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Moderator message templates contain the magic text {optionalSuspensionAutoMessage}, which, if the message is sent with a suspension, turns into the following text:

Your account has been temporarily suspended for $number days. While you’re suspended, your reputation will show as 1 but will be restored once the suspension ends.

Let's be honest; this isn't very useful. The useful information is the length of the suspension; the bit about your reputation showing as 1 is only relevant to users who have more than 1 reputation (after mod action, such as removing plagiarized posts) in the first place and could misleadingly imply that the display as "1" will change even for users who do only have 1 rep.

There are, I think, more broadly applicable and important things to tell a user who's just been suspended than minutiae about how their reputation will be displayed - for instance, in what ways they can and cannot continue to use the site.

Suspensions don't block users from accessing the site entirely. Suspended users can still browse the site, using the site for its main purpose: benefiting from the knowledge base. They cannot interact with the content or other users, but a suspension does not render the site useless to a suspended user. With that in mind, I would change the suspension auto message to something in the vein of

Your $Sitename profile has been temporarily suspended for $number days. While you're suspended, you may not vote, post, or perform other actions on the site, but may continue to view and search existing posts. Your reputation will be frozen at 1 for the duration of the suspension, but your reputation score will be displayed as normal once the suspension ends.

Aside from fixing the minor terminology nitpick about a site-specific profile versus the network-wide account, this would give the suspended user direct, useful information about what the suspension practically means, that is probably more immediately relevant to the user in most cases than their reputation being frozen at 1 - although leaving that information in there is probably important, because some users are liable to freak out otherwise.

I'm open to suggestions on improving this further, but I think that giving suspended users clear, practical information on the effects of a suspension is important and helps set expectations, particularly around suspensions not being a tool to boot users entirely (most of the time) but a way to protect the site and allow the user to cool down, while still allowing the suspended user to benefit from the primary purpose of the network.

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    For mods who want to roll their own wording of this bit in the meantime, you can use the magic placeholder {suspensionDurationDays} to only render the number of days the user is being suspended for. Commented Mar 17 at 20:45
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    Now that I think about it, apparently we don't have a help article explaining an account suspension. Not sure if adding the link to the MSE FAQ My account has been temporarily suspended; what does that mean? might be a good idea. Commented Mar 18 at 5:57
  • We don't cause it was a blog post Commented Mar 18 at 9:10
  • Also, it would be great if it said "day(s)" rather than "days", because sometimes I want to suspend someone for 1 day (not "1 days"). Commented Mar 19 at 15:23

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