A Day in the Penalty Box
Are you familiar with the Penalty Box?
The penalty box (sometimes called the sin bin, bad box, or bin) is the area in ice hockey, rugby football and some other sports where a player sits to serve the time of a given penalty, for an offense not severe enough to merit outright expulsion from the contest. Teams are generally not allowed to replace players who have been sent to the penalty box.
It’s not something we looked forward to, but as of tonight, we’re instituting a penalty box on Stack Overflow.
Our general strategy is to discourage specific problem behaviors, not individual users. But sometimes you just can’t seem to reach people, and it becomes necessary to place accounts in timed suspension.
When users exhibit a pattern of either …
No effort to learn and improve over time
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This user does not put reasonable effort into the questions they ask of the community.
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There is little or no evidence of this user learning over time, either in the topic itself or in the community norms on the site.
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This user intentionally spams the site with the same question or very similar questions, over and over.
- The user never gives anything back to the community, but only takes.
Disruptive behavior
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Other users tend to react poorly to this user’s contributions, posting negative responses in kind and generally causing a commotion.
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There is a broad sense of community resentment over this user’s behavior, and they are frequently cited in discussion about the community.
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There is a dark storm cloud of moderator flags that seems to follow this user around wherever they go.
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The moderators get email complaints about this user’s behavior.
- This user makes overtly snide, rude, or hostile comments to their fellow users.
… these problem behaviors have to be dealt with. When they aren’t, it takes up excessive moderator time that could be used for something more productive — and, even worse, these behaviors begin to actively turn people away from our community, stunting its growth and harming everyone.
So starting tonight, there will be consequences for patterns of problem behavior.
If we think you are reachable, and the behavior is one that we feel can change, we will try to warn you via email first when there are behavior problems — so that we can address them before they become deeper problems. But I make no guarantees; the community moderators are very, very busy and there are a lot of things that need their attention. The odds of moderators contacting you with a warning first will be in direct proportion to how much evidence you’ve given us that you are, in fact, a potentially valuable and contributing member of the community.
Depending on the severity of the problem behavior — and at the complete discretion of the moderator — your account will be placed in timed suspension for anywhere from 1 to 365 days. That means:
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Your account will be locked at 1 reputation.
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Your user page will have a visual indication that you are in timed suspension, and for how long.
- You will be unable to vote, ask, answer, or comment.
At the end of this timed suspension period, your reputation will be recalculated, and your account will resume as normal. We don’t hold grudges. The point of all this is to address the behavior. If the behavior improves, you are welcome back.
(This should probably go without saying, but if the problem behaviors do continue beyond the timed suspension, your account is very likely to be permanently deleted.)
75 Comments
too much days in penalty box for him http://stackoverflow.com/users/285587/your-common-sense LOL
My account has been suspended for a day because the “moderators” state I’ve answered questions of “low quality.” There is no rigorous and quantitaive measure of a “quality post.” Ironic isn’t it, inasmuch as this is a math site.
The moderaors are imposing opinion to suspend a user who has answered more the 5,000 questions.
Read this: https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/34879/what-to-do-when-a-user-is-just-providing-answer-to-a-low-quality-question?cb=1
It’s a totalitarian, language policing, silence anyone platform. Best to ask questions in IRC, these mods of stack overflow think they are lords.
You are absolutely right. Most of them see themselves as very superior beings.
I completely understand, certainly I absolutely have little time to take full advantage of the platform. I realize that several months and for those reasons I have obtained from login back on. I appreciate your evaluation of my person, and respect your perspective of myself as exactly meaning nothing more or not less, what I take from your perspective is not personal and obviously we don’t particularly know each other personally. In that regard I certainly have no real opinion over your opinions, or perspective even to evaluate my character, it’s actually a gesture of witch I knowledge that there is some one, or something to be said regardless of myself, You have my respect, and thank you for bringing such perspective to my attention. Some of us do stop and listen or take the opportunity to glance at one self, certainly it’s our critique so that is not a pulse for witch I get the privilege to be at public mesure. I certainly will uninstall the app, with the current situation and my personal aspects and effects, I recuse myself from being such low moral, that will be all. AG
I don’t think there is any, just shouldn’t passed over the border.
Can someone please let me know , what’s the exact reason for suspension of my account , I was recently started taking part in the community and I put my first question and within 15-20 days my account is suspended.
