Banhammer

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The banhammer, sometimes called the ban stick, is internet slang for a mythical item used to punish malicious members of a group such as an internet forum, usually through virtual means.

1 Overview
2 Gaming usage
3 References
4 See also

[edit] Overview

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, promoting prejudice, disrespect of moderators, or promoting illegal acts.

[edit] Gaming usage

Its concept has since expanded into more mainstream venues, 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.^[1]^[2] News site Slashdot began using the term at that point and has subsequently applied it to multiple instances of similar housecleaning occurring on World of Warcraft.^[3]

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.^[4]