Month: July 2026

So, you think someone should be banned from a con? Let’s discuss how that works.

First, let’s set expectations

I want to get this part out of the way: Conventions generally reserve bans for credible risk, repeated misconduct, or clear violations of their policy, based on behavior that is documented, corroborated, or observed by staff.  Conventions generally won’t ban someone based purely on speculation or dislike, but they may act on credible patterns of concerning behavior or documented risk.

That said, even if a con does not ban a person, conventions do want to be told about possible issues in advance, so that they know a specific person may be a problem down the road.  So even though your email to a convention’s Safety department may not result in a ban, you are still doing the con a solid if you let them know about a particular person in advance.  It also helps you create a paper trail if that person does escalate at the con and decides to cause you problems there in person.

Please keep that in mind as you read the rest of this post.