Black marks
Black marks are a disciplinary measure used by Jagex to track the offences of a player. When a player has accumulated 10 black marks, the player can be permanently muted or permanently banned.
Minor black marks that leave players in the "Green zone" are removed after a designated period of time, and cannot be appealed. Players may track the number of black marks on their account by clicking "Appeal an Offence/Ban" in the account recovery section of the website, though they cannot appeal a Legacy punishment.
Mod Raven (a Jagex Moderator) created an "Account Review Thread" in the RuneScape Forums on 10 October 2008, which allowed players that have permanently banned or muted accounts to be reviewed once more. Many accounts had offences removed, but more serious offences such as RWT offences (rule 12) were not removed. The thread has since been closed, and Mod Raven states that it "will not be re-opened for several weeks, if at all". The thread was re-opened as of 9 February 2009. However, appeals for account bans that have been submitted may yet be accepted, since there is "an enormous backlog of several thousand names", and "it may still be a good few weeks until this backlog is resolved."
In a post on the RuneScape Forums, Mod Raven revealed that Jagex were working on a system where black marks would "degrade". He said, "The only other thing anyone might want to contact us about, is if their account has black marks, but aren't currently permanently banned/muted. But since we're working on a system of degrading black marks, this isn't going to be an issue either, as these black marks will eventually vanish off the account altogether."
On the 11 May 2009, the blackmark system was replaced by a new offence system.<ref>Jagex. "Offence System Updated". 11 May 2009. RuneScape News. *</ref> The rules were split up into three categories: Honour, Respect and Security. All players had the option to appeal past offences once more. Most offences will now expire after 12 months. Serious offences such as RWT were not removed and player's accounts remained banned.