This banning stuff bothers me more than any other problem with VMK. They really need to change their banning process. I can understand the need to ban immediately and investigate later but it's clear that they just do the big ban and move on.
Here's what I would suggest for handling reports from players:
Put a temporary ban on the reported player's account. I think it's safer to initially ban the player just in case the report is valid. I'm guessing a two to four hour ban would be adequtate. A simple message stating that the player has been reported by another player and their account has been temporarily suspended while VMK staff are verifying the report is valid would be adequate.
Do a quick investigation of the report. If it's totally unwarranted, reinstate the person's account, give them some credits for the inconvenience and put the person who issued the report on warning or ban them for filing a false report. I think most reports could be resolved this quickly. If a player is reporting people for no reason, ban THEM for 10 years. If the report is valid, then issue a longer term ban based on the circumstances and notify the player.
If the quick investigation isn't conclusive, extend the temporary ban to perhaps one or two days and notify the player of the status. This would allow the staff time to have a discussion about how to handle the situation. Again, if the report is determined to be not worthy of a long term ban, then reinstate the player's account. If the report is valid, then issue a longer term ban based on the circumstances and notify the player. In this case, I probably wouldn't punish the player who issued the report because the situation did require a more thorough investigation. In other words, it wasn't a false report but the circumstances didn't warrant a long term ban.
I would also try to avoid banning an IP address, using that ban only in the worst case scenarios.
It's not rocket science, the above procedure should work fairly smoothly although it might need a few tweaks here and there.
Feel free to submit this suggestion to the VMK black hole if you think it makes sense.
qruthie (the 'q' is silent)