Excellent work liverpole. It may help to relieve the angst to -- all the plagiarised nodes. That in itself sends a message to the perpetrators. This thread in itself is another excellent heads up both to these two monks, and to any others who may be tempted into the same behaviour in the future.

A number of suggestions were made in the CB. Those I recall that seem to me appropriate and likely to be moderately effective are:

• down vote the nodes to signal that this is not acceptable behaviour
• have janitors mark the nodes as plagiarised with and editorial note at the top and bottom of the node
• leave unapproved any future nodes posted by the perpertators (for some unspecified time)
• add the perpertators' names to a "shunning wall"
• remove FP status of any plagiarised nodes that have been FP'd
• do not consider the nodes for reaping - that hides the problem
• do not 'ban' the perpetrators - better to encourage reform than force them to resurface under a different guise.

Only the "shunning wall" would need any alteration to the site and probably it isn't worth worrying about. It would allow the approval checkbox to be disabled for nodes posted by shunned monks though. Something to ponder anyway, even though I'd vote against its implementation myself.

There was some discussion of a need for "rules" to cover this sort of situation. I don't see a need for that nor for intervention from the gods. The PM community has the power to shun and ignore such members and in many communities that is an awsome power indeed. Here we also have the power to take away some of the XP we have given in the past and that may be even more effective than shunning when one considers that the likely motivation for such posts in the first place is to gain in reputation among the community - and XP is a reflection of that.

(Yes, yes, I know XP is only a game and doesn't matter, but some people don't understand that so well ;). )