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I was looking at some of the best reviewers of all time and clicked a random user just for fun (I am not stalking people). Stack Overflow said that his/her account was suspended so that the user can cool down.

What does that mean? Did that user answer too much or kept on down-voting people too much in a short period of time? That user was suspended for 1 year.

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    Answering or downvoting are not going to result in you being suspended, given that neither is doing anything wrong.
    – Servy
    Jan 13, 2015 at 22:16
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    @Servy I think Python's intent was for serial downvoting: "kept on down-voting people too much in a short period of time"
    – MTL
    Jan 13, 2015 at 22:43
  • @Servy not quite right. User who keep posting really bad answers and somehow dodge the automatic ban (e.g. got few good answers, or doing it in a site without auto ban) might get suspended to stop the flow of bad answers. (same for questions)
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Jan 14, 2015 at 7:37
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    meta.stackoverflow.com/a/281579/839601
    – gnat
    Jan 14, 2015 at 11:04

1 Answer 1

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I'm no expert on suspension, but I don't think it means for voting, as I've seen a special suspension reason for voting.

I think it means that this user might have been involved in "disruptive/abusive activity" like flame wars and deleting a lot of posts, so after warning the user, the moderators decided that it would be a good idea for him/her to take some time off, and hopefully come back after the suspension, ready to "play nicely" with other users.

A year is a long time to be suspended, so this probably means that it wasn't the first suspension this user got.

See this blog post and this answer for more info on suspensions in general.

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  • Well I guess that is for rule violations. I saw another suspended user for multiple rule violations
    – Anthony Pham
    Jan 13, 2015 at 22:27
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    This is spot on. It is mostly used for abusive behavior. But just as a note: the "cool down" message does also appear when we suspend users who are trying to delete all of the content on their account, usually due to rage-quits.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Jan 13, 2015 at 22:27
  • @animuson That's also "disruptive behavior," isn't it? ....thanks for the info, I'll put that in.
    – MTL
    Jan 13, 2015 at 22:28
  • @PythonMaster My understanding is that "cool down" is different from "rule violations," in that a user that has been suspended to "cool down" may not have broken any rules per se, but was still disruptive in some other way.
    – MTL
    Jan 13, 2015 at 22:33
  • The "rule violations" reason is actually just a catch-all/default. For example, if we didn't use any of the templates and just typed up a message manually, it would get displayed to the public as rule violations. Any time you've been suspended, you've broken some sort of rule. We wouldn't suspend users if they weren't breaking rules.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Jan 13, 2015 at 22:37
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    @animuson Got it. Then again, "be nice" is a rule, isn't it? ;-)
    – MTL
    Jan 13, 2015 at 22:40
  • Those messages you type up manually, @animuson, would be visible to....other moderators? SE staff? All of the above? ....otherwise, I don't see much of a purpose in manual messages.
    – MTL
    Jan 13, 2015 at 22:41
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    @Shokhet Well, it's a message to the user you're contacting. The point is that the user sees it. Sometimes the templates just don't cover what we want to say to them. But yes, all other moderators (including SE staff) can see all messages sent on their site.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Jan 13, 2015 at 22:45
  • @animuson Thanks for explaining that. I guessed it served some history/tracking-mods-to-prevent-abuse function; I guess I was partially correct.
    – MTL
    Jan 13, 2015 at 22:48
  • 365 days usually means it's the third suspension you get. But, the fourth can't be 1825 days for example, because 365 is the top. I think a ban occurs then.
    – EKons
    Aug 28, 2016 at 12:18

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