New post lock available on meta sites: Policy Lock

Emphasise the "official" bit, de-emphasise the "lock" bit

status-completed

Update: The language and appearance of the policy notice has been updated to be very close to what has been suggested here (see above for exact appearance)

In my opinion, the more important thing here is "This is not your average question, this is an important message".

The current wording, icon, and initial bolded word "Locked" all emphasise the wrong part. Perhaps instead it should include the company or site logo, a rubber stamp icon, or something similar.

Here's a mockup:

Update:

As implemented:

On these locked posts, as demonstrated by this one, the "Close" button (granted by close vote privileges) has been hidden for me. I'm also told that the "Delete" button is invisible on this post, even to community moderators.

That all makes sense, but why is the "Edit" button still visible if it just yields a "This post is locked." message? Wouldn't it make sense to make it invisible as well?

Other locks, such as this historically locked question on Meta, only show "Share" for me as a non-mod. No "Edit" button is available.

All that aside, this isn't a bad addition. The rare times when a wrongful edit is made or an erroneous close vote is cast can cause some confusion when the post is about an official policy/announcement for Stack Exchange, Inc. Thank you for making an announcement and telling us about it!

support edits suggested-edits

What should users do if they believe that a Policy Locked post needs an update?

• Should they flag the question for moderator attention?
• Should they ask a new question on the Meta site proposing a change?
• Should they use the Contact link to directly petition the Community Team?
• Should they comment on the post?

feature-request help-center status-completed

It's probably worth adding some points about this new lock type to Help Center article about locks, especially since the lock banner contains a direct link to it.

How commonly will this be used? For example, should we expect every or nearly every post by the Community Team to be Policy Locked as a matter of course, or will this be something that is used only on the most problematic posts?

As we have one example of a locked answer...

Could we make it act like an accepted answer? To be maybe pin it under an accepted answer, but atleast be on top of other ones.

It would be easier to find an official answer this way. I ask this as sometimes an official answer can be downvoted a lot. Being able to see the official answer should be easy, even when it's not the accepted answer.

bug spam flags status-review

I can flag this question as spam or rude/abusive. I don't think that's intentional – other locked posts I can only flag for moderator attention.

(flag has been retracted meanwhile)

To expand on my comment

The point of making announcements visible by other means then the post owner would simply be solved by a mod-only tag. Policy that needs its exact wording to remain, can simply be put in a quote block. So this is way over the top for the things you want to achieve. It almost feels like you distrust us, which is something that deviates from the positive trend of mutual trust you recently managed to start.

To which Yaakov Ellis♦ replied

@Luuklag this is intended to be used sparingly, and is actually something that we need in place to be able to continue to post more policies and important communications on Meta. As Makyen pointed out, sometimes well-intentioned edits can actually lead to changing the way in which a post can be interpreted. Not meant as a sign of distrust.

I would love to see any evidence to back up this need. So how many questions are there that would have benefited from this type of lock. Or is this all hypothetical "Lawyer precautions"?

Could these posts, when the lock is applied by CMs, get an automatic special tag like maybe "Company Policy Statement" or "Official Policy" or something so that searches can be made easily for such documents by tag ?

This is explicitly something beyond the existing "policy" tag, which may cover debate or suggestions on policy, whereas this special tag would cover statements of company policy on subjects.

Combinations of existing tags do cover the properties, but they do not make searching convenient and would not necessarily exclude posts that are not official policy statements.

I think it's a good idea in general to explicitly state in this manner (and with the lock) that a post is the decision for a policy (hopefully after an open debate, but that's a different issue) and not currently likely to change.

I still hope that general policy will be largely directed by member input and debate.

Shall such locked post still be open for Suggested Edits?

Pressing the [edit] button may show the source text of the message and then record intent to make a change to it, allowing proposing changes in easier fashion.

Alternatively, "Post is locked" message may be longer and invite flagging the post for moderator intervention in case user believes the post should be edited.

This...rubs me the wrong way.

Don't get me wrong, I feel like a place for policies should be made, and I feel like something that is referred to as policy should be concrete and not changed by the community.

But this feels like the company is putting their foot in the ground and isn't allowing us to make tweaks to verbiage or fix sentence flow.

My original argument was that this could be seen as DRM and run afoul of Section 2 of the CC-by-SA 4.0 license which this particular work is licensed under. Thankfully, the comments got me on the right course and I'm not as convinced that this is the case.

My original thinking was that this was different in intention than a post lock, which is meant to be short lived and exists for moderation purposes to help cool off a situation. This lock is intended to be long-lived and has no real end or expiration. That seems against the spirit of what the Stack Exchange platform really brings to the table when it comes to Q&A sites.

Furthermore, my opinion was more rooted in the notion that, this sort of content doesn't feel like it belongs on a site which thoroughly encourages peer editing and collaborative review of content. By adding a feature that takes this away, it sends an subtle message of not wanting to collaborate on policy.

If Stack Overflow wants to define policy, then do so and make it a fixture of your site which you control. Anywhere else is not fair game to put these restrictions.

I would hope that a definition of policy would also mean that there is a discussion about that policy somewhere on Meta so that you can get the appropriate feedback before it's implemented. It would sure suck to feel like we're being treated like kids. Again.

A scenario:

1. A staff's post got this lock.
2. The said staff leave SE for whatever reason and lose their diamond.

Can they edit their own post? Presumably not, because they are no longer a staff, but I wonder whether being the OP override the lock.

Can they still accept/unaccept answer?

This appears to be a good improvement.

I think it may be beneficial to improve on the wording being used in this new post lock indicator.

Many people on SE do not know the difference between "moderators" and "staff", and I think it needs to be made clear that moderators cannot edit these posts.

I'm a moderator, and I'm not even completely clear on the definition of "staff". Does it mean "paid employee"? Are any volunteers considered "staff"?

I think it would be good to make it clear who qualifies as "staff" or use different words.

Also, I think it would be beneficial to provide the name of the organization that is posting the "official policy or communication" within the new post lock note. It's strange to see official communication without any letterhead or identifier clearly stating the organization's name. Newcomers, not familiar with SE, will likely have little notion as to whom is responsible for creating the posts with these locks.