I am a fan of NomadList. I have been using it for the last year and a half. I made good friendships there and tried to contribute to the community with my experience. I joined by buying the lifetime plan — one charge seems much better to me at the time.

Today, I was preparing to host a mirror of Arch linux in Thailand because the official mirrors are outdated. I was researching what providers are good and decided to post a message in #Bangkok channel on Slack of NomadList to ask if someone can recommend a good dedicated server provider.

I posted my message and 2 minutes later found that I am banned. I later found this message in my email:

Hi @yani You have been banned from Nomad List for breaking the community rules, specifically: “Ignored 6 warnings related to avatar.” Related message is: “Anyone can recommend a good dedicated server hosting in Bangkok?” https://nomadlist.com/forum/t/community-guidelines-please-read-before-posting/251 To fine you for breaking our rules, we do not refund banned members. You can re-signup but you will have to pay again. Thanks! Nomad Bot P.S. I’m just a humble bot, please don’t reply to me as I’m shy and wont reply.

The part that annoys me is that guidelines change overtime. The guidelines are not the same as the once that I agreed to when I joined. That’s the downside of offering lifetime access vs subscription. In the case of subscription, if the subscriber doesn’t agree with your new guidelines, they can cancel their subscription. It is not the same with lifetime access, and you cannot just ban people who disagree with your new guidelines and tell them “To fine you for breaking our rules, we do not refund banned members.”. — it is just nasty since a lifetime subscription cannot be cancelled.

I am sure this will be corrected and is just an oversight from the team. I will post updates when I hear back from levels.io

Update

We require you to have a human profile photo as avatar. Moderators asked you 6 (!) times repeatedly to set an avatar and you declined as the message says

I am kind of disappointed with that reply. I expected more. There was no moderator asking me even once to set an avatar. However, even if I was asked to change my avatar, I would not do it. It is my choice if I want to share my personal data like a photo of myself.

NomadList has changed its community rules — I do not agree with the change — we part our ways but the issue is the Lifetime package that I bought. Obviously, NomadList cannot keep providing me the service so I should get a refund. But then this unscrupulous message follows: “To fine you for breaking our rules, we do not refund banned members”. I trust NomadList can see what they are doing wrong and can fix it.

Some of the things that NomadList could do:

1. Do not apply updated community guidelines to its Lifetime subscribers

- OR-

2. Refund Lifetime subscribers who don’t agree with the updated guidelines.

2nd Update

Sorry but that’s bullshit. Been like this for years. Ironically you share your avatar on Medium writing this! Robot mod asked you 4 times, Grum asked you 6 times over DM. There’s plenty of cases where we’re wrong but this is definitely not one of them.

I don’t find any irony in my freedom to select what information to provide to different services. You think it is justifiable to ban someone because they refuse to post a photo of themselves and to say they are not eligible for a refund? You claim that someone has contacted me when no one actually has. It is not difficult to be civil but why you chose not to be escapes me. Are the users of your community not important to you? $99 are not > kindness and humbleness.