Problem
In long disciplinary threads, particularly ones involving a lot of discussion about whether an incident is sufficiently rule breaking for action to be taken, it can be really hard to tell quickly what a user has been banned for previously, for how long, and whether it was successfully appealed. Often the thread summary reflects only the reason behind the first ban, or very short summaries of all the ban reasons; and so there’s no easy summary of what happened in the thread.
This is, generally, a lesser issue in Non-Disc threads since they typically only get a few posts, most having less than 5, before they are upgraded to Disciplinary threads. Indeed, only three threads with 15 or more posts have been posted in during the last two years. Nevertheless, this is three threads where a quick summary of all the non-disc worthy stuff that has happened would be beneficial.
Solution
This proposal aims to rectify this by adding the creation of a summary post to any long disc/non-disc thread, which should be the first and only reply to the original post in the thread. This post would be linked to from the original post in the thread; and updated as further action occurs.
The aim of this post is to quickly summarise all of the relevant disciplinary/non-disciplinary material within the thread; with links to relevant places in the thread where new material is introduced. For example, if the thread was originally posted to discuss a year ban for immaturity, which was successfully appealed down to 1 month; and then following the end of the ban, a permanent ban for plagiarism was enacted, the summary would contain a link to the original ban post, the original appeal post and the plagiarism ban post, as well as a very short summary of each of these actions.
The creation of this post would occur the next time a relevant disciplinary/non-disc thread is updated; and typically would only be done when either there has been long discussion of one complex issue or of multiple issues.
This discussion is open to everyone
This idea was originally Bleeps, I just ruthlessly stole it from her ;p. Thanks to both her and Conwell for helping shape this into the form it is now.
Discussion of this will last for a week: