Convincing the community: Should we rephrase the post-ban faq?

Question

We all are aware of the many questions we get on automatic post-bans. Often we simply close them as a dupe of "What can I do when..." because the OP simply did not read it. On rare occasions however, the OP did.

Take for example this case (though I've seen similar cases before) where the OP is asked if he read the specific FAQ. His answer is:

"Yes I read that:

The only way for the ban to be lifted is for you to convince the community that they should give you another chance

So here I am"

Of course, the FAQ goes on to state what to do. But I can see how this sentence is somewhat misleading. After all, you don't have to come to us and try to convince us to unban you. You can argue until you're blue in the face, but that's not the point of that sentence. I can however see how one could make that mistake.

So, should we perhaps make a modification to that sentence which clarifies this? Something along the lines of

The only way for the ban to be lifted is for you to positively contribute to the site in ways still possible to you, gaining reputation in the process

or something similar. I think this is a more fair representation of the actual situation. That this implies convincing the community is fair enough, but it avoids the "here I am to state my case" scenario.

Examples:

• Blacklisted / banned from StackOverflow?
• https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/158160/banned-to-ask-questions-in-stackoverflow

Answer 1

I find our post ban workflow quite ineffective, for a variety of reasons:

1. The damn shortened URL

   Replacing the shortened URL with a real link has been proposed before, and declined. Waffles asks:

   Should we invest any time in giving suspended users a smoother user experience?

   And I say no, absolutely not. But you certainly need to invest time in giving users that aren't suspended a smoother user experience, and not have us deal (mostly clean up) with "unban me pleaz" questions on MSO every day (including code questions posted on MSO to circumvent the ban).

   URL shorteners are poor form, and the message itself can be easily¹ confused for a system error message. Let's fix that first, make it crystal clear that the ban is not an "error", but something you brought upon yourself.

2. The answer shouldn't be hosted on Meta

   The ban is automatic, and there's nothing the SO community can do about it. Host the answer under stackexchange.com, give it an air of officiality, after all it's not enforced and can't be reversed by the community, it doesn't really have a place here. Add a form to it, so people can easily¹ contact Stack Exchange directly if they want to contest the ban.

   I wonder how many banned users first found out about Meta through that answer, and later thought: "Oh, I'll just post all my coding questions here from now on...".

3. The answer itself should be simplified

   It's a stellar answer, beautifully written by Arjan and amended by the community, but it's a relatively long answer targeted at people who probably failed to read / comprehend or completely ignored shorter / more important documents, like the FAQ and the How to Ask guidelines. Case in point that it might be a bit inaccessible for users that aren't native english speakers is this question.

   The style adopted in the AskPatents about page would be far more efficient¹, imho.

As you may have guessed already, I don't have much hope that we will come up with better wording for that phrase. We might, but I'm afraid the new phrase will confuse someone else, and we will be back where we started.

And before anyone mentions it, I'm fully aware that sometimes our post ban workflow works wonderfully, but I'm afraid that's more of an exception than the rule.

_{¹ Considering the target audience of the message.}

Answer 2

That answer is pretty good, but I'm not quite sure it covers all bases. Particularly if you read the section on "How long do I have to wait before I can post again?", which seems to imply that simply fixing your posts will by itself reverse your ban. It won't, unless people get interested in your stale old negative score post again, and what are the odds of that happening?

I agree that an extra sentence that highlights the importance of gaining reputation and contributing in the ways still available to you would not be misplaced. It is never going to solve the problem entirely though. An angry person can't be angry at a computer screen, so you'll still have people coming here to vent.