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Why are you asking the community this question? Why not just ask an admin like you would on any other forum or irc network? Why do people think that this is som

Why are you asking the community this question? Why not just ask an admin like you would on any other forum or irc network? Why do people think that this is something other HNers need to know about? [edit: this is a genuine question to establish a motive that might stop me flagging this and other content, this post is worthless clutter for all I can see] [edit2: anyone care to explain their downvotes?]

RyanMcGreal 17y ago
This is something other HNers need to know about. The policy and process around killing comments is utterly mysterious and apparently capricious. As a community, we should have a clear understanding of: a) What comments will be killed; and b) What process will be followed to determine whether a comment is killed. Sorry, but security through obscurity is no excuse for not making this stuff transparent.
- shrughes 17y ago
  What are you talking about, this isn't a question of security.
  - RyanMcGreal 17y ago
    It's a metaphor. The excuse I keep hearing is that if we learn how HN filters spam, it will enable spammers to game the system. Frankly, I don't care so much about the internal mechanisms used to kill posts. I just want to understand the policy; I have the showdead flag on and at least a quarter of the time, I can't for the life of me figure out why a comment was killed. That lack of transparency makes me uncomfortable.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    That's PG's own view of how this works, we're not even supposed to tell people to stop bothering with their posts because they have been banned. I can see the rationale for it at some level but I really doubt that it has much effect, spammers are pretty good at monitoring the effect of their actions. It also makes me wonder who the mysterious 'you've been banned' emailer is.
    - shrughes 17y ago
      I don't think the lack-of-telling-people-to-not-bother-posting is about spam, it's about ordinary internet rats who would just reregister and continue making terrible posts. It also makes me wonder who the mysterious 'you've been banned' emailer is. What? I've never heard about this. (Edit: Oh, I glossed over half the threadstarter's text.)
      - jacquesm 17y ago
        > I don't think the lack-of-telling-people-to-not-bother-posting is about spam, it's about ordinary internet rats who would just reregister and continue making terrible posts. That's very well possible. (edit: I doubt someone would go out of their way to alert a troll to being banned though) > What? I've never heard about this. You would have if you read the posting at the top of the page ;)
        Freebytes 17y ago
        It is possible for someone to make poor posts in the beginning and improve their post content when they realize their role within the community. Many new visitors to HN are likely to encounter this by simply making a one-line 'witty' comment that people dislike. When that gets downvoted, they may tend to lean towards more informative and relevant posts after learning their lesson.
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
- theblackbox 17y ago
  No, it isn't, it's something particular HNers like to complain about due to some over zealous sense of free speech or something like that. Why could this not have been handled silently through an admin, like you would anywhere else where this might happen? The problem is that HN has turned into a monster of a forum, and to know everything that goes on behind the scenes to keep it functioning and to set up guidelines that navigate this perfectly is utopian. False positives and accidents happen, admins welcome reports of these, I don't get what the community gets out of them, though.
  - ErrantX 17y ago
    pg is the admin; at a guess queries like this would usually take a while to get a response. Someone here would probably be able to answer the question faster.
    - theblackbox 17y ago
      I don't see how this differs from asking for advice on IRC when you have failed to take even the most cursory of glances at Google to track down the solution yourself. This is a golden rule of IRC support. Other than taking a little more time, the situation is exactly the same.
      - ErrantX 17y ago
        AFAIK this hasn't been answered before (that's from 30s on searchyc). We were discussing emailing pg a short while ago and the consensus then seemed to be "only if it's really important".
      - elblanco 17y ago
        Particularly because things like this are not always the result of pg personally moderating or killing accounts. Many times it's due to user abuse. AFAIK, HN grants different levels of power to users based on their karma. When I first joined, I couldn't downvote, and could only comment a couple times a day. Who's to say that the guys on here http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders don't have some kind of uber-user power because of their high karma score? We've already established in a number of threads over the past few months that some of these folks (to be left unnamed) have invested remarkable effort into attaining these scores and think very highly of themselves and don't feel the need to answer to anyone for their otherwise abusive behavior (like hitting the downvote cap %, or flagging users they don't like etc.). More interesting is that the community discussion around those guys' behavior also showed interesting patterns in the way HN works. Eventually pg shows up and says something like "yeah well, if your karma is above 10k, and you have a 30% upvote surplus, and it's a thursday, you can kill user accounts, but only 2 a year, unless their name starts with a t,s,kh, or an odd number." and then somebody posts the relevant arc source for that. We all then walk away scratching our heads as to why that's something built into the site, but we have no internal mail system or simple way of contacting the admins.
pvg 17y ago
Might have something to do with the fact that there is no obvious way to contact an 'admin', like on any other forum or irc network. Perhaps except the 'any other forum or irc network' part.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
aw3c2 17y ago
The only ways of contacting available on this site are info@ycombinator.com (which I never got a reply on with a banning problem, I waited 3 weeks) and submitting a story. Anything else is just not there unless you know about it by other means.

