Someone asked me about this yesterday on PS actually and since I saw this here I thought I would re-iterate what I said here.
For permalocks, there is probably some confusion as to how they are issued and work. Most punishments are issued through a command such as /lock user, reason permalocks are a bit different however because they are designed to apply to ALL PS servers. To get this to work, permalocks are issued by setting a flag for the user on the login server (where you send your login request to when trying to login to PS) which is a different place than the actual server that handles chats and battles. When a permalocked user logs in, the server they are connecting to is notified by the login server and if they are not locked that server issues a 30 day lock with the reason "Permalocked as [name]". As a result of this if a user is set to permalocked and already online this won't be reflected until they reconnect to PS so usually a human moderator will start their permalock with a manual week lock which has the normal message. However do note the reason usually includes something along the lines of "You are now permalocked". If no reason is provided feel free to contact staff to ask questions.
For blacklists the confusion usually stems from a different source. Being a signifigant punishment like permalocks roomstaff will usually discuss blacklisting a user as a team before doing it. Sometimes this results in "blacklist them the next time we can/now" (1) or "nameblacklist them now" (2), other times it can be "blacklist them on their next offense (final chance)" (3), and of course there is also "they haven't done enough to warrent a blacklist" or maybe something else. All of the examples I listed can cause issues with what message is displayed to the user. #1 generally shows the right message, unless the user already has an active punishment or user object and is offline. If this is the case they can be blacklisted while they are offline resulting in them not seeing the message. The 2nd example is sometimes used when the first will not work, however it results in the blacklist not being IP based which isn't desirable. Also to note the 2nd only happens when the user is offline so they won't get the popup. The final point usually happens directly after another room staff member punishes the user (roomban usually at this point) and then contacts a Room Owner to issue the blacklist, also note the user may be offline. Basically, theres often an existing punishment issued before the blacklist that the user saw rather than the blacklist because BLs can only be issued by ROs and are not given out lightly.
Also to note: all users can block pms now and blacklists are not shown publically in chat anymore to prevent reactions from users when they are issued.
