CZ:Managing Editor/2011/004 - Constabulary action

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Statement of problem

Please be brief and specific in your request (polar questions are best) and add relevant links if available. Please state a time frame in which you expect a decision.

Could the effort currently going into policing uncivil and non-professional behaviour be spent with more benefit to the project?

I think the Constables' job becomes less and less doable if we require it to cover all instances of incivility or non-professional behaviour. So I am considering to "patch" that part of policy with something that says that anything written on public CZ channels shall remain there unless it is clear spam or vandalism or removal is required by applicable law. This would free the Constabulary to deal with other matters, and reduce the probability of them being subject to hostile comments, or of anyone engaging in arguments as to whether a particular phrase should have been removed (or "censored").

A second modification would be that warnings would not be private any more, but to be issued on a user's talk page, and linked from right below the entry that caused the warning (if the entry was not to a talk page, the link should be from the relevant talk page). This would make the warning system transparent, and perhaps also reduce a bit the probability of uncivil behaviour, since few people will like to have a collection of warnings on their talk page. Taken together, both changes would seem to be more promising to develop a site-wide standard for civility than current practices.

--Daniel Mietchen 02:06, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

See also the analogy to sports, as suggested by Peter on the talk page (and, before that, on the forums). We could perhaps even use yellow and red cards as in soccer, in combination with penalty times as in ice hockey. --Daniel Mietchen 15:06, 1 May 2011 (CDT)

Any solution of this kind should be compatible, in the long run, with a karma system focused on positive contributions to the site (very rough prototype). --Daniel Mietchen 15:38, 1 May 2011 (CDT)

Formal restatement of problem

This section defines the section structure of the decision.

Existing applicable policy

Decisions by the governing bodies

• Management Council - 2011-003, 28 January 2011:

"The constables may delete all personal comments that are derogatory to named individuals who are not public figures. Offenders shall be warned. Offenders who exhibit a pattern of personal attacks will be banned. This rule shall apply to all applications at citizendium.org."

Draft decision

The text below is what I plan to decide in this case. Feel free to edit the text if you think this improves it. If your edits require discussion, please use the dedicated section below. Editing and discussion in this "Draft decision" section shall stop 24h after my last edit to it.'

Discussion of Draft decision

When reading or editing this section, please keep in mind that the current version of the draft decision might be different from the one referred to by previous commenters.