I was insulted by the some moderator, who removed all my technical comments, blocked and then deleted my posts, and killed my account. He and his friends did that for me posting a SQL Server Management Studio screenshot. And there was NOTHING done to punish him, what a shame, using your power against helpless users with no tools to protest.
Your Common Sense is one of the best authors on this site ever. His posts are of top quality, giving the best knowledge to users, with explanations. And he is banned… What can I say?
You could say just nothing if you think he’s a great author.
@Pavel While not knowing the exact reason for his suspension, good quality work does not prevent bad behavior. And as with any team, you rather have a team of good people working together than a single totally enthusiastic one-man show. Of course, it’s even better if you get a brilliant person to work alongside the rest of the team, but if a person does misbehave, his good work is no excuse for bad behavior. The current profile text of that account at least shows quite a sense of entitlement. Yes, I’m sure he did awesome work, but painting yourself as the single Marvel hero against all those bad foes, who in their mind may attempt to contribute as well, is a sign of a developing character/behavior problem.
Yep it doesn’t take much to be suspended here as my ex boyfriend created this account for scandalous things that somehow he manipulated for his personal life and the fact of the matter is how it went unnoticed but mostly he’s just a liar cheater thief
I feel like no matter what I say mods think I did something wrong
Following a time suspension for 7 days, now my account (https://stackoverflow.com/users/5025009/serafeim) is again back. However, the reputation remains locked at 1. Why is that? The article states that the reputation is recalculated.
Your reputation is on 29k 😉
Why do I see a user that is suspended for almost 5 years, when this article says the possible suspension time is from 1 to 365 days?
please let me know, what is the exact reason for suspension of my account.
Well, SE right now is so bad. Even a one-time offense resulting in a suspension with no warning whatsoever. Quoting https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/391202/3654837. Supposedly warning firsthand then suspension. But yeah, right now they just throw suspension without warning.
My account was misused by someone else and it is locked. I have had 411 reputations and 11 badges but it now started with 1 reputation. Why is it so?
At what time today 2-8-2020 will my seven day suspension be lifted? Thank You
I got banned by engaging an individual who was condescending an unhelpful. He deleted his comments because they were indeed that: condescending, unhelpful, and agressive. The person that suspended my account very likely was the same person that I engaged.
In my opinion this is extremely unfair. I did not swear, I did not belittle the person. I gave this person milder treatment than this person gave me, and because this person (likely) has “mod powers” he/she can freely use those to punish those that get in his/her way.
I totally understand the need for moderators. I also don’t typically jump to “mod abuse”. All I am saying is please review this case @other mods, and make your independent judgement. If your judgement remains the same, then I understand. I will server my sentence. I believe strongly however that I really did not do anything wrong.
Please consider.
I answered a simple question. I am new to SU so before I posted, I checked whether naming free software to solve the OP problems and/or a URL link to wasn’t allowed or was frowned on. Nothing was mentioned in Helps. It was immediately down voted. I edited out any mention of what software was needed. I flagged it because I thought a moderator should look at it. They deleted my answer. I didn’t mind the down vote. Don’t mind the revised answer being deleted.
After discussing my options I decided to re-answer the question with the same revised answer gave earlier. Adding specifics about how the softare works to accomplish the OP’s goal, since they asked for that anyway.
I go to post and I’m informed I need to sign in. SO I did that using Google account, as I already use it here. But it signifies I’m a new user. Which I’m not. So what’s the penalty for?
It would be nice for some mods I know to chill in the penalty box…
I got suspended because I always have lots of likes and dislikes as I read through lots of posts on this site, and that means I am TARGETING other users? Seriously?
I understand your dilemma, as I too was suspended — most likely for my high levels of voting. Don’t worry about the accusations for the reason your account was banned, as I believe the process might be automated — correct me if I’m wrong. I’m sure you are not really “targeting” other users and that everything is just a misunderstanding. As long as you explain the situation to the moderators, everything should go smoothly and your account will be restored.
they suspended me without any solid proof or explanation. how these moderators can decide anything without asking or understanding anything? there should be a governing body of stackoverflow itself. not the users
I work very hard on my StackExchange account and was very surprised to see I was suspended — I had 1300 reputations. I feel as though my StackExchange community does not vote as much as they should, so I try to max out my votes each day to make the biggest imact on users who deserve an increased reputation. I believe the system for detecting odd behavior may have found my “excessive” voting unusual and suspended my account, but it is important to note that instances like this will happen and it is important to be open with the moderators, who will be more than willing to help fix the problem.
