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Many users will first learn of their suspension when they see their reputation score go down to 1. I disagree with the reasoning behind this (beyond "the reputation / privilege system forces this behaviour"), but changing the behaviour would be hard.

Instead, users who learn they're suspended by seeing their reputation score go to 1 should also learn that they're suspended. (This has been suggested a few times over the years, most recently here.) I envisage it looking something like this:

wizzwizz4: 1 reputation (link: suspended), 6 gold badges, 50 silver badges, 90 bronze badges

This should only display for the suspended user, and it should display everywhere that the reputation score is visible. The link should take me to a help page about suspensions in general, or to the moderator message explaining my suspension in specific.

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Don't do this.

There's isn't a need to continuously inform the user that they are suspended. Continuously informing them would be quite negative emotionally for many people, feeling similar to being pilloried (publicly shamed), which is something that we don't do.

Users already get both a global inbox notification and email upon suspension.

That is generally enough. If people really think that something more is needed, then some, single, notification (e.g., perhaps a popup that the user has to dismiss?) would be far better than something that shows up continuously on every single page for the entire duration of their suspension.

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  • 6
    I agree – but the 1 reputation is already continuously informing the user that they're suspended, once they learn what it means, and until then it's distressing for a different reason (for whoever cares about their reputation points, which many people do). This is an argument for changing that – which might not be possible, but has repeatedly been rejected in the past on the basis of "why do we care about suspended users? they should feel pain!".
    – wizzwizz4
    Commented Dec 11 at 17:30
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Alternative suggestion which might be easier to implement, is adding "suspended" label: (same way we have staff label, moderator label, etc.)

mockup showing suspended label for the user

I think that it would also be proper for everyone to see it, as it is after all only informative about the user status, it's not meant for "shaming".

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    I'd see it two ways. On one hand, it gives much more visibility to a suspension, and people to ask about these things, and that's not good. On the other it does mean you know why the other user is ignoring you
    – Journeyman Geek
    Commented Dec 11 at 10:49
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    In 2016, you didn't like this idea. Why the change of heart?
    – wizzwizz4
    Commented Dec 11 at 10:49
  • @wizzwizz4 lots of water flowed in the river since then, and the labels for staff/mod/bots that went through a redesign. This isn't intrusive, and in those 8 years I also seen lots of cases of suspended users. While I'm still against public "shaming" of them, I do think that with the label it's not "throw it in their face", but rather elegant way to show their status.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Dec 11 at 11:34
  • meta.stackexchange.com/posts/comments/1349624
    – VLAZ
    Commented Dec 11 at 12:38
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    This would draw too much attention to suspended users. The 1 rep and no badges on an upvoted answer already draws attention to users that know what to look for.
    – CPlus
    Commented Dec 11 at 18:28
  • @CPlus ah, forgot that badges are also hidden, this is indeed a good point and a good indicator. I still think that label showing the status has merit, so leaving the answer.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Dec 12 at 7:34

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