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I would applaud any effort to make comment-killing and user-banning a more transparent process on HN. You don't know it happens when it happens, it's often for

by gamache 17y ago

I would applaud any effort to make comment-killing and user-banning a more transparent process on HN. You don't know it happens when it happens, it's often for a shaky reason, and there is no place to discuss it other than emailing PG (which just seems wasteful, a feeling that was reinforced by PG's very curt tone throughout). When seeking assistance for a hellban of my very own, I was emailed by several helpful HN power users, all giving basically the same opinion -- "The HN moderation is capricious and deaf", in one user's words. That's an uncomfortable assessment from regular site contributors.

aw3c2 17y ago
http://enjoys.it/hn/outcast.html http://enjoys.it/hn/outcast.html After I asked in #startups if someone would be so kind to submit it, I was suggested to mail to pg's email address. I did and received a dry "Ok, I unbanned you.".
- Sukotto 17y ago
  "Can you please revert that? And give me a reason why I am not considered worthy using HN anymore?" You got the first part. Did you ever get an answer to the second part?
lionhearted 17y ago
> That's an uncomfortable assessment from regular site contributors. First, I agree with you that a more transparent process would be a positive thing. Second, I'd like to highlight that this is by far the finest community I've ever been a part of for a long term period. I've seen other communities good for six months to a year before coming somewhat unglued, and Hacker News hasn't done that in the two years or so I've been here. So I agree with you, but also want to take a moment to thank the moderators for what is largely a thankless job, and for what they're largely doing incredible work with. So, agree that improvements can be made, and still - a massive amount of gratitude from me. Actually, if there's any HN mods in whatever city I'm in at any given time, shoot me an email and lunch is on me. Taipei right now, seriously, you guys are amazing and thanks.
- TrevorJ 17y ago
  That's a well-reasoned reply. I too appreciate the tone of this site and given the fact that there are hundreds of non-moderated places I can go and say whatever I want to online, I'm ok with HN being tightly moderated.
justin_vanw 17y ago
I'm not sure. This is my third user account. Coming from reddit and slashdot, I had an abrasive posting style, which sometimes would generate hundreds of upmods for my posts, and sometimes would generate dozens of downmods. Maybe this is purely me, but having a month or two of my posts going down the black hole 1. saved people from my vitriol and 2. forced me to think about why it happend. Now, I think there are too many people that will downmod a comment because they disagree with it, or because it responds to one of their comments in an unflattering (but appropriately toned) way. If this happens to you early on you get put in the kill list. You also get kill-listed if you upmod a killed account too much, which is to prevent shill accounts I suppose. The real way to tell, however, is that whenever you are logged in every page view takes 10 seconds or more to load. Overall I think that all these shinanigans are pretty effective at knocking down the number of people who are just angry and bringing that anger to the site. They might be perfectly smart people, but there are plenty of smart people in the world, and people coming here to rage are such a huge negative that it is best if they are eliminated from the site, even if there are occationally people who get kill-listed 'unfairly'. This is a BBS, not a criminal court. If you feel it is unwarranted you are banned from posting to a Bulletin board, my suggestion at that point would be to create another account and proceed rocking out from there. If you can't get over the injustice of being slighted by an automated system on a discussion board, then your priorities are incredibly retarded, and probably you should reflect on your life and figure out why? I should say that this isn't meant to be directed at anyone in particular, except maybe to me circa 2006.

by gamache 17y ago

aw3c2 17y ago

http://enjoys.it/hn/outcast.html http://enjoys.it/hn/outcast.html After I asked in #startups if someone would be so kind to submit it, I was suggested to mail to pg's email address. I did and received a dry "Ok, I unbanned you.".

Sukotto 17y ago
"Can you please revert that? And give me a reason why I am not considered worthy using HN anymore?" You got the first part. Did you ever get an answer to the second part?

lionhearted 17y ago

> That's an uncomfortable assessment from regular site contributors. First, I agree with you that a more transparent process would be a positive thing. Second, I'd like to highlight that this is by far the finest community I've ever been a part of for a long term period. I've seen other communities good for six months to a year before coming somewhat unglued, and Hacker News hasn't done that in the two years or so I've been here. So I agree with you, but also want to take a moment to thank the moderators for what is largely a thankless job, and for what they're largely doing incredible work with. So, agree that improvements can be made, and still - a massive amount of gratitude from me. Actually, if there's any HN mods in whatever city I'm in at any given time, shoot me an email and lunch is on me. Taipei right now, seriously, you guys are amazing and thanks.

TrevorJ 17y ago
That's a well-reasoned reply. I too appreciate the tone of this site and given the fact that there are hundreds of non-moderated places I can go and say whatever I want to online, I'm ok with HN being tightly moderated.

justin_vanw 17y ago

I'm not sure. This is my third user account. Coming from reddit and slashdot, I had an abrasive posting style, which sometimes would generate hundreds of upmods for my posts, and sometimes would generate dozens of downmods. Maybe this is purely me, but having a month or two of my posts going down the black hole 1. saved people from my vitriol and 2. forced me to think about why it happend. Now, I think there are too many people that will downmod a comment because they disagree with it, or because it responds to one of their comments in an unflattering (but appropriately toned) way. If this happens to you early on you get put in the kill list. You also get kill-listed if you upmod a killed account too much, which is to prevent shill accounts I suppose. The real way to tell, however, is that whenever you are logged in every page view takes 10 seconds or more to load. Overall I think that all these shinanigans are pretty effective at knocking down the number of people who are just angry and bringing that anger to the site. They might be perfectly smart people, but there are plenty of smart people in the world, and people coming here to rage are such a huge negative that it is best if they are eliminated from the site, even if there are occationally people who get kill-listed 'unfairly'. This is a BBS, not a criminal court. If you feel it is unwarranted you are banned from posting to a Bulletin board, my suggestion at that point would be to create another account and proceed rocking out from there. If you can't get over the injustice of being slighted by an automated system on a discussion board, then your priorities are incredibly retarded, and probably you should reflect on your life and figure out why? I should say that this isn't meant to be directed at anyone in particular, except maybe to me circa 2006.