If your account has been suspended, do you lose the opportunity of becoming a moderator? My brother has an Arqade account, and so do I, and I was suspended for having a sockpuppet, when in reality, it was my brother’s account. Now, his account has been removed, and he is very upset.
No, you do not, you can nominate yourself again to become moderator after 1 year. In fact, there are cases of users becoming moderator even when their account has been suspended once.
I don’t understand what’s problem cause the issue on my account. I just answered one question about testing canvas tool, I introduced one. Is it a problem? Please pay attention, the question is to ask a tool, it didn’t limit the scope.
I just got immediately re-banned for a full year. The mods say I’ve been doing the same behavior – excessive low-quality-posts, non-edits, etc.
But I think the mods were anticipating. I only made one not-well-received answer, one question that was closed as a duplicate, and only one suggested edit that I actually DID make an honest attempt to improve but was still rejected by a moderator.
I was very annoyed when I had my previous ban – but I just got re-banned immediately after I returned for a strange reason.
Please, I honestly DID try to do my best this time. Although I may have made some mistakes, I still want another chance. Please, I need my ban to be lifted.
Thanks!
I just got immediately re-banned for a full year. The mods say I’ve been doing the same behavior – excessive low-quality-posts, non-edits, etc.
But I think the mods were anticipating. I only made one not-well-received answer, one question that was closed as a duplicate, and only one suggested edit that I actually DID make an honest attempt to improve but was still rejected by a moderator.
I was very annoyed when I had my previous ban – but I just got re-banned immediately after I returned for a strange reason.
Please, I honestly DID try to do my best this time. Although I may have made some mistakes, I still want another chance. Please, I need my ban to be lifted.
Thanks!
Why my account has been suspended for 60 days? What is major reason behind doing such an unfair decision to me?
Hello, A user called Adjan (https://stackoverflow.com/users/1447296/adjan) has been on a spree of down-voting posts for no apparent reason without comment or feedback. Can you please look into this? I have filed a complaint, but nobody has gotten back to me yet. Thank you
365 days in the “Penalty Box” is far from interpretation of “A Day in the Penalty Box”
I created my account, asked an analysis question, got one helpful answer too. And after some days, I’m suddenly suspended for what? I’m leaving this site for good and never coming back. Thanks for this awful experience.
I’m trying to understand how a question about fictional characters motivations got my account suspended even for a day.
I think the moderators are mostly motivated by ulterior motives and strange esoteric rules and behaviors 😛
They should have to give justifications that are sensible.
Maybe they don’t like commentary which is close to what they’re up to 😛
The moderators are salty as hell my my; why so serious brothers
I was suspended 6 days for having 1 reputation, i dont have fault people dont help me or unlike that.
After 7 years and 43k reputation, my account was suspended for 4 years “to cool down” for disagreeing with the moderators who treated a comment of mine that said “I’m pretty sure their teacher will appreciate your detailed answer.” as rude and problematic. This site is very indulgent with the cheaters, and aggressive towards the users who expose it. God job!
You don’t seriously expect mods or most users to like nuances, do you? The moderators of math.stackexchange are running on totally empty when it comes to healthy sarcastic humor against other mods or even users. For other users, they will very quickly delete comments without further explanations and slightly nuanced answers, like yours. For darkly humorous ANDnasty, sarcastic nuances WITH proof that some people are totally incompetent, they will ban you for at least a year. These dudes have no dark sense of humor, whatsoever.
Here’s a shameless self-plug advertisement for my case:
https:/ingalidakis.com/writing/StupidWebPages.html#note26
I am already starting a countdown before they ghost this comment. And after they ghost it, I’ll comment again, and again, and again, ad infinitum until they decide to leave it alone – so my website can gets some serious and free traffic, or decide to disable me even from commenting on “A ‘day’ in the Penalty Box”. Then, I’ll find another way to creep the entire network out, probably by putting a link to math.SE in the page above.
