Notice: This is not a formal proposal. I am aware that implementing this would take a significant amount of dev time and would strain the GMT. I also do not have enough knowledge of the inner workings of osu! moderation to know if certain things already exist.
I am also not sure whether this post belongs in General Discussion.

I've often thought: What if there was a middle step between a timed silence and an untimed restriction? A penalty lasting up to 1 month, and a profile-hiding penalty lasting at least 3 months?
I had the idea for an indefinite silence, given for offences (or offence patterns) that aren't worth a restriction, but are more serious than a one-month silence; for instance, for consistent violations of the rules or significant off-platform harassment (not necessarily to be imposed by the GMT), as seen with a certain recent veto.

An indefinite silence would last at least 4 weeks, with higher cooldowns for more severe cases. Generally, the longest cooldown would be 12 weeks (3 months), but in certain circumstances (extreme misbehavior unrelated to the game, for example), there may be no specific cooldown. The account support team would specify the cooldown length.
The repealing of the silence may require certain other criteria to be fulfilled in some circumstances, such as a formal apology to the victims, or a repeal to referee a tournament.

If a player request (to the account support team) for a repeal fails, the next request can be made in 4 weeks.
The GMT may impose indefinite silences, and the account support team may repeal them.
Indefinite silences can be appealed to appeal-review@ppy.sh if the cooldown is 9 weeks or longer, or if the silence has not been repealed after 9 weeks, regardless of cooldown.

After the silence is repealed, there would be a 3-month trial period (possibly longer in special cases) where the user is expected to behave well and follow the rules precisely.
They will receive a "GMT buddy" for the period, who they are expected to ask about the rules when in doubt.
Any silence during the trial period would be heavily extended (e.g. 5 minutes -> 5 hours, 80 minutes --> 21 hours), and may result in:

1. An extension of the trial period
2. A return to the indefinite silence for at least another 4 weeks
3. A restriction in severe cases and/or where the above has already happened one or more times

at the judgement of the account support team.

Alongside the difficulties it may cause, this might have certain positive effects:

1. It would be an effective countermeasure to players that are risky to allow to speak, but not deserving of a restriction
2. It would give the GMT another way of dealing with consistent rule violations than the harsh 3 months of a restriction
3. It could result in players taking more active efforts to reform themselves, depending on the conditions set
4. It would give the GMT a tool to combat off-platform misbehaviour

Again, since this is complicated, likely heavy on GMT time, and possibly hard to judge, I am not proposing this.
I am writing to fully describe an idea I've had and train my idea-phrasing skills.

How would you define "consistent violations of the rules" exactly? And as far as I'm aware, the moderation team doesn't deal with off-platform harassment.

For me, indefinite silence is restriction in all but the ability to submit scores. It's just redundant.

How would it be redundant? Being able to play the game ane submit scores is a pretty important aspect which should be considered when restricting a player.
At face value this seems like a good suggestion.

Speaking mostly from my experience and the context that this discussion lacks from the perspective of a moderator. These are just my thoughts on the matter, as to not render the effort that went into the post null & void.

All in all, the current process is quite, quite simple really. The suggested process seems to make it needlessly complex, for what seems to be no good tangible outcome. Users who have misbehaved for a prolonged period of time are restricted at the behest of the Account Support Team in collaboration with the GMT.

There are a few misconceptions to note, mainly when it comes to the ethos of moderating. The two "official" punishments (Those that have a tangible effect on a user's account) are either a Silence or a Restriction. There's no in-between, although a user who goes above and beyond stacking up silences may lead himself to a restriction, whereas restrictions will be placed on users who break certain rules.

If a user reaches a point where they need to be silenced up to a month or indefinitely, most likely a restriction would be applied before that ever happens. The purpose of restrictions is to completely vet off users from the game and their interactions with the community.

Appeals when it comes to restrictions or silences always have to be forwarded to accounts@ppy.sh. The GMT are not in charge of appeals. Outside of the overhead that would add, it would not be practical and there's already a process for users to report their appeals as stated in the purpose of the email. The GMT does not deal with off-platform harassment either. It's outside of our scope.

I'm not sure in how much detail I can go. All I can say is that the moderation team has a system in place for users who're near the last straw. A stern warning is always given before any restriction when it comes to repeated misbehavior. Which seems partly what this idea is trying to achieve, though correct me if I'm wrong.

TlDr; Don't know what this idea is trying to achieve, nor what the existence of a middle point would fix. The question to ask and answer is whether the current model is correct, and why should a repeated misbehaving user not be granted a restriction instead as it is currently done.

With respect, this was not a proposal or intended to be implemented, as Ymir and RandomeLoL implied. This was simply a "What if?" / "How would this work" exercise in expressing my thoughts and ideas.
This was made explicitly and repeatedly clear from the start:

Original Post wrote:

Again, since this is complicated, likely heavy on GMT time, and possibly hard to judge, I am not proposing this.
I am writing to fully describe an idea I've had and train my idea-phrasing skills.

The title has been edited to reflect this (added "[Hypothetical / thought experiment]").

Do not get me wrong, I understood perfectly.

Regardless, I am still providing (my) context and perspective in the matter so as to establish a discussion. Not with the purpose of getting changes done, but rather to provide good context on the matter at hand and to not let the post be ignored. In turn, I hope knowing the other side of the coin can help with the phrasing skills in the future — that was my genuine goal with the response given, sorry if it came the wrong way.

If this was not to be discussed nor responded to at any capacity however, I would've suggested to keep it private. Users are allowed to freely discuss in the General [Discussion forum. Ymir, Jangsoodlor, or any user for that matter can take part of it.

^ Sure then. Reworded to say the GMT doesn't handle appeals.

I believe that if a user offends on the osu! platform, simply removing their ability to speak on the platform would generally be all that is needed, except in severe cases where the harsher restriction is a necessary deterrent. Otherwise, only those who reoffend would need to be restricted.

As for the GMT buddy/trial release system, I was inspired both by the NAT buddy BNs get when accepted on probation and by parole law. I understand simplicity is a focus, but personally, I prioritize effectiveness over simplicity heavily, perhaps too heavily.

There is also a demand for action being taken against certain off-platform misbehaviour [1] [2], though whether this would happen through the GMT or some other group is a different discussion.

Any and all off-platform misbehavior should be redirected to abuse@ppy.sh as GMT/NAT dont deal with that. So if any action is to be done it is by the people that handle and respond to that email.

re: gmt buddy system: BN and NAT work together harmoniously as its a work relationship and can foster good relations, people/users that are on severe silence terms and working with GMT would more than likely not work. 1. There are not enough gmt to handle such an influx of users. 2. If a user is unable to understand why they've been silenced then they are always free to reach out to any member of the GMT for clarification on the silence and can tell them "don't do x". beyond that the rules are pretty straight forward with a few grey areas.

If a user cannot read the rules or understand what not to do after the several, and I mean several, silences they would've received then its not necessarily up to us to try and correct their behavior as silences are meant to be warnings (to my understanding) before they are forced to not interact with the community.

otherwise everything that randome has said is true and I stand by their comments.