RyanMcGreal 17y ago

This is something other HNers need to know about. The policy and process around killing comments is utterly mysterious and apparently capricious. As a community, we should have a clear understanding of: a) What comments will be killed; and b) What process will be followed to determine whether a comment is killed. Sorry, but security through obscurity is no excuse for not making this stuff transparent.

shrughes 17y ago
What are you talking about, this isn't a question of security.
- RyanMcGreal 17y ago
  It's a metaphor. The excuse I keep hearing is that if we learn how HN filters spam, it will enable spammers to game the system. Frankly, I don't care so much about the internal mechanisms used to kill posts. I just want to understand the policy; I have the showdead flag on and at least a quarter of the time, I can't for the life of me figure out why a comment was killed. That lack of transparency makes me uncomfortable.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  That's PG's own view of how this works, we're not even supposed to tell people to stop bothering with their posts because they have been banned. I can see the rationale for it at some level but I really doubt that it has much effect, spammers are pretty good at monitoring the effect of their actions. It also makes me wonder who the mysterious 'you've been banned' emailer is.
  - shrughes 17y ago
    I don't think the lack-of-telling-people-to-not-bother-posting is about spam, it's about ordinary internet rats who would just reregister and continue making terrible posts. It also makes me wonder who the mysterious 'you've been banned' emailer is. What? I've never heard about this. (Edit: Oh, I glossed over half the threadstarter's text.)
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      > I don't think the lack-of-telling-people-to-not-bother-posting is about spam, it's about ordinary internet rats who would just reregister and continue making terrible posts. That's very well possible. (edit: I doubt someone would go out of their way to alert a troll to being banned though) > What? I've never heard about this. You would have if you read the posting at the top of the page ;)
      - Freebytes 17y ago
        It is possible for someone to make poor posts in the beginning and improve their post content when they realize their role within the community. Many new visitors to HN are likely to encounter this by simply making a one-line 'witty' comment that people dislike. When that gets downvoted, they may tend to lean towards more informative and relevant posts after learning their lesson.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
theblackbox 17y ago
No, it isn't, it's something particular HNers like to complain about due to some over zealous sense of free speech or something like that. Why could this not have been handled silently through an admin, like you would anywhere else where this might happen? The problem is that HN has turned into a monster of a forum, and to know everything that goes on behind the scenes to keep it functioning and to set up guidelines that navigate this perfectly is utopian. False positives and accidents happen, admins welcome reports of these, I don't get what the community gets out of them, though.
- ErrantX 17y ago
  pg is the admin; at a guess queries like this would usually take a while to get a response. Someone here would probably be able to answer the question faster.
  - theblackbox 17y ago
    I don't see how this differs from asking for advice on IRC when you have failed to take even the most cursory of glances at Google to track down the solution yourself. This is a golden rule of IRC support. Other than taking a little more time, the situation is exactly the same.
    - ErrantX 17y ago
      AFAIK this hasn't been answered before (that's from 30s on searchyc). We were discussing emailing pg a short while ago and the consensus then seemed to be "only if it's really important".
    - elblanco 17y ago
      Particularly because things like this are not always the result of pg personally moderating or killing accounts. Many times it's due to user abuse. AFAIK, HN grants different levels of power to users based on their karma. When I first joined, I couldn't downvote, and could only comment a couple times a day. Who's to say that the guys on here http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders don't have some kind of uber-user power because of their high karma score? We've already established in a number of threads over the past few months that some of these folks (to be left unnamed) have invested remarkable effort into attaining these scores and think very highly of themselves and don't feel the need to answer to anyone for their otherwise abusive behavior (like hitting the downvote cap %, or flagging users they don't like etc.). More interesting is that the community discussion around those guys' behavior also showed interesting patterns in the way HN works. Eventually pg shows up and says something like "yeah well, if your karma is above 10k, and you have a 30% upvote surplus, and it's a thursday, you can kill user accounts, but only 2 a year, unless their name starts with a t,s,kh, or an odd number." and then somebody posts the relevant arc source for that. We all then walk away scratching our heads as to why that's something built into the site, but we have no internal mail system or simple way of contacting the admins.

pvg 17y ago

Might have something to do with the fact that there is no obvious way to contact an 'admin', like on any other forum or irc network. Perhaps except the 'any other forum or irc network' part.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

aw3c2 17y ago

The only ways of contacting available on this site are info@ycombinator.com (which I never got a reply on with a banning problem, I waited 3 weeks) and submitting a story. Anything else is just not there unless you know about it by other means.