, ‘Modding’ now just means cheating or hacking.

If you got to a GTA V game or community and say ‘I’m a modder’ they will interperet that as ‘I am a cheater’, not ‘I make and have made mods for one or many PC games.’

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All of these newer uses of the terms are still ‘correct’ in the sense that you can justify the meanings of the newer terms, its not like they’re misnomers…

… but a lot of zoomers / casuals have little to no understanding of how the terminology changes are confusing to an older gamer who finds themselves in a community of younger folks.

We also use “Block” when it’s really mute.

Nothing in the definition of ban says it has to be permanent.

Online there’s basically 3 levels of ban, temp ban, ban, and permaban.

Temp ban, the offender is not allowed to interact temporarily usually for a set amount of time before its automatically lifted, they get put in timeout for a bit.

Ban, more permanent sibling of the temp ban, doesn’t automatically lift after a set amount of time, can be lifted manually by admin/mods, usually leaves one possible channel of comms open for the offender to make appeals to the admins/mods. They’ve been kicked out of the bar, they’re not allowed back, but maybe in a while management will soften their stance.

Permaban, you do not pass go, you do not collect 200, you’re permanently gone, no take backs, these are basically never undone and basically no one except for the highest level of admins can undo it. You dun fucked up, the bar’s management is beyond pissed at you and you will never ever be back again, bouncers have your photo and it is damn near on sight with them.

It seems like most people conflate temp ban and regular ban. They’re both pretty common and the difference between them is basically one has an automatic timer so calling something a ban, temporary or regular just gets called a ban.

“Permaban” is the word you’re looking for.

Ban just means you are not allowed to do something. You can add a qualifier to note how long it is but on its own, there is no implied timeframe, it could be short or long no problem. A permanent ban means explicitly it will not be lifted after a certain period of time.

A suspension means that you stop doing something but you could expect to restart. In most contexts this is on a temporary basis, but you can specify an “indefinite suspension”, which practically is the same as a permanent ban, but perhaps connotating greater chance to appeal it or some conditions that may occur at an indeterminate point that would lift the suspension.