That’s an interesting perspective. However, I maintain my position. Banning criticism of people is too general an abstraction and opens the door to bad actors.

That’s an interesting perspective. However, I maintain my position. Banning criticism of people is too general an abstraction and opens the door to bad actors. An article posted today (“I don’t need your query language”) offers a good concrete example. In an environment where I am unable to criticize a person’s approach (and by extension, that person) I and the rest of the team are at the mercy of their idiosyncrasies (I am referring to the syntax issues highlighted in the first example of the mentioned article). Escalation via managers can work in specific situations but it has no guarantee of success and comes at a significant cost. In the best case it exists as an extra layer of indirection that must be paid for. A technical solution, which is what you are proposing, is a poor solution when a better structured policy obviates the need for it.