I wasn t concerned about the specific incident involved in the exchange It was the statement that the uw templates aren t severity warnings they are counts In the end we may be saying the same thing I also usually start out with a level 1 or level 2 But if I see a pattern of vandalism over time either from existing warnings on the talk page or by taking a look at the user contributions or if the substance of the edits is particularly egregious I ll jump to a level 3 or maybe even a level 4 at which point I go to AIV But a user might get a few level 1 or 2 warnings before getting a level 3 warning I guess that s why I took issue with SMcCandlish conceptualizing the numbers in the templates as counts of warnings in the last week I don t see it as a linear first warning second warning third warning progression