So please excuse me while I go save this highly offensive and sarcastic comment against the ENTIRE StackExchange network AND all the idiots I have entries for in this link and put this highly valuable web page link add here for later humorous edification for the humorously challenged adult kids…
Wuzz UP , user21820, Simply Beautiful (f)Art, AmWhy-Why Me? What’ Up, me mathema-wizzards and anonymously competent Mathematicians? Have you blocked enough Ph.D. level Mathematicians who need math.SE for research purposes yet, or are you looking for more, for healthy anonymous critique and further downvoting their existing answers? If you need help, please message me at: jgal@aua.gr., with message header: “You are a crazy racist antisemite, anti-american, anti-german,…, anti-,…loon…” Your message will be very much appreciated at AUA!
I am just about ready to start holding my horses and wait to be unbanned after my trial period.
HAPPY DOWNVOTING on a site you can’t downvote, fools!
Hehe…!
Suspended for antizionism. That’s all it took. One year suspension for arguing that antizionism isn’t antisemitism and that a channel, which is openly friendly to political conversations, shouldn’t restrict my ability to make this argument.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210518063603/https://security.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3435/antizionism-and-antisemitism-are-different-we-should-not-confuse-the-two-when-m
Huge failure in moderation to establish Zionist propaganda as StackExchange policy.
Why was I suspended.
Please tell me the reason.
You may want to bring that up on Meta Stack Exchange or the site’s own meta (click Help > Meta)
sees should be seems.
On header of my account profile, there is notification of that it will be suspened for a year.
Is there any way to reduce suspened days.
Is it possible to know the motivation of my SuperUser account suspension? It says “rule violation” but I don’t know what rule I violated…is it possible to know it, in order to not violate it again?
Please unblock my account https://stackoverflow.com/users/16322133/spoilt . I see message – This account is temporarily suspended network-wide. The suspension period ends on Apr 6 ’21 at 19:28. Today is 28th August and account stucked in suspension.
You banned for 98 more years lol. What did you do?
Why was my account suspended
Stack overflow moderators are taking advantage. My friend had an account and has no enough reputation to post comments. So he asked my to so. When i did, it like i have a question ban and i am trying to ask question from another account. It is too annoying. My account is [here](https://stackoverflow.com/users/17133283/sambhav-khandelwal). I had 900 reputation earlier but it is just gone!!!!!!.
stackoverflow is all that is wrong with social media today, keyboard warriors hiding behind faux outrage. Lets get it in perspective. Its is a wiki site, not an oracle of life saving knowledge.
The site is allowing and enabling bullying behavior and has been documented even by itself.
If these all powerful moderators were truly decent folks, they would be out donating time to others to teach real skills, not force opinions on others. But this is the only true power they think they wield.
Move on, use other sites like reddit or direct groups that don’t use unacceptable behavior.
Then enjoy watching SO become irrelevant and, with it, those moderators and evangelists of code purity.
Like a bad passive aggressive relationship, After 10 years of using the site and helping others, it is time to move on.
Time to use other forums where people stand equal and knowledge is a goal that brings people together. Not a pretend fiefdom.
I don’t know the reason why my account is banned or temporarily suspended. Please help me Stack Overflow team.
I wrote a constructive comment on mathoverflow…didn’t insult anyone or violate any of the rules and you can read my comment to see that. I was asked to go find proof, which I did in about an hour, when I came back my account was suspended and I couldn’t even post the proof to show what I said was well…proven.
I’d like my account to be reinstated, and my deleted comment to be reinstated so i can present this proof and defend my statement.
“Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship.”
― Bruce Coville
I was suspended for 7 days because of rude comments, I accepted that because I know I was wrong and I shouldn’t have done it. However, later I created a new account, because I need to ask questions, I didn’t know that it was illegal, and I was suspended for 30 days. And they told me not to do it again, and deleted my new account. But before I see their message, I already clicked “Join this community”, which means that I created another new account. And guess what? I was banned for 365 days. Then I was furious and I deleted my account. Stupid site. Moderators just take banning and suspending as a game, and always ban others without knowing the cause and effect.
Hello,
Could you unblock please my account : https://stackoverflow.com/users/8792904/acat . This account is temporarily suspended network-wide. The suspension period ends on Feb’2222. I would like at least to be able to use it again before I am dead.
2 centuries ia a huge sanction, I didn’t deserve it, even if
I had 3 accounts that I didn’t want to merge for convenience.
Hoping you will understand my distress.
Best regards
How can users subject to unreasonable discipline action by moderators challenge their decisions?
