Posted by Honore on June 30, 2007, at 9:17:55
In reply to Re: block history, posted by Dr. Bob on June 29, 2007, at 3:22:13
Dinah has made the suggestion, I think-- but if you wanted to quantify it, you could see it this way. These are just some thoughts about how you could restructure things without getting to complicated.
--have 2 types of infractions
1. personal things– personal attacks, or general condemnations of types of people etc-- attacks on babble such as overwhelming the board with angry posts, etc. using nonpersonal incivility in a way that amounts to an attack on the board, rather than mere an occasional or habitual thing
--use the rule bob has now, with with the current limitation
2. nonpersonal– using words that don't seem civil, not asterisking, three posts in a row, etc
-use the rule, but have two further rules
---a.. No banning for over a month (or maybe six weeks) at a time. If a person reaches a month and keeps reoffending, just keep bannning them for a month. A month really makes the point, and they can be monitored more closely for violations
---b. If a long time passes– say six months– after a month ban, reduce to a week for next ban
this introduces greater incentives for good behavior. Most people don't like being banned at all– just the fact of being banned is bad; then the month is a long enough time of being deprived of posting that it should have an effect on people's behavior
if the person doesn't respond to the month, a another month is a pretty long time–
2. if someone has a long block for having committed things under the more serious type of incivility, you can have a separate system of blocks for them, relating to their impersonal acts.
So for example, zen could at most be blocked for a a month, if she had worked up to that by a number of impersonal uncivil posts. But if she had had a history of personal uncivil posts that led to 33 weeks of blocking, then that would be used if she was uncivil in a personal way again, up to a year.
In that sense, you could fit the punishment more to the crime, but keep the system simple and understandable. People would understand that there are different degrees of incivility (in this case 2), which is true.
Also, just as a general point, sentences in most justice systems are related to the crime that is at hand, not to the history of prior criminal activity. There is the exception that prior activity can be taken into account, when there's a range of sentence for a crime. For example, if theft has a range of 2-5 years, prior criminal acts could move someone toward the 5 year sentence, but not change the range of possible sentences for theft to those for some more serious crime.
Honore
poster:Honore
thread:762973
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20070605/msgs/766842.html