I am quite sure that noone really wants to keep them up. I mean why? All it does is to greatly discourage world pvp, which is awful, and i know you guys are supporters of world pvping.
What good things does this punishment system do? Give me a thing. Perhaps discourages killing quest npcs? But its world pvp, people will have to defend themselves, or call for help.
If the above statement seems too rude, there are sure other solutions to make things better!
Since they are flagged as civilians, people dont want to kill them, but they will eventually do it anyway if they are in huge raids cause of reaction or Area of Effect. Noone really wants to kill them if they give dhk...so you could instead make them unattackable from the opposite faction, just like the vendor npcs in the starting zones!
I've seen plenty of people not participating in world pvp for that very reason, i hope you take this into consideration!