room topic changed to Barriers to consistent and systematic enforcement: Continuation of discussion from comment thread here: english.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11138 (no tags)

I've written a little about it elsewhere, but this gives me a chance to get several thoughts about enforcement out there for review and criticism.

In a nutshell, the real barrier to consistent and systematic enforcement is by design.

First, SE publishes content without prior editorial review. After posting, content is available for volunteers to act on. Volunteers are expected to work at any pace they choose, and to pick and choose what to work on: you can follow a tag, or monitor new questions, or work a review queue, and so on. So it's to be expected that the attention actually paid to individual posts varies from day to day. The way that volunteers understand and handle each situation varies also.

Second, review queues are equally unsystematic. Rather they are management by exception. Items on queue have hit a threshold or were marked for attention by another volunteer. Queues are run when people feel like it. And SE lets items be skipped, and limits how much review any one person can do. So again it's to be expected that content which needs review will not be reviewed.

Third, mod queues are the same. Exactly like review queues, they are management by exception. More consistent participation is expected of mods than of all other volunteers, but that mainly means that somebody who stops doing volunteer work will eventually be replaced. Also, SE automatically prioritizes the mod queue. All items on the mod queue will get reviewed eventually, but the top items get the most attention.

In short, at all levels of SE curation, there is no expectation of consistent and systematic enforcement. SE is designed to run as volunteers have time, and operates by the principle of management by exception.

Inconsistent enforcement does not relieve us of a duty to follow the rules. In fact one of the best things you can do in such an environment is set a good example.

One of the frustrating aspects of this system for new (and even not so new) users is when action is taken on their content but there are other examples of the same problem that have gotten zero attention.

People sometimes argue that their content should get a free pass, basically on the grounds that the community has not already perfectly curated all other similar content on the site with complete self-consistency. The absurdity of that argument becomes clear when it is stated that way, but I do understand the frustration.

I see a clear parallel between SE and Wikipedia in this regard. On Wikipedia, there is one set of editorial standards, but many articles (and many users) do not live up to them. And the result is that some articles are much better than others. This is by design.