Information

/ess version, server log, and config all at
https://hastebin.com/vusuqazaqu.coffeescript

Details

I use luckperms to give some people a ★ suffix. If a mod with this suffix bans someone, they get put into the banned-players list, but then they can not be unbanned and their ban message can not be changed.

Hello, I'd like to take a look at this issue. I believe it has to do with some reading problem using a non ASCII character such as the ★. I'll keep you updated.

I was wrong. This isn't the cause of the issue. I have no clue what is.
I have a shortcut in commands.yml to where /banx will act like /ban. The only difference is that /banx adds an extra message to the end of the ban message. Sometimes /banx results in a warning: player never joined the server message so I suspected this to maybe be the issue, but my tests couldn't confirm it.

@Kakd Should I close this issue?

It's still an issue I'm experiencing with my server. I had thought it was caused by the star suffix but it must be caused by something else.

Could you provide an example of a broken banned-players.json entry (one where you can unban the player) and one that is not broken (one where you can't unban them)?

It now seems to happen with all players. I switched to paper 1.13.2 and updated my essentials a while ago. I also tested it out without essentials installed and it seemed to still have an error, "Error: Player not found", instead of "Error: null". So this probably isn't an issue with essentials considering the issue persisted even without essentials.