What is meta? ×

I have some questions regarding suspended users:

  1. Why do suspended users have a reputation of one?

  2. According to the default reputation of a new user, he/she will have reputation of one and he/she has the privilege of posting questions. When comparing this, this is getting violated when compared to suspended users' reputation. Even though they have one reputation point, they cannot post questions.

  3. As suspended users do not have privilege of posting questions, there is no use of making "Ask Question" visible. This is an unnecessary server hit. Am I right?

  4. As suspended users do not have the privilege of answering questions, there is no use of making "Answer Question" visible.

share|improve this question
You do know the meaning of the word suspended right? –  Octavian Damiean May 17 '11 at 11:43
@Octavian Damiean : Ya, terminated for certain period of time –  damodar May 17 '11 at 11:45
One is the loneliest number. –  Rosinante May 17 '11 at 13:16
As to point 3, no, displaying some additional text on the page doesn't cause another "server hit". There is no additional overhead from displaying the "Ask Question" button. –  meagar May 17 '11 at 13:57
This actually makes it very difficult to check if voting fraud has been corrected properly (which occasionally it isn't) –  Richard Tingle Apr 11 at 7:59

1 Answer 1

up vote 11 down vote accepted

First, for those who haven't read it yet, you better read the official blog regarding this issue.

Now to answer your questions:

  1. The reputation is not only reduced to 1, it's also locked at 1 point. This is done, in addition to "auto block" most privileges, as some sort of intimidation - most people care very much about their reputation, almost like money, so taking it away is almost as hurting as banning from asking questions or posting answers. Even if someone will upvote answers such a person made in the past, the reputation won't be gained until the suspension is over.

  2. That's right, suspended user is not just user with 1 rep.

  3. The server get millions of hits every day. There are maybe several dozens of suspended user at any given time - the server can survive this extra hit.

  4. Might be true, but probably not worth developing - the developers have more important things to do, that affect the whole community. If you want feel free to start Feature Request asking to hide the Answer section (and Ask a Question button) for suspended users.

Also, since "Why not 0?" is a common question, it's explained nicely in answers to this question: Why does reputation have a lower bound of 1?

share|improve this answer
still can i ask you one more question for the 2nd point you posted. can the reputation be zero for suspended users? –  damodar May 17 '11 at 12:09
I doubt it's even an extra hit on the server to render a button on the client side. –  Cody Gray May 17 '11 at 12:15
@Damodar: No, the reputation can never be zero. There's no special case for suspended users. The lowest you can go is 1. –  Cody Gray May 17 '11 at 12:16
Why cannot the reputation be zero, just to get more clarification? –  pal4life Apr 11 at 2:01
@pal4life, see Why does reputation have a lower bound of 1? –  brasofilo Apr 11 at 2:40
@pal4life, We want them to come back with new hopes and wisdom. So no need for evey user to see on each post that a user is suspended. 1 is neutral, 0 is a scar. –  Toon Krijthe Apr 11 at 15:20
@ToonKrijthe Nice way to put it –  pal4life Apr 18 at 17:13

You must log in to answer this question.