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I've been banned from the reviews and it might be worthy but I would like to know if it's the honeypot tests that got me or a manual ban; if it's the latter, I would also like to know how I can improve.

I know I failed 2 honeypot audits this month, the last one for wanting to leave a comment (yeah!) and at least another one before that, when I started reviewing. After failing that first one, I took a break because I thought that I might not have been ready to review. On another note, it's a pain trying to find those missed audits in the activity tab.

I think it might be a good idea to give some feedback when banning people so they have a better understanding of what they need to do to improve.

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  • 7
    Feature request: ability to downvote that last comment? :(
    – Joe
    Commented Jul 29, 2013 at 14:21
  • 1
    As a workaround, you can flag one of your own posts choose "Other" and ask the moderator to explain why you're banned from reviewing and he can answer with a custom message.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jul 29, 2013 at 14:21
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    @Joe: if you're failing enough review audits to get banned...it may be time to stop reviewing.
    – user7116
    Commented Jul 29, 2013 at 14:32
  • @user7116 Stop for now, yes (hence my answer). Learn what you're doing wrong, certainly. But "enough folks reviewing, don't worry about it"? 64k to-be-closed questions queued say otherwise. Plus the whole "community" thing. I'm sure many of our best reviewers failed a few audits in their day.
    – Joe
    Commented Jul 29, 2013 at 14:33
  • @Joe: I've never been sold on the benefit of widening the reviewer pool. The review audits are not rocket surgery, and the bogus audits are few and far between.
    – user7116
    Commented Jul 29, 2013 at 14:38
  • 1
    @user7116 Reviews are one of the biggest ways users become part of the StackOverflow community, instead of just the StackOverflow:[mytag] community. Sure, some users might not review well, but that's not a reason to tell them to go away. I want those folks a part of our community as well, so long as they're willing to put in some work and learn how to review better. Perhaps we should have some sort of "review academy" where they go through a list of 10-20 reviews for each type with an explanation on what needs changing (or not)?
    – Joe
    Commented Jul 29, 2013 at 14:52
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    @Joe: when did reviewing become the biggest way people become a part of SE? It's been about asking and answering questions since the beginning. Everything else is at best an "add-on" (like our comments, these are add-on's).
    – user7116
    Commented Jul 29, 2013 at 15:05

3 Answers 3

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I'd venture to guess it was a manual ban because of the large number of No Action Needed reviews.

For example, this question certainly needs a significant amount of work done to improve it. It has poor formatting and isn't really a great question to begin with.

This question is also pretty bad and has again no formatting as well as an unclear question.

That's two of the first three questions I looked at randomly from your recent reviews. It's good that you are interested in jumping in and helping improve our community, but you definitely need to either spend more time on them, or learn more about what a good StackOverflow question is prior to doing reviews.

As to your specific suggestion, I think some of the point of not providing feedback for review bans is that if you're doing reviews, you should either know about meta and come here and ask, or you should take it as a caution to slow down and think about them some more.

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  • The last review the OP did was an audit. It seems more reasonable to me that this audit pushed him over a limit to trigger an automatic ban than that a moderator happened to manually ban him around the same time this happened.
    – Wooble
    Commented Jul 29, 2013 at 14:16
  • 2
    I don't think 2 failed audits in a month is enough to kick you into a ban, is it?
    – Joe
    Commented Jul 29, 2013 at 14:17
  • Well, the question says "at least" another one; I didn't look through the complete history for failed audits; it is indeed a pain to find them.
    – Wooble
    Commented Jul 29, 2013 at 14:18
  • That's why I'm asking. If I am to venture to guess that I need to take more time to review, I'm not gonna be any better once the ban is over.
    – Jonathan Drapeau
    Commented Jul 29, 2013 at 14:18
  • And you came to meta, and asked - so the system worked this time, at least.
    – Joe
    Commented Jul 29, 2013 at 14:21
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    @Joe Indeed but if we could have a right-away explanation rather than having to come here to ask, I think that would be better.
    – Jonathan Drapeau
    Commented Jul 29, 2013 at 14:25
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    The problem is that usually the right-away explanation is "your reviews were not good quality". The moderators don't necessarily have time to write a separate explanation for each user as to why this is. Meta, on the other hand, has lots of people with extra time to do this, and the knowledge for how. So you get a better explanation here.
    – Joe
    Commented Jul 29, 2013 at 14:26
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    @JonathanDrapeau I can confirm that this was not a manual ban.
    – Andrew Barber Mod
    Commented Jul 29, 2013 at 14:26
  • @AndrewBArber Thanks for the info.
    – Jonathan Drapeau
    Commented Jul 29, 2013 at 15:26
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Looking at What are review tests (audits) and how do they work?, it seems that notification is given when a review audit has been failed.

enter image description here

Looking at Why am I getting the message "You've failed too many recent review audits"? it also appears that notification is given if you receive a review ban.

enter image description here

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  • 2
    Yes and I'm suggesting the later to be improved to provide tips and informations that could help the banned person improve.
    – Jonathan Drapeau
    Commented Jul 29, 2013 at 17:22
  • @JonathanDrapeau I think the hope is that users would improve after reading the first message, so that second won't be needed.
    – apaul
    Commented Jul 29, 2013 at 19:29
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I would have liked to know what led to my ban without having to come here. I don't mind the ban, but I also like to know what I did wrong and how I can improve myself, especially since the SE sites are about helping each other.

At the same time, advice and recommendations about what to improve with the "You've failed too many..." message wouldn't hurt anyone.

Something like:

You've fallen into the honeypot. Here are some tips to help you make better reviews:

  • Take the time to carefully read the answer/question you're reviewing.
  • In doubt, skip the review, someone else will review it.
  • (add more)

The same would be possible for (manual) moderator bans, where they could select a "canned" tips message and/or add a comment of their own if they feel it is needed.

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