News: youtube enforcement policy changes

News:
18-04-2008:
Thanks to mashable for this.

First up is a change to how long strikes last on your account for violations of community guidelines. Under the old system, someone getting two strikes over the course of a year, and were facing a third, carried the same weight as someone getting those same three strikes in one week. The policy is not that your strikes roll off of your account after six months, allowing for more “human error” type occurrences. Let’s face it, everyone makes mistakes, but if you do them in rapid succession, more than likely it was intentional. Accounts that had two warnings as of April 16th, 2008 have had those strikes erased and will now fall under the new policy.

Two other changes they’ve set up include you will now be notified of video removals upon logging in to the site as well as receiving an email. YouTube realizes their notifications sometimes get caught caught in spam filters, so they are hoping this will rectify that problem some. Also, users who get two strikes in a six-month period for community violations will also now be “muted” for two-weeks. You will still be able to use the site to watch videos, but you will not be able to upload new content during your muting.

As with any large site’s policy changes, there are sure to be those who don’t feel the new ones are fair, so they are encouraging the community to give them feedback on these new rules. Personally, I think they sound pretty fair and even handed, especially the rolling system for strikes.