Banhammer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The term banhammer, sometimes called the ban stick, represents an idea that enforcement of rules on forums, image boards, or online video games on the Internet should be swift and harsh. It is an example of an Internet meme. A tagline in several image macros for the term concisely summarizes the ban hammer's "stern, but fair" nature.
Punishment is usually a form of ban from the service, either by deleting the guilty party's account or suspending it for a time. In extreme cases, the person's IP address may be blocked from the server to prevent them from simply creating another account, sometimes indefinitely. These actions are usually invoked for such offenses as violating the website's Terms of Service, trolling, spouting racism, disrespect of moderators, or promoting illegal acts.
Its concept has since expanded into more mainstream vanues, such as Bungie's Halo 2 video game for the Xbox console. A patch released in July of 2005 -- required for future online play -- scanned the user's hard drive and summarily restricted them from joining Xbox Live if it was determined that their copy had been modded without possibility of appeal or leniency. While not specifically mentioning the banhammer concept in press releases, the two became linked together regardless in a number of well-known game news websites such as GamePro [1]. News site Slashdot began using the term at that point and has subsequently applied it to three separate instances of similar housecleaning occurring on World of Warcraft. [2]
In other games such as Blizzard's StarCraft, the host has a hammer icon next to their name and is able to boot people from the chat for being disruptive. The banhammer has even made an appearance in RPG Morrowind, where it can be found on the corpse of an NPC. [3]
