Avoid the Streisand Effect - be clear about the reason when suspending an account

Question

This sort of thing has happened a few times now...

"Hey, did you see? User X was boxed!"
"User X? Why?"
"I donno... Maybe he... " (wild speculation ensues. waffles are blamed.)

It's generally quite easy to notice when a user gets thrown in The Penalty Box. You see the tell-tale 1 when viewing questions they've asked or answers they've provided. You visit their profile page. You see that big red message. And you're curious...

The Streisand effect is an Internet phenomenon where an attempt to censor or remove a piece of information backfires, causing the information to be widely publicized.

This isn't good. It turns what should be a subtle "cool-down" period into a big public spectacle. And for what?

Worse yet, speculation leads to unease. Was the suspension really justified? Where's the evidence? What's the definition of "jerk"?

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It's been two years since this tool was introduced, and nearly a year and a half since I first wrote this proposal. In that time, a number of things have changed:

• The popularity of the core "SOFU Trilogy" sites has grown immensely, bringing many more "problem users" with it.

• Many new Stack Exchange 2.0 sites have been created, with community-elected and "Pro Tempore"-appointed moderators.

• Moderators can now engage users in private conversations on-site, without having to resort to email. These conversations remain attached to the account, allowing other moderators to review them as-needed. Templates are provided to guide moderators in communicating common problems.

• The "No effort to learn and improve over time" rationale for suspending turned out to be as or more important than "Disruptive behavior" on Stack Overflow.

In addition to this, moderators have found other uses for this tool: suspending (rather than deleting) spammer accounts to allow for tracking history and... scalp-hunting. This just goes to show, no matter how obvious the purpose of a tool might be, folks will always find other uses...

There are currently 90+ suspended users on Stack Overflow, over 40 on Super User and nearly 150 on Server Fault. In the face of this, the occasional drama resulting from the suspension of a popular/notorious user seems relatively unimportant...

But I don't think it is.

Jeff often refers to the modern-day Stack Overflow as having "big city problems", meaning it's reached a scale where the sort of intimate, hand-holding relationship between staff, moderators, and new users is no longer practical. But it also has "big city advantages" - paradoxically, you can retain some amount of privacy in a large population, while in the small town everyone knows you... In the big city, you can spend the night in jail and go back to work the next morning without any questions; in the small town, everyone remembers how you got into an argument with Barney in front of the post office last May.

SE is busily adding more small towns. Hopefully, they won't stay small very long... But that initial, small-town period is crucial to their later development. Personalities clash, users unfamiliar with the SE platform stuble through newbie mistakes with varying degrees of grace, and the newly-minted moderators try their best to gain the trust of the budding community. During this period, it is vital to avoid the appearance of censorship or abuse of power.

Transparency, when it matters

After discussing this with several moderators and watching how suspension is used in practice, I've come to the conclusion that there are two three primary categories:

1. Users who should be / will be deleted. Suspected spammers, trolls, sockpuppets, astroturfers, etc. There's no need to wear the kid gloves here; no positive contributions to the site, past or present.

2. Users who've made a disturbing mix of valuable, and harmful contributions to the site. These may need some care; poor-quality questions, rants or inflamatory comments have probably been deleted, sockpuppets have been merged, votes expunged, leaving a public record that looks pretty good to the casual observer. And others may agree with these users' arguments, even if they disagree with the tone or manner in which they've been presented. The hope is that the suspended user will come back to the site and participate positively; any appearance of public humiliation, whether by moderators or other users, works against this goal.

3. Users who just need a chance to cool down. This is a pretty close match to the original metaphor of a "penalty box" - a user got caught up in an argument, or came home drunk and started having some "fun" at the expense of other users, or quit smoking... Maybe their account was hacked and they can't be contacted for some reason. There's no reason they can't come back and contribute positively once they've regained their composure, but in the meanwhile they need to be kept from making a mess of the site and their own reputation.

I originally suggested a simple change: add a way for moderators to add a brief, public comment to the account, noting the reason without going into detail. "Sockpuppet voting", "Persistent low-quality", "Cool down", etc.

But that's unnecessary in the vast majority of suspensions. Indeed, even a moderator-only annotation isn't really necessary when the user is a flagrant spammer, or has already been sent a message regarding persistent abuse. The situations I wanted to address here, and still believe are worth addressing here, are the tiny handful of high-profile suspensions involving a user well-known within their site or circle, where a suspension might otherwise lead to harmful speculation.

