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As dang is shadowbanning people, I cannot agree with many of the popular sentiments expressed. I think shadowbanning is unjust, and if is someone is violating

As dang is shadowbanning people, I cannot agree with many of the popular sentiments expressed. I think shadowbanning is unjust, and if is someone is violating the rules nonstop they should be made aware of it through notice and an actual ban.

dang 4y ago
When an account has an established history, we tell them we're banning them and why: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20banned&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... Shadowbanning is reserved for spammers and for new accounts that show signs of abusing the site, e.g. by trolling or egregiously breaking the site guidelines, or if there's evidence that they're related to past accounts that have been abusing the site. It's not a good idea to use explicit banning in all of these cases (for different reasons). Here are some longer past explanations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23686672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23686672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21288858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21288858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20666742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20666742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20289994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20289994 This system has drawbacks—banning new accounts means guessing—by definition, there isn't a lot of information to go on—and we guess wrong sometimes. But we try to correct those errors later. Btw, if anyone notices a banned account that shouldn't be banned, please let us know at hn@ycombinator.com—we've unbanned many accounts that way. In fact I'm just working on a ban review system that will make it much easier for mods to track banned accounts that are still posting and unban the ones who are making good contributions (whether because we guessed wrong when banning them, or because they've reformed since having been banned).
tomcam 4y ago
How else to keep a community stable and civil, where by definition civil must contain attributes that will always offend some of the audience?
maxbond 4y ago
I've seen dang warn people their conduct is bannable many times. AFAIK shadowbanning on HN means your comments default to "dead", as if they had been flagged. You can see them if you enable "showdead" in your profile, and if people vouch for them, they can become visible again. See Terry Davis' comment history for examples (this is the only shadowbanned account I know of): https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TerryADavis https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TerryADavis - if you look a few pages in, you'll see some live comments of him talking about the early days of Ticketmaster and such. To me this seems like a better solution than simply kicking people out who are unable to uphold the minimum guidelines necessary to engage in reasonably civil discourse. What would you suggest as an alternative?
- account42 4y ago
  The crucial part of shadowbanning is that the one subjected to it is can't (easily) see that their comments/post are being hidden from others. It's like the difference between rejecting spam mail and silently dropping it. Since actual shadowbanning is all about showing a different view of the world to the affected user compared to everyone else we can't see if TerryADavis has been shadowbanned or not. Shadowbanning might be effective against actual spammers but preventing the user from seeing that they were banned removes even more accountability from the moderation than other tools which makes shadowbanning particularly prone to abuse as well as mistakes that won't get fixed. I think it's pretty dishonest to punish someone without telling them they are being punished. It's also worth pointing out that shadowbanning is more effective against good faith users than malicious users since all it takes is to check using a disconnected session to uncover the ruse - something that will hardly be difficult for a motivated malicious user.
  - maxbond 4y ago
    I've never been shadowbanned on HN but afaik you will see that your comments are flagged. I would disagree with the form of banning you are describing, however.
the_only_law 4y ago
Shadowban is [dead] right? On rare occasion I've seen [banned] accounts as well with showdead on. Weird thing I've noticed is [dead] accounts that aren green tend to be typical troll, spam, or people who can't calm down during certain discussions. They may even have some comments still love. [banned] accounts on the other hand tend to be completely deragned. They seem almost obsessed. Despite being banned they continue to make essay posts about whatever it is that got them hanne over large periods of time. Could be bots, but the complexity and variety of the language in the posts tends to be moderately complex.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  Interesting! I don't think I've ever seen "[banned]", although I may have not been paying enough attention. I've definitely seen "[dead]" on accounts which, if you go into their post history, were told by dang that they were being banned.

dang 4y ago

When an account has an established history, we tell them we're banning them and why: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20banned&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... Shadowbanning is reserved for spammers and for new accounts that show signs of abusing the site, e.g. by trolling or egregiously breaking the site guidelines, or if there's evidence that they're related to past accounts that have been abusing the site. It's not a good idea to use explicit banning in all of these cases (for different reasons). Here are some longer past explanations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23686672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23686672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21288858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21288858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20666742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20666742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20289994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20289994 This system has drawbacks—banning new accounts means guessing—by definition, there isn't a lot of information to go on—and we guess wrong sometimes. But we try to correct those errors later. Btw, if anyone notices a banned account that shouldn't be banned, please let us know at hn@ycombinator.com—we've unbanned many accounts that way. In fact I'm just working on a ban review system that will make it much easier for mods to track banned accounts that are still posting and unban the ones who are making good contributions (whether because we guessed wrong when banning them, or because they've reformed since having been banned).

tomcam 4y ago

How else to keep a community stable and civil, where by definition civil must contain attributes that will always offend some of the audience?

maxbond 4y ago

I've seen dang warn people their conduct is bannable many times. AFAIK shadowbanning on HN means your comments default