Plagiarisms are handle very strictly in this forum. Permanent bans and most of banned users don't have successful ban appeals.
Alternatives to Permabans for plagarism was raised and some users made ban appeals, get successful ones to have softener bans (signature bans for 6 months, 1 year, 2 years).
To get successful ban appeal and softener bans, they have to contribute many positive things in the past.
- 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.
Warning: Anyone caught copying other users' posts or plagiarising content from elsewhere on the web will be immediately permabanned. You shouldn't need a warning to know that this isn't acceptable under any circumstances.
There's been no policy change. redsn0w wasn't permanently banned due to several factors which made me think that permabanning him would be a net negative for the forum. Nobody is banned strictly because of "the rules"; it's always handled case-by-case, but almost always, plagiarists deserve to be permabanned.
If you think that a ban should be ended, make your case in a new topic from a "good for the forum as a whole" perspective.
A few people have their bans removed for numerous reasons. It's not plagiarism if it's your own work and if you can prove that then the ban should be lifted in those cases.