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Preventative measures used to deal with violations of Wikipedia policies and guidelines should follow the SMART principles. Let us add that in the long run, your success on Wikipedia is based on building a positive reputation or "rep". As such, they should be:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Appropriate
- Relevant
- Timely and Timed.
Ideally, they should also include the following qualities of being:
- Re-evaluable
- Educational
- Preventative
By ensuring that all sanctions have these SMART properties, many problem editors - and even new editors - may become better aware of how to edit in the community, and become better overall editors.