To my mind, Ban has always meant permanent.
“You’re banned from this place! You’ll never be allowed in again!”

While I’ve always thought of Suspend as being temporary.
“You’re being suspended from school for 1 week, over fighting.”

Ban:

  1. to prohibit especially by legal means
  2. bar entry

Suspend:

  1. to debar temporarily especially from a privilege, office, or function
  2. a: to cause to stop temporarily
    b: to set aside or make temporarily inoperative
  3. to defer to a later time on specified conditions
  4. to hold in an undetermined or undecided state awaiting further information

When I hear someone mention they were banned my reaction is: “Holy shit! WTF did you do to earn that!” Then I find out it was only for a day or three: “Oh… That’s not a Ban! That’s minor. Go touch grass. You’ll be fine.”

I’ve been banned from subreddits and communities a few times. At least once I never even noticed because it was so short.

How is it a Ban if I didn’t even notice?

Why did Ban in online forums and games, come to mean temporary?

Is it simply an example of the intensification of language? To make something mundane, seem more severe than it is?

Does it bother anyone else? Or am I alone here?

  • 𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚒𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚗 𝙼𝚎𝚘𝚠
    4•2 days ago

    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.