What's the point of the private warning rule?

[Siriel]

(I apologize if this is the wrong section of the forum for these kinds of questions. Just move the thread.)

To elaborate, I realize that private warnings are meant to be delivered to the person being warned in secret so they can adjust their behavior without others knowing they've been warned.

The private warning can be skipped if a mod judges the rule breaching to be severe enough. I think that's a little silly but I can understand the point of the rule.

But if things like this are going to happen:

So yeah, this is gonna be closed. Norris, don't do this again please. Consider this a private warning.

Zidan, mentioning your ignore list as a way to bludgeon someone is precisely the opposite of what it was meant for, which is to let you get along more smoothly on the boards. Stop it.

Hawkeye, aside from it being unacceptable to dismiss a user as never being able to do anything constructive, doing it when they're banned and can't react to or report it is particularly out of line.

Both of you consider this a formal private warning (delivered in public).

Then why are private warnings even a thing?

I mean I won't argue about if either instances deserved a warning, but I don't think anyone will pretend that the offences that brought them about were truly heinous breach of forum rules.

Basically my question is: If moderators are going to publicly deliver 'private warnings', why even have private warnings?

[Daiki]

I imagine it was done so that it respects the escalating chart.

[Tobias]

Private warnings also have the distinction of putting people on the first formal cooldown, meaning that until they go off cooldown they will not get another unofficial warning until the timer ends. However, it is not as serious as reaching the full public warning which means any further infractions get a strike.

Some mods, not me personally, feel like they want to deliver a notice to the full thread that things are going wrong, whilst also showing as much leniancy as possible to the poster who is out of line.

or to put that simpler, if you see someone getting a private warning mentioned, it means two things, A someone got cut a break and should consider themselves fortunate, and B, the next person who fucks up probably will not be so lucky.

like I said, I don't utilize that particular modding strategy, but then again, seika and alt are nicer then I am.

[Seika]

It's a question we've discussed: some are in favour of moving wholly to public warnings for both initial steps on the ladder. In general, as it happens, I'm not one of those people.

I'll be honest as to the latest particular instance and say that the thought that went into it was twofold:

1) These offences are ones I want to make a public point about, because I've seen them cropping up lately (and was anticipating it continuing) - don't get on banned users' cases, because we did that and it's not right to do it when they can't defend themselves; also, stop trying to use the ignore list as a weapon.
Given the offences in question weren't at all worthy of publics, and so I couldn't do it in that fashion, handing out the privates in public was just the most direct way to make the example here.

and

2) I'll save a minute by making one post about it instead of individual PMs. I was feeling a bit lazy. Fair cop.

[Siriel]

I see. Thank you both for taking the time to answer; I understand why it's a debatable issue on the mod side of things.