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Today I saw a user profile which had the following in the header

This account is temporarily suspended to cool down. The suspension period ends on Mmm dd at hh:mm.

I didn't see anything related to "cool down" anywhere in the linked blog post.

So my question is what does cool down mean in this context?

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    $\begingroup$ As a matter of policy moderators will not discuss suspensions with third parties. For the general mechanism of suspension periods, see this old post by Jeff Atwood. $\endgroup$
    – hardmath
    Feb 18, 2017 at 5:59
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    $\begingroup$ Some related posts on meta.SE, although I am not sure whether they give a satisfactory answer to your question (and they are relatively old): What Does It Mean To Be Suspended “To Cool Down”? and Suspension reason listed as “to cool down” if “something else” reason is selected. $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Feb 18, 2017 at 6:38
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    $\begingroup$ I don't know if it's the phrase cool down that you're unfamiliar with, but it's a colloquial expression that basically means "calm down." If there's a heated argument, for example, the participants might be said to have cooled down if all tempers/emotions to return to a less intense state. $\endgroup$
    – pjs36
    Feb 18, 2017 at 14:08
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    $\begingroup$ @pjs36 I do know the meaning of cool down. I was a little curious as to what it means in this context. $\endgroup$
    – user312097
    Feb 18, 2017 at 14:26
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    $\begingroup$ Came to this post because an account has just been suspended (on SO), and I wondered the meaning of "cool down"! As a matter of fact, that someone happened to be the opposite of "nice", along with a ratio of 1% up, 99% down votes... it seems there is justice on this site! $\endgroup$
    – Déjà vu
    Dec 10, 2018 at 5:44

1 Answer 1

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The basic idea of account suspensions is laid out in Jeff Atwood's announcing blog post A Day in the Penalty Box. They are timed periods during which the account cannot interact with the site in any way, save passively reading. These are given by site moderators (which includes SE employees) to users who have exhibited a tendency towards disruptive and/or unwanted behaviour.

Each suspension comes with a message/email from the suspending moderator explaining the reason and duration of the suspension. This message can be replied to (but only once, unless a moderator responds to that). We've seen replies that run the gamut from the succinct but unhelpful

FU.

to reasoned and rational responses that convince us that one of the main purposes of the suspension — to effect a change in the user's behaviour — has already been reached. (And, yes, suspensions can end before their stated end-date at the discretion of the moderators.)

Usually the moderators do not discus the specifics of suspensions on meta or on chat, especially while the suspension is on-going.

As of now, when a user is suspended their profile will show one of the following reasons (from Marc Gravell's answer on Meta Stack Exchange):

  1. for voting irregularities When the user's voting habits are contrary to their intent: to signal that content is good or bad. This covers a lot of situations such as upvoting your own content via sock puppets, serial downvoting of the content of specific users, and even the serial upvoting of the content of specific users. (Votes are meant to judge the quality of a post, not the quality of the person making the post.)
  2. for promotional content When a user's contribution, though perhaps actually answering questions, tend to also (or primarily) promote their own products or services without disclosing the connection. If you want to say that your commercial Maple plug-in solves such-and-such a problem, you should be clear that you're not a random person recommending a product, but that you are involved in its development.
  3. because of low-quality contributions This is pretty self-explanatory, but if over a period of time a user is not contributing positive content to the site, that account could be suspended. This isn't overly common, as there are automatic rolling rate limits and outright blocks.
  4. to cool down Basically everything else, from consistently ignoring the Be Nice policy or abusing other privileges, to an account is acting strangely and out of character and we want to put a temporary halt to the actions and reach out in case the account has been hacked. This is generally used when a user has been disruptive to the community in a sense not covered by the above.
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  • $\begingroup$ What is +ve contirbution ? is it (number of answers ) - (number of questions) > 0 ? $\endgroup$
    – user312097
    Feb 18, 2017 at 12:14
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    $\begingroup$ Also why my question is heavily censored ? Did I do something wrong ? $\endgroup$
    – user312097
    Feb 18, 2017 at 12:15
  • $\begingroup$ @A---B Positive contributions would generally mean positively (or at least non-negatively) scored posts which are not deleted and, in the case of questions, not closed/on-hold. $\endgroup$
    – user642796
    Feb 18, 2017 at 15:29
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    $\begingroup$ @A---B I wouldn't say that I "censored" your question, but rather made it focused by not drawing attention to any particular suspension. You said you wanted to know what "to cool down" meant, and this doesn't depend on where exactly you saw this. From some now-deleted comments to your question, the original form had some users thinking that you were inquiring about the details of a specific suspension. $\endgroup$
    – user642796
    Feb 18, 2017 at 15:34

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