NowPublic will take the following steps if members violate our code of conduct or our flaming policy (on a case by case basis).

1. The member will receive a message of warning from the editorial team about their behaviour.

2. If the member does not comply, then their status will be demoted on the site (if they have a status), for example, editor to wrangler, wrangler to standard member. If that member is a standard member they will be removed from the ranking system.

3. If the member still does not comply to our above policies, within a timeframe set out by the Editorial Team, then they will be blocked from NowPublic. 

4. The staff reserve the right to suspend a member's account for a length of time determined on a case by case basis. Suspension of an account means that a member cannot access his or her account for a length of time determined by staff, but all content and comments made by that member will remain visible. The decision on whether to temporarily suspend, or permanently delete, an account will be determined by staff, and that member will be notified beforehand if they have broken the above rules.

5. We reserve the right to remove members immediately if we feel that they are expressly breaking our policies.

For further discussion about maintaining civility on the site, please see our previous forum post on this subject:

http://www.nowpublic.com/newsroom/forum/maintaining-civility-site

Thanks,

NowPublic Editorial Team