The part in bold has just proven my point that you will use a members past moderation history against them 'when we quote their histories to them' which has the potential to cause embarrassment if they waived their right to privacy to argue their case in a public forum and then you decide to 'quote their histories to them'. You have quoted members past history to them when in private BUT there is nothing in the rules that state you will not do so when done in public. THIS is why the huge majority of members will not waive their right to privacy when discussing moderating action because they know you will quote their moderating history in public to use it against them.
Make a ruling that you will not publicly publish or quote a members past moderation history if they waive their right to privacy so they can discuss their 'current' case in a public manner.
Again, you're misunderstanding. We don't use users' moderation histories against them. We quote the relevant part of the history that's necessary to explain the moderation. This is because moderation history makes a difference as to how a user is moderated. This is explained in the Moderation FAQ.
It's the user who chooses to have the explanation be public, not us. We would much rather keep such discussions private.
There is indeed something in the rules that stops staff from quoting moderation histories: the rules state that moderation is private, between the staff and that user. That means that when users ask about moderation done to another account, we say "no, we won't tell you that because there's a privacy policy in place to protect users." We do this often.
However, due to users' wishes to have the choice to waive their privacy, if a user decides to waive that right to privacy, that user is giving us permission to discuss the moderation we did in a public thread. We have this exception because
users asked for it.
As these users pointed out:
Maybe I’m missing a point, but if a member wants to publicly discuss their moderation, then the staff should also be free to post why they did what they did, i.e., reveal the prior violations that led up to the action (if there were any).
You can't have it both ways, wanting the freedom to discuss the moderation but not let the staff publicly discuss your violations.
When a MR member waives their right to privacy to discuss an event, past history could be highly relevant. Especially if the MR member is using this forum to try and expose what they feel is inconsistent or poor moderation.
Publicly highlighting a members spelling mistake(s) and/or grammatical error(s) and then to have their mistakes quoted in a post reply saying 'here, I corrected it for you' or words to that effect, should be frowned upon and a bannable offence because it's purpose in doing so is to explicitly embarrass the member for their errors. The rule of thumb should be that if a mistake/error is spotted then the person seeing the error should have the decency to leave the poster a private message explaining to them they have made a mistake which then allows the member time to rectify their mistake/error. If a moderator see's these type of public displays of highlighting other members mistakes/errors then the moderator should either edit the post or remove it, they should not have to wait for the post to be reported.
Publically highlighting a user's language mistakes in any way is against the rules, as long as the post can be understood. If it's hard to understand, it's ok to politely ask the user what the user meant. But criticizing language (spelling, grammar, punctuation etc) is never allowed.
Having it be an instantly bannable offense is too harsh, though. The only exception would be if a user corrects other users' language time and time again. That user would first get a reminder or two, then a short suspension, the longer and longer suspensions, until we finally decided that that user isn't interested in or able to follow the rules. Then a ban could be possible - even for a minor problem.
If we see such a post or it's reported, we edit or delete it and send a moderation message.
If users remember that not everyone here has English as a first language or has the same level of education or even the same interest in language, then we'll all be generous enough not to make fun of users for their language use or be embarrassed if we ourselves see that we've make a mistake.
It all boils down to good manners and generosity.
