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This would basically function as a zero-day suspension: the reviewer would get the message in exactly the same way they would for a review suspension, except that they can keep reviewing afterward.

Background: It's not uncommon to see bad reviews where the user is simply mistaken about how some aspect of the review system should be used. They're not robo-reviewing or approving blatant spam edits; they just maybe haven't read all of the meta posts that could have advised them better.

As (tragically overworked) moderators (who need all the good help we can get), we don't actually want these people to stop reviewing. We just want them to change one particular aspect of how they're reviewing. We could send a moderator message to them, but since we already have a system for warning about bad reviews, it would be much better to use that system instead (and it would avoid spamming other moderators with noise about bad reviewing that they probably don't care to read).

This would be in line with our approach to correcting other behaviors on the site: we often mod-message a user without suspending for a first offense, in the hope that a "hey, stop doing that" will correct the behavior—and it often does. We should be able to do the same for reviews.

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  • 7
    The official way to warn a user about a bad review is to issue them a very short review suspension. However, this feeds into other systems, such as that the user will be immediately suspended if they fail a single review audit for the 30 days following the suspension, and it resets automatic suspension durations (so if they've been previously subject to a long suspension, it'll be double or half the new short suspension, not the prior long one). The current system for letting users know about bad reviews is great; it should be repurposed to allow for warnings too
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Apr 22, 2022 at 0:11
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    In addition to the drawbacks Sonic listed, I'd rather avoid suspending them at all, even for a day (the minimum). I don't want it to feel like a punishment, just advice.
    – Ryan M
    Commented Apr 22, 2022 at 0:14
  • I believe that the message is still shown if the user is manually unsuspended, so the message could be sent with most of the drawbacks substantially mitigated by giving the user a review suspension for the same amount of time as their last suspension (min 1 day, max 365) and then immediately unsuspending them. While they were technically suspended, it was effectively for minutes/seconds, but won't, in most cases, affect the length of their next automatic suspension.
    – Makyen
    Commented Apr 22, 2022 at 0:48
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    @Makyen Manually lifted review suspensions still have the drawbacks I mentioned in my comment. The system doesn't differentiate between suspensions that no longer exist either because they've expired or because they were manually lifted.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Apr 22, 2022 at 1:07
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    @SonictheSaveUkraine-hog No, you mentioned 2 drawbacks, but we can mitigate 1: A) counts as a suspension, so a single audit failure will result in a suspension; B) resets the automatic suspension duration. We can't do anything about (A). For (B), if the moderator matches the most recent suspension length, then it's "reset" to the same value, thus no effect. A moderator can't give a suspension > 365 days, so, yes, if the last auto-suspension was > 365 days, then it's reset to 365, but it's unlikely this sort of note is something which is being sent to someone with > 365 day auto-suspensions.
    – Makyen
    Commented Apr 22, 2022 at 2:17
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    @SonictheSaveUkraine-hog The other drawback I was considering was from the question and Ryan's comment, which is that the user is suspended for a period of time. I suggested immediately unsuspending. So, of those 3 drawbacks, 2 are mitigated by what I suggested (so "most of the drawbacks substantially mitigated"). I'm not trying to say it's a complete solution, just that we can get substantially further with what we already have than is envisioned in the question and your comment.
    – Makyen
    Commented Apr 22, 2022 at 2:21
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    @Makyen Sure, it's a good temporary workaround as we wait for this to be implemented, but it's not a reason to skip implementing this. I still think drawback 1 is an important enough reason to do so. When a site suspension is imposed, it feeds into other systems such as suggested lengths for future suspensions and the 1-year soft ban from nominating in moderator elections, even if the suspension is later manually lifted, while mod message warnings don't do any such things. The same thing should apply for review warnings: it should have no future effects afterwards.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Apr 22, 2022 at 3:51
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    It also would probably require explaining the awkwardness of "While the UI will describe this as a suspension, you are free to continue reviewing, keeping in mind the above information."
    – Ryan M
    Commented Apr 22, 2022 at 3:56
  • Also, what would you do if the user has no history of review suspensions? You can't simply take the length of the last review suspension, because there won't be one. Sure, you could know that a first-time suspension is two days so make it four days so that half of it is two, but drawback 1 still applies: if the user fails a single audit within 30 days, they'll have an 8-day first-time suspension after a single failure rather than a 2-day first-time suspension after failing three within a 30-day period.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Apr 22, 2022 at 4:02
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    @RyanM The UI already handles showing the note after the suspension has been completed. That it does show it to the user regardless of the suspension being active was one of the points of the redesign, as users were being given excessively long suspensions merely to make sure that they would see the accompanying note the next time they tried to perform reviews, even if that next time was quite some time away. The review suspension UI rewrite changed that such that the note is always shown to the user the next time they try to review.
    – Makyen
    Commented Apr 23, 2022 at 4:40
  • @RyanM It also seems not good to me, because of automatic audit system, sometimes it's too tricky, for example, I am suspended now, only because of one particular question which had 7 votes in the past, and came as 0 votes in audit, the question includes text something like I have many questions and posted three questions there, so I have flagged as more focused, I think it should be right, but because of votes in the past, I got failed in the review, all diamond moderators need to do something, beacuse if any user does almost 3000+ good reviews, and immediately suspended for bad review.
    – Sunderam Dubey
    Commented Apr 27, 2022 at 18:19
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    @SunderamDubey please make an MSO post about the audit - this feature request is not exactly the place for complaints about bad audits (your frustration is understandable, though). If (and it's more or less 100% chance) a mod chances upon it and agrees that the audit was bad, they will lift your suspension - best we can do under the current system.
    – 0Valt
    Commented Apr 27, 2022 at 18:25
  • @OlegValteriswithUkraine And it's also get compounded, you know that.
    – Sunderam Dubey
    Commented Apr 27, 2022 at 18:26
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    @SunderamDubey if you mean doubling the automatic suspension duration - yes, it does that. Just wanted to note that you should definitely flag for mod attention or make a Meta post to get the suspension lifted if that was a bad audit. This proposal is to avoid manual suspensions by a mods when all they want is to bring the reviewer's attention to a minor infraction or a misunderstanding.
    – 0Valt
    Commented Apr 27, 2022 at 22:18
  • From some testing with another user, it appears that manually lifted review suspensions do not show the message to the user.
    – Ryan M
    Commented Jun 29, 2022 at 9:52

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