*In the light of some of the moderators comments, I'd like to add an alternative to my first answer:*

# Educate the community

Lets take the RAW and policing discussion as a prime example. What *should* ideally be done is that the community should down vote the answers that don't adhere to the RAW tags requirements. What you propose, because you think the community will not be able to handle it, is to flag it and moderate it.

There is a quite old, but very respected FAQ about Hacker communities, which at least SO is a part of: [How To Ask Questions The Smart Way](http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html). It's way older than any SE and older than the SO idea or implementation.

>Community standards do not maintain themselves: They're maintained by people actively applying them, visibly, *in public*.

So yes, I think this is correct. For a community to learn and apply standards, those standards must be applied by their role-models. Visibly. In public. If you flag NAA and subsequently delete a post that is not up to our standards, *nobody learns anything from it*. The community at large is no smarter than before.

It's like dragging the offender into a dark back-alley and spanking him. That *may* be effective for the offender, but if nobody knows about it, you will need to repeat it for every. single. offender. 

And most won't even know what hit them. Because they never witnessed an account of wrongdoing and therefore did not even have a chance to see that what they did  was wrong before a moderator action struck them.

Lets stay with the example. To set up and maintain a community standard, that RAW answer talking about house rules needs to sit at -10. With a comment nine times up-voted saying "this is a house-rule and we are looking for written rules only as per the tag". For everyone to see that this behavior is wrong. Visible. In public. Because now everyone can see that we don't want house-rules in the RAW tag. Now the community can *learn*, even without reading through tons of meta posts. New people will see what is expected from them and won't make the same mistake all over again.

Use your mod powers less, because using them in that way makes the site look pretty on the outside, but breeds a community that has no guideline on what is right or wrong. Flagging and mod powers that are invisible to the public add to the mistrust because they seemingly strike out of nowhere without any prior warning. The community should use their downvotes to police this site. Using mod powers for it is counterproductive. 

If you don't trust the community to do this, have a chat and down-vote those you'd flag and close/remove as a team. A -3 and three comments why this is wrong is a pretty clear signal the community will see and understand. More importantly, it **is** a signal. Flagging and removing signals nothing. Literally. Any trace of what might be wrong is gone without any learning opportunity.

**tl;dr:**

Mistakes are a learning opportunity *if available*. Removing errors behind the scenes teaches the community nothing. And we do need a well educated community to run an SE site. So police the site, but do so visibly in public with the means available to the public. That means down-votes and comments mostly.