Hell-banning for anything other than blatant spam or hate speech is reprehensible.
Imagine participating in a community, enjoying your interactions with some bright people, contributing knowledge when you can, when suddenly you find that you've become invisible. After some period of time wondering, you eventually find out that you are invisible.
It's a horrible thing to do to someone. I like many of the HN commenters, and I often learn something from reading what they've written, but I have nothing but disdain for the site itself, its mods, and its creator. They all contribute to doing this to people, though they'll brush it off as necessary automation, necessary for quality control, or some other sociopathic nonsense.
If it wasn't for the quality control, I wouldn't be here.
I wish HN would be more strict, it would drive the quality up even further. I want users to think long and hard about what they are writing and submitting.
HN is a right, not a privilege.
The internet is littered with poorly maintained communities, but HN isn't one of them, by design. If you don't get why these rules exist and you can't understand their purpose, you shouldn't be here.
I don't think it's reprehensible. Any user can from their settings select the option 'show dead' to see hellbanned comments/submissions. Often, you'll see people alert those hellbanned if they deserve to know. This is a free service open to the public with almost no effort required to post, so I understand why this type of moderation is done.
People who are used to seeing upvotes on their comments and submissions will notice when they have a long period of no interaction with the community and probably figure out they've been hellbanned. I'd guess most hellbanned users (who deserve it) find it comforting that their comments stopped getting downvotes and angry responses, so it might even be more humane moderation then letting the community rage at them.
I ask this with kindness and no ill will -- because I am curious. If that is true, than why are you still using the site and contributing comments? There are tons of great places to read newsworthy and interesting articles.
Always email if you feel you have been banned. A few months ago, I posted something stupid and was down voted. Almost right afterwards, the site became extremely slow but was fast when I was logged out. I thought I had been slow banned. After emailing, I was reassured my account was fine and the slowness was caused by garbage collection & caching issues.
On many sites, an unauthenticated user gets content faster since it's much easier to very aggressively cache unauthenticated content -- since there is usually no user-specific page customization (e.g., so the entire response can be easily cached via varnish). Additionally, if the user cannot modify state, the cache can be made more incoherent without loss (e.g., such that the cache is only flushed every few minutes; unauthenticated users don't often notice the stale data).
In some situations under high load, the same response from Varnish (which may only available to unauthenticated users) may be an order of magnitude faster than the application server, even if they're co-located on the same physical machine.
I was most likely banned for making a negative comment about a mindless HBR article. The site was being flooded with them at the time.
The consensus in the commenting community was that you shouldn't downvote people without explaining why. The rule of the site is that you shouldn't complain about posts. The two are at odds, and personally I favor what the community wants, not what the site overlords dictate.
For appropriate reasons, I know the 'ghost' ban thresholds are secret (otherwise it would be incredibly easy for script kiddies to simply game).
However, the hacker in me is almost curious enough to see how far I could "poke the lion with a stick". If I had more time, creating a few dozen accounts ... etc
Then I think about how I would engineer such a system and try and keep it as automated as possible. I'm sure its well written enough to threshold on some dynamic curve based on incoming traffic.
And, whilst variety is the spice of life and all that, if you are a prolific (and popular) poster, should people care if you self promote. If each of your posts is a winner, generates great readership figures and 'likes' and spikes conversation, why not allow this? So, I'd want to deviate down a score based on popularity. Then there is frequency of posting, and comment karma ...
At the end of the day whenever there is a threshold, there will be edge cases where people are the wrong side of judgment line. Banning is a digital thing, and reputation is analog. I'm glad that hn seems to have a response appeal system.
Yes, very true. But sometimes banning is analog as well. I am just glad that the problem was admitted/resolved and I am back posting stories and comments.
I wonder if a more appropriate title wouldn't be "How I Got Banned in the First Place". How the author got unbanned isn't really as helpful to know as what he did to get banned to begin with.
It seems a lot of people don't know how to find out whether they're shadowbanned, or how to get out of the HN purgatory if they are. I can see the value of this post.
I've tweeted a few people before to let them know of their fate when their comment history didn't seem worthy of a ban and I think in all cases I've had to point out that an email needs to be sent to have the ban looked at.
Disappointed. I was expecting drama, controversy, action. Instead it's just a routine thing and there's no intriguing story of banning. No redemption, slander, betrayal or revenge. Or anything juicy at all.
This post could help people that may write the highly technical posts and only submit their own content. If they were to get banned, you'd miss their great information.
[+] [-] was_hellbanned|12 years ago|reply
Imagine participating in a community, enjoying your interactions with some bright people, contributing knowledge when you can, when suddenly you find that you've become invisible. After some period of time wondering, you eventually find out that you are invisible.
It's a horrible thing to do to someone. I like many of the HN commenters, and I often learn something from reading what they've written, but I have nothing but disdain for the site itself, its mods, and its creator. They all contribute to doing this to people, though they'll brush it off as necessary automation, necessary for quality control, or some other sociopathic nonsense.
[+] [-] smartwater|12 years ago|reply
I wish HN would be more strict, it would drive the quality up even further. I want users to think long and hard about what they are writing and submitting.
HN is a right, not a privilege.
The internet is littered with poorly maintained communities, but HN isn't one of them, by design. If you don't get why these rules exist and you can't understand their purpose, you shouldn't be here.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] logn|12 years ago|reply
People who are used to seeing upvotes on their comments and submissions will notice when they have a long period of no interaction with the community and probably figure out they've been hellbanned. I'd guess most hellbanned users (who deserve it) find it comforting that their comments stopped getting downvotes and angry responses, so it might even be more humane moderation then letting the community rage at them.
[+] [-] unreal37|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bdehaaff|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ancarda|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lcampbell|12 years ago|reply
In some situations under high load, the same response from Varnish (which may only available to unauthenticated users) may be an order of magnitude faster than the application server, even if they're co-located on the same physical machine.
[+] [-] was_hellbanned|12 years ago|reply
The consensus in the commenting community was that you shouldn't downvote people without explaining why. The rule of the site is that you shouldn't complain about posts. The two are at odds, and personally I favor what the community wants, not what the site overlords dictate.
[+] [-] bdehaaff|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dxm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Fuzzwah|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bdehaaff|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] squeakynick|12 years ago|reply
However, the hacker in me is almost curious enough to see how far I could "poke the lion with a stick". If I had more time, creating a few dozen accounts ... etc
Then I think about how I would engineer such a system and try and keep it as automated as possible. I'm sure its well written enough to threshold on some dynamic curve based on incoming traffic.
And, whilst variety is the spice of life and all that, if you are a prolific (and popular) poster, should people care if you self promote. If each of your posts is a winner, generates great readership figures and 'likes' and spikes conversation, why not allow this? So, I'd want to deviate down a score based on popularity. Then there is frequency of posting, and comment karma ...
At the end of the day whenever there is a threshold, there will be edge cases where people are the wrong side of judgment line. Banning is a digital thing, and reputation is analog. I'm glad that hn seems to have a response appeal system.
[+] [-] bdehaaff|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikestew|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kintamanimatt|12 years ago|reply
I've tweeted a few people before to let them know of their fate when their comment history didn't seem worthy of a ban and I think in all cases I've had to point out that an email needs to be sent to have the ban looked at.
[+] [-] bdehaaff|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomatojuice|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bdehaaff|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exodust|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] losethos|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] croisillon|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikeg8|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bdehaaff|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ffrryuu|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bdehaaff|12 years ago|reply