So here's my second idea. This is what the suspension UI looks like right now:

Moderators must enter at least a short description of the problem, even if that's just "See user-message ###". The idea is that this gives other moderators a place to start when reviewing suspensions; in practice, the user's history (containing annotations, private user-messages, etc.) is probably going to contain more important information. Here's what I propose in its place:

Note that I'm not attempting to enumerate badness here, although I suppose I am stratifying it. The results would look like this:

Terse. No gory details. And without that free-form text-entry to trip up a new, frustrated moderator whose goal should be to minimize rubbernecking. And most importantly, specific enough to hopefully quell speculation until such a time as the user is able to defend himself.

Answer 1

Your updated argument was very persuasive. Enough such that this is now in place for new suspensions. We'll be monitoring to see how this works in practice, of course.

Public reasons will be shown as one of the following:

• for voting irregularities
• to cool down
• because of low-quality contributions
• for promotional content
• for plagiarism
• for rule violations

Answer 2

In general, it is a private matter between the moderators and that particular user. Note that other moderators have access to annotations on the account that will provide more context for the suspension.

I believe it is the responsibility and right of the user who was placed in timed suspension to have the freedom to discuss (or not discuss) what happened to them.

It is a basic matter of respecting other users' privacy.

Note that every user suspension page links directly to our official guidance on the matter:

https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/a-day-in-the-penalty-box

Please read that closely -- it is quite detailed, and explains the most common general reasons that cover 95% (or more) of all timed user suspensions.

Answer 3

The thing that ticks me off most is that we are all sitting here completely speculating about "WHY" someone is in the penalty box. The speculation seems to always have a flavor or hint that people think the moderators have abused their power or messed up. I see the same thing happening with our police officers. We don't simply assume that they've done their job and a good one, we pick one thing and want to blow it way out of proportion and before long, we have a beast upon us.

The one and only way to solve this is complete transparency. I know that some want it, some don't. But if we all had visibility to see what marks a user has against them, we wouldn't have to speculate. To some degree, we use the "we are the community" or the "we are the world" approach here on the SO sites, but we really don't fulfill that because this process is fuzzy to most.

10K+ users can see posts that have been flagged, maybe they can also see some kind of user rating as well that shows them who is close to the box, who is in the box, etc.

Answer 4

Seeing what happened yesterday, I think there should be a short explanation about the sin binning. Otherwise, the community is going to take out its virtual pitchforks and try to find an answer.

Lack of information leads to a lot of searching into why the user was binned, countless accusations, almost no control of the situation, a general mess of things. This is not what we should strive for. It might not be obvious right now, but it will tear the community apart. There are a lot of egos here that will not take binning that easily.

Answer 5

fwiw, the forum model is generally a terse statement along the lines of "suspended for spam", "warning for violation of TOS", etc.. in red letters by the username or offending post.

It eliminates the streisand, is clear and inarguable if the mods are decent human beings, provides some openness to the system (arbitrary and unknown penalties basically = police state) and serves as a powerful warning and steering mechanism for the community at large - the latter two of which are much more important than curtailing rumour-mongering.

I'm against naming and shaming generally, but I see value in the OP's proposition even if for different reasons.

Answer 6

I am very much against this. When a user gets suspended that is their punishment. There is no public shaming of them, they are just binned.

It is only noticable in high profile cases. If a user with < 1000 reputation gets binned, no one is going to notice, so there is no reason to tag their profile. Some of the users may have made small but serious mistakes, or became carried away in the course of one discussion and been suspended. In any and all of those scenarios, the suspension is the punishment.

There will always be people who distrust authority, and they will never believe any suspension is reasonable. If you publish a reason then not only are you giving people something specific to grasp at and disagree with, you are publicly shaming someone who is already being punished.

Further, as noted by womp the terse explanation will still fuel speculation. For instance 'Banned because of abusive comments' would generate speculation about which discussion caused it. And then whether or not the person was binned for mentioning waffles. You can't open up terse explanations without generating huge amounts of discussion and curiosity.

Obviously, keeping people in the dark also does this, but it generates less because you are less likely to notice someone being binned.

