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I was looking at another user's profile (not mine!) and noticed that the account was suspended. The exact text reads:

This account is temporarily suspended for voting irregularities. The suspension period ends in 7 days.

Now I know what happens when someone is suspended, but I'm a bit unsure about the 'voting irregularities' part. I've read a few other discussions here on meta, such as Please don't misuse the voting system

How can one vote irregularly?*

*Not that I'm looking for a suspension, I just want to know what kind of voting behaviour to avoid.

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    Voting irregularities usually means someone has some sockpuppets that are upvoting each other. I found one user with what looked like at least two sockpuppet accounts today, and they all got merged into one. That's most likely the user you were looking at, I suspect.
    – Frank
    Commented Jun 12, 2013 at 3:16
  • Of the (small) list of things you can get suspended from Stack Exchange for, they are all no-brainers. Someone who is suspended really should have known (and probably actually did know) that what they were doing (spamming, racism, vote-spamming, etc) was wrong.
    – corsiKa
    Commented Jun 12, 2013 at 15:10

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Voting irregularities would be repeatedly upvoting or downvoting answers from a particular user, often in a rapid fashion. The algorithms for determining what constitutes "irregular" are intentionally undisclosed, to avoid them being gamed. Rest assured that they are conservative enough that legitimate users should never get identified.

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    The algorithms are just warning bells; we and SE community managers investigate each case manually.
    – badp Mod
    Commented Jun 12, 2013 at 9:03
  • @badp To my recollection, the algorithms take other automatic action though right? Just not suspension.
    – EBongo
    Commented Jun 14, 2013 at 3:52
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    @EBongo You will never be suspended by an algorithm, AFAIK.
    – badp Mod
    Commented Jun 14, 2013 at 9:15
  • @badp I was thinking of serial vote reversal, but not sure if there was other automatic stuff.
    – EBongo
    Commented Jun 14, 2013 at 12:35
  • @EBongo different set of algorithms
    – user27134
    Commented Jun 15, 2013 at 0:30

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