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You’ve been suspended from reviewing. You will be able to review again on Dec 4 at 1:41. Your review on triage/25664945 wasn't helpful. The "Requires Editing" option should only be used when other community users (like you) are able to edit/format an already answerable question into a better shape. If a question can be closed or can only be improved/clarified by the question asker, please use the "Unsalvageable" option instead. If in doubt always use the "Skip" option. For more information, see Getting banned from Triage reviews and How does the Triage queue work?.

This was "awarded" to me March 23rd, 2020. I noticed it now as I haven't really looked in the review queue that last times I've been to Stack Overflow. The review-option I chose I shared together with three others, and a fourth one chose "unsalvageable". The majority isn't always right - that I understand :)

I've read a bit around and understand the why's and why not. What I have trouble understanding is that I got banned for nine months for one mistake. Maybe I did several mistakes, but I can only find a message about one? Can a moderator enlighten me?

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    If it's a 9 months ban then it is most likely not your first ban and therefore not caused by a single mistake. Ban durations ramp up as you receive more of them. I'm sure a diamond mod can provide more details if they're allowed to. – ivarni Aug 12 '20 at 10:46
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    I've given like 5-10 reviews all in all. And I thought I skipped the ones that ones I should stay away from. Difficult to know since there is no history or place to get more information. Maybe I should just stay away from reviewing all in all then. – sonstabo Aug 12 '20 at 10:49
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    For the moment you don't have a choice but leave this up for a diamond mod to notice and see what they say about it. It could be a mistake. For reference here is an overview of reviews. – ivarni Aug 12 '20 at 10:52
  • Great - thanks! I can see that my number is higher than 5-10 (24). I'll see if I can learn something from them (i.e. identify my review vs. accepted or similar)! – sonstabo Aug 12 '20 at 10:56
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    More importantly than review your review-history, is to read this, for the Triage queue, and this one for the First Posts and/or Late Answers queues. – yivi Aug 12 '20 at 10:59
  • It is probably this long to make sure you noticed. Had it been a week you would happily continue without learning that something was off with your reviewing. – rene Aug 12 '20 at 11:12
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    Which they're also aware of... "Majority isn't always right - that I understand :)" – Nick Aug 12 '20 at 11:36
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    If the suspension had only been 4 months, you wouldn't have noticed. So I suppose you're in luck :) – Scratte Aug 12 '20 at 13:14
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    Because Triage is a mess and there's no way to notify a reviewer that they did something wrong except suspending them, and even that only works if they actually see the message. And considering you're just now seeing it five months into your suspension... – John Montgomery Aug 12 '20 at 17:16
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    My only attempts to get involved in the StackOverflow review processes have resulted in me getting stamped on by ignoramuses, so I have stayed well clear of it ever since. (I understood a question raised by a non-English speaker which other reviewers failed to understand, so I got hit by being in a minority). – Michael Kay Aug 13 '20 at 13:47
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    I'm with @MichaelKay on this one. The review process causes more pain than it's worth. There seem to be loads of hurdles in place to sabotage the efforts of people who are trying to help out. I figured that Stack Overflow simply don't want me reviewing stuff - so I have permanently refrained. – Dawood ibn Kareem Aug 14 '20 at 4:32
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    In the future, just do what I do, and abstain from any review activity. I still hold that the current Stack Overflow system of community moderation is fundamentally flawed. I constantly get notifications in chat from VERY offensive messages with no way to opt out. – Nzall Aug 14 '20 at 9:22
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This is a bit of an odd case. All the bans came from a moderator, not audits. And all of them were for bad Triage reviews.

If you're not familiar with how review suspension works, each suspension doubles in length, starting with 4 days. With 7 bans, that becomes 2^8, or 256 days.

The problem I have here is that the first 3 happened back-to-back on Mar 4, and the last 4 happened back-to-back on Mar 23. I've seen the current messages this moderator uses, and that's not typically how they handle things (you should only get one review ban per set of bad reviews), so I can only assume this was early on in the process to stop bad Triage reviews.

Since this isn't normal, I went ahead and removed the suspension.

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  • Is there a way to decrease the suspension time manually once it has been awarded. i.e. shorten the sentence? – Dharman Aug 12 '20 at 13:44
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    To reset the duration, you can issue a new review suspension of shorter length which will override the old one immediately, then lift the suspension. – Samuel Liew Mod Aug 12 '20 at 14:22
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    Well, I've been through 3 bans, and I've been banned for like 3 months, even though I should have been banned for 16 days. Is this normal? – 10 Rep Aug 12 '20 at 22:07
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    @10Rep A moderator stuck a 16 day ban on you initially (it was hard to get people to see those 4-day bans before the recent UX change). You've since doubled those on your own with failed audits. And some of those failures were pretty bad – Machavity Mod Aug 12 '20 at 22:24
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    I tried to tell this particular moderator that hammering people for what is essentially a bad Stack Exchange UI was a bad idea. The better idea is to fix the UI. – Robert Harvey Aug 13 '20 at 12:54
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    In the OP's defense, many of the other reviewers were reviewing the same way as them for the same reviews. It seems kind of harsh to review-ban them when lots of other people are apparently voting the same way. – EJoshuaS - Reinstate Monica Aug 13 '20 at 12:56
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    A long ban might be relevant here because OP doesn't review often. OP was banned nearly 5 months ago, and just noticed now. A shorter ban would likely have not been noticed, and therefore OP would not have learned about them doing the reviewing wrong. This is, after all, an attempt at teaching how to do these reviews, it's not punishment. Long ban -> person learns -> ban gets lifted -> everyone happy. – Cris Luengo Aug 13 '20 at 22:19
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    @ejoshua "It seems kind of harsh to review-ban them when lots of other people are apparently voting the same way" - what makes you think they didn't all get banned? – Nick Aug 13 '20 at 23:15
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    The others who voted that way likely did get suspended—thousands of reviewers were. Reading between the lines a bit here, I suspect the 256 day suspension was a bug in a script that was only intended to suspend for a shorter period of time. Additionally, the moderators have so far unsuspended every single person I've seen suspended for this upon request once they acknowledge that they now understand what "Requires editing" means. – Ryan M Aug 14 '20 at 1:16
  • @Nick Admittedly, I can't see whether they were or not. Still, it seems like if lots of people are evidently making the same mistake, then either it's not that clear that it's a mistake or there's something else going on - either way, it seems a bit harsh to me. I could be wrong though. – EJoshuaS - Reinstate Monica Aug 14 '20 at 19:59
  • @RyanM: That bit about contacting the moderators with a mea culpa should be added to the answer. – jxh Aug 14 '20 at 19:59
  • @EJoshuaS-ReinstateMonica Old methodology basically. If you got banned for 4 days there was no notice, so they stacked the bans to make it longer in the hopes it would be seen. As I suspected, this is no longer done, especially with the UX change – Machavity Mod Aug 14 '20 at 21:00
  • @jxh that would be more appropriate for an answer to a question like Why was I suspended from reviewing for selecting “Requires Editing” in Triage? (which does touch on the subject and invite users to a chatroom to discuss their suspension) – Ryan M Aug 14 '20 at 23:56

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