Al,
To answer your question, some members have violated the stated
Conduct Guidelines and as such have been placed on Verbal Warning. Every time they post, the "Verbal Warning" note is evident in their posts. This indicates that the user is on warning, not that they are issuing a warning to someone else.
Verbals are the lowest step on the warning system, and being on verbal means you can't edit your own posts for a week - a very minor inconvenience, and designed to encourage those warned to think seriously about what they're posting.
Verbals are designed to be a "tripflare" that goes off when a user starts to go astray. Some take it as an opportunity to review their approach on the forums and see if they can improve; others see it as an attack on them personally and fight back. The former tend to come off their Verbal and take a moment to verify their perspective. For them, the Verbal ends up having its intended positive results. Others come off their Verbal itching for a fight, burning to prove they were mistreated. Those users generally walk up the warning ladder through Recorded, C&P and eventually to an outright ban. In short, a Verbal is a friendly warning in that it's impact is low but it's an easy way to make it clear to users that their approach is headed in the wrong direction.
It's our way of gently guiding inquisitive visitors towards the preferred approach to asking and answering questions.
If you have any specific examples of members here breaching the Guidelines without being warned, please let myself or any of the other staff know and we'll review it. Every post has a "Report to moderator" button which immediately notifies Army.ca Staff of potential issues, so we encourage people to use it to highlight problems.
Cheers
Mike