Greetings dear comrades of prisoners. I came to cry because I got a 7-day ban. But, can’t stop laughing after seeing the account that was banned until 2222 LMAOO hahahahahah
well, I am getting unlocked today. However, I was banned unfairly, all I did was add a link to another website, and BAM! banned 7 days for “Promotional content”🙄. whatever happened to the email first, attack later? This is 2022 people! and don’t go thinking I’m gonna put up with it much longer either! (p.s if you are reading this stack overflow/stack exchange, I am part of the music and space exploration communities, and was banned from both, please do not ban me longer, I am not trying to be rude, all I’m saying is I was not emailed about bad behavior before I was banned, and already filed a compliant to no avail or response.)
Why you suspended my account for 1 year? please remove this restriction.
I’m the the box of shame. Not so nice here. I need some good food and maybe a Television to go over my 7 days. Brrrrrrrrr
As Aristotle said, “It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.” We all know what “‘Tis hard (but glorious) to be poor & honest. Nihil timendum est. Vivre sans temps mort. (Live without wasted time.).”. As Adams said, “I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.” I was wrongly censored for asking simple math questions which are a part of my path toward treating *depression*. I am happy to share the names of those who censored me and the context of my censorship with the public media, social media, and personal connections. I would appreciate it if you could remove the hold from my account.
V.R.
Evan Gertis
CEO & Founder, Inner Growth Training & Services
M.S. Computer Science Georgia Southern
B.S Physics, UNC Chapel Hill
Certified Terraform Associate
Security +
EIT
Nihil Timendum Est
| http://www.evan-gertis.com
| https://inner-growth-training-and-services.com/
This penalty makes me want to answer less and less on SO community.
Two persons in this thread: https://superuser.com/questions/1723415/is-it-possible-to-map-as-a-network-drive-a-server-that-i-sftp-to/1761914
has attacked me and hasn’t been punished.
This was directed attack and they involved moderation, as this is impossible that I have been offended and I was suspended.
They don’t care they’ve let the community go since 2017 it’s been a negative decline. It’s actually really sad.
My account has been closed for 7 days due to helping other users. Not funny?
My account is suspended due to un necessary reason I mean so disgusting. If I brief example of the website to some one help like https://dolgeneraldgme.com/ or other website they mark me spam account how is system goes on.
I don’t understand why I am blocked? What is going on. I have over 1600 pts in reputation and I am incredibly thankful for community support. I would appreciate it if my account was unblocked as soon as possible. i am working a cure for mental health, running a company, and developing research for sleep and vitals from COVID-19 patients. 6 days is an unreasonable amount of time to censor someone like me for asking questions.
What is the point of having a forum about programing (PHP, MySQL etc) if you can not ask questions about it? I asked question about PHP solution and got Penalty Box when I was discussing the solution with one of the memebers so I can not move forward in that discussion. To be honest is this for real and what is really the point with this forum? It is a joke right?
I’m mind blown that I’ve been “Suspended for using GPT.”
I don’t use ChatGPT for my answers, I use an ML algorithm to rephrase my writings into an educational format because I’m autistic and even provide the ML model I use in learning examples I’ve been writing.
https://github.com/BrockCodes/DevOps-Databases-and-Mobile-Apps—A-guide-for-everyone/blob/main/react.Native%20projects/ml.net%20text%20correctionl.md
What makes this even more comical, is I worked for MongoDB for two years and even went through MongoDBs Engineering Ramp Plans and internal trainings on aggregations etc. for MongoDB and was flagged for knowing more how to efficiently handle a MongoDB query than others posting about MongoDB.
That’s amazing irony.
Well people! You guys are great. I was trying to help and got punishment for it. I know that my statements are someimes difficult to interpret and seems as they were mechanical. But what should I do??? I am autistic, I have a proof about it (if you had asked, I would have shown it).
Instead you banned me, taking away my reputation points, for 7 days? Is this what you, the community, really need? Disriminating autistic people, really? Would that really be the direction? ChatGPT, huh? Come on! Wake up, bookers, this is not how it works in 2023!
What I have knowledge is mine. I would have loved to share it here with the community. But if you didn’t need it, then so be it! Then I will do it elsewhere, on other programming forums. Well done, dear moderators. You can praise yourselves and do a happy dance. You outlawed the autistic person and humiliated him.
I don’t feel like doing anything here anymore!
Guys I wanted to see how chatGPT could help answer faster these type of questions. I never intended to abuse this. I always put effort and use stackoverflow for my work. I really regret my actions. I hope you forgive me, and I am glad you are working on defense’s against ai answers