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In short, there was a hot conversation today about politics in the Tavern on the Meta chatroom and a moderator ended up suspending me for chat in Meta chats for six days.

I would like to know please what I did wrong to suspend me. I was just disagreeing with what some people were saying and it seems like some people got nervous. Yes, I used "blabla" to indicate something I didn't agree with, but another user also said it, and I don't see any seriousness in that.

I have already contacted the SE staff via the Contact form, but I also want to leave my complaint here in this post, perhaps it will speed up this verification. I didn't disrespect anyone, and it seems like you can't disagree on certain hot topics. Furthermore, I did not receive any warning from the moderator or room owner about anything wrong that I was doing, at least so that I could know what it was about, and also so that I could respond to the matter.

And finally, if the suspension was for 30 minutes, I would think it was pointless, but for 6 days? What serious thing have I done?

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    Bear in mind that you may well not be the only one suspended. We have no way of knowing. I've never known staff to get involved with chat suspensions. As far as I can tell it's up to the room owners or mods and the company takes little interest as it's not a part of the main business. I'd be interested to hear different though.
    – W.O.
    Commented Apr 19 at 21:06
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    @W.O. "I've never known staff to get involved with chat suspensions." - I know one case for sure. Commented Apr 21 at 9:30

1 Answer 1

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I don't like speculating on suspensions, but since you asked and I was there at the end, here's my answer. Note that as I don't have a diamond, my guess on the suspension is exactly that: a guess.

Tl;dr You were suspended for being rude to other users after engaging in a conversation on a highly polarized political topic. Please, go read this on SciFi Meta and this on MSE with very important advice for avoiding what happened and having productive chat discussions on politics.


You, and several other users, were having a political conversation about an especially polarized issue. As Shog9 said (part 1 & part 2)*

If y'all wanna talk about politics, good on ya - this is important stuff, and deserves to be discussed.

In a public place, in a diverse group, it can be all but impossible to know what someone else will find off-putting. If you care about the people around you, the best you can do in most cases is to listen and watch for signs that they've become uncomfortable and, when you observe this, to back off: stop the conversation and either move to a different topic or move the conversation to a different space.

There are a few areas where you should generally anticipate problems however. For instance, if you're bringing up a topic that large groups of people have physically marched to protest in real life, then you should not expect a calm conversation from random folks on the 'Net.

... that didn't happen. You declared villains, and when another user politely questioned that, you asked why they didn't understand your simple sentence (rough quote). Someone told you "Please wrap up.", followed by a suggestion (by someone else) to cool down.

This was, presumably, because you kept saying "blabla" to disagree. That's neither kind nor productive. Something like "I don't really agree because X, Y, and Z" is better. Softer/less harsh wording is a very good idea when engaging with folks on sensitive subjects.

Also, "someone else did it too", while maybe accurate, isn't a free pass for everyone else to break the rules. If it's still there, you can flag it, and someone(s) will take a look and delete it if needed.

The first validated chat flag carried a 30-minute suspension. The ones after that bumped it to one hour (in total, not each). Far more than two flags were raised and validated, making it an hour. From there, a moderator manually issued you a chat suspension, which can be seen as your chat profile states as such:

This user has been temporarily suspended by a moderator and cannot chat for 6 days.

The issue here isn't differing opinions - you're entirely free to have a different viewpoint. The issue was that you were being rude in chat.

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  • So saying "blabla" is a serious thing? Is that being rude? And do I deserve to be punished in chat for 6 days for this?
    – Marco
    Commented Apr 19 at 21:16
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    @Marco I'd personally consider it rude, and I handled those flags as such. With that said, if it was six days, than that would probably have been manually done by the diamond (elected) moderators, not automatically. You can check your Stack Exchange inbox to see if there's a mod message there, which would explain it. If not, I can't really know beyond what I said already, sadly. You'd need a mod to explain. For what it's worth, I've raised a custom mod flag so they can investigate this as I can't do much more.
    – cocomac
    Commented Apr 19 at 21:16
  • cocomac: "I've raised a custom mod flag so they can investigate this as I can't do much more": so they can investigate what?
    – Marco
    Commented Apr 19 at 21:27
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    @Marco The custom flag was to look over the chat messages (and handle them). This might mean more suspensions, undoing a suspension, sending one or more mod messages, and/or something else. Exactly what happens there is, ultimately, up to whichever mod handles the flag and maybe the diamond mods if multiple address it. I totally understand why you're frustrated, but there's really not much more we can do without a diamond mod.
    – cocomac
    Commented Apr 19 at 21:40
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    @Marco That message is now in a Trashcan room. If you feel it violates the Code of Conduct and want it deleted, you can flag it as spam/offensive. If you feel a suspension is warranted, I'd advise either a custom moderator flag on MSE with context, like this post. Note that the usual point of suspensions is to fix problematic behavior, so "I got an unjustified suspension so that user should too" isn't an acceptable reason.
    – cocomac
    Commented Apr 20 at 2:06
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    If you are seeking recourse if a mod wrongly suspended you/didn't suspend someone else, this page is for that. If you are unhappy with what we on Meta can do and raise a custom moderator flag (on MSE with context not chat) and that doesn't satisfy you, the next step may be contacting SE. At this point, I'd gently encourage you to wait until tomorrow, and if you're still annoyed, politely raise a custom flag appealing the suspension. Waiting a week and coming back after that wouldn't be terrible, though.
    – cocomac
    Commented Apr 20 at 2:07
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    "I think that is dramatic anyone that think that saying "blabla" is offensive." No-one here has said that saying "blabla" is offensive, merely that it's rude, which it is. People were trying to engage with you in a civilized, intelligent debate, and you were shutting them down in an immature manner because (presumably) you didn't like what they were saying. That is rude.
    – F1Krazy
    Commented Apr 20 at 9:17
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    Regarding the other user, my understanding of the situation from reading through the answer and the comments is that they only said it once, whereas you said it repeatedly even after being warned (hence the six-day suspension). It's entirely possible that user was suspended too, but only the automatic 30-minute suspension you get for a validated chat flag. That would make sense: they may have broken the rules too, but they broke them less, and therefore (IMO) deserve a lesser punishment.
    – F1Krazy
    Commented Apr 20 at 9:20

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