EDIT

My suggestion is that there be a list of actions in the FAQ which will generally get you banned. It would shed some light on the process ("users have been banned for the following reasons:") but it would not single out users for particular shaming. It should also be stated that moderators can still suspend people for other reasons. So, you can't claim "but posting pornography isn't on 'the list'! so it must be allowed!".

Answer 7

I can think of lots of reasons why the smart thing to do is not to publish why a person has been suspended, not the least of which is the potential liability for slander. Even if notice were to be given, where would you give it? The blog? Blogging about someone's transgressions absent some compelling interest -- like resulting changes to the fundamental rules of the site -- seems like overkill. Posting it to the front page of the site? That's hardly any better. I know, why don't we put a message on their profile that they've been suspended. That makes sense. It's not hidden, anyone can see it -- if they care enough to look. Oh, yeah, that's already been implemented.

Now we only need to quibble about whether everyone needs to know exactly why it happened. For the liability issue alone, I would caution against making a public statement unless it results in fundamental change to the system. Even then, I would focus on the resulting change not the behavior. Note that anyone who feels compelled to disagree with their ban has the whole of the internet to work with in making their position known. As far as I know none of the admins has the capacity to turn off someone's internet access or restrict them from posting an alternate forum. There are plenty of people who will commiserate with them over on Reddit. As far as I know you aren't restricted from updating your profile to add a link to your version of events if you wish.

Answer 8

I'm just an Average Joe on SO/MSO/SU. I ask dumb questions, I get smart answers. I appreciate the tension between privacy of the individual and the transparency of the community, and I think we're all aware that there's no Great Big Answer Way.

However, what is a problem is having long crabby gossip threads about what's going on?! why did $joe disappear! why are there waffles instead of flair on $joe's page!

It's important to have good enough transparency that the community is reasonably satisfied there aren't Creepy Moderators Silently Killing Users.

Answer 9

A bit late the party here, but I think that Shog9 is right, and that these debates happen anyway, so it would be far better to provide the information up-front.

Moderators end up 'justifying' themselves anyway:

Why user vgv8 is being suspended again

http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/832/why-is-97832123-suspended

Very frustrating user experience (see first answer)

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65073/why-was-this-account-suspended

Answer 10

For your information, this is pretty much status-bydesign.

If you're worried about transparency, please be aware you already must explain why the user is being suspended before action is applied:

...and the suspension reason is permanently placed against the user for all moderators (and employees) to see:

There are other ways in which this information is visible, also, some of which quite prominent.

So, no, you can't go rogue without all other mods noticing.

Answer 11

I don't think that any information given would quiet the gossip. In a way, it will make things worse.

If they posted a terse summary saying "X got banned for Y", everyone is going to go through their recent activity to see if Y really happened. Now, instead of asking if there is any evidence, people are directly analyzing it. I think it would just exacerbate the kind of speculation you talk about, i.e.

Was the suspension really justified? What's the definition of "jerk"?

Answer 12

No. The main problem about the suspensions that the suspended user can't explain his version, because he is suspended. People simply disappear, and nobody will be ever notified about this.

Even the list of the currently suspended users isn't advertised. Although it can be asked with a simple SEDE query:

SELECT Id as [User Link], *
FROM Users
WHERE UpVotes>0 AND DownVotes>0 AND Reputation=1;

This gives the moderation a little bit of NKVD flavor. People simply disappears and nobody talks about them. They will be unpersons. Even mentioning them on the chat is at least impolite, maybe dangerous (1, 2). This enables the moderation cagings on trumped up reasons.

As I know, every cage is revisited by the SE. In practice, this is only a theoretical thing. Never ever I've heard, for example, that a cage decision had been revised by the SE.

In the IRL world, if there is a criminal case, the offended has the possibility to say his/her version of the story and he can defend himself and the decisions are public. Here it is unheard. Cagings happen by single-person decisions of a mod, they are executed on the spot, the "offender" doesn't have any chance to defend his stance and the public will know the fact if they see next time the name in some list with "1" reputation.

No. Not the "Streisand effect" is the problem, the "Jezhov effect" is the problem: if your opinion differs from the "community"(*), and won't shut up, you have to dance continuously on the border of the caging. And you will sometimes lose.

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*: "community" means here the mods and the possible narrowest list of power users being capable to "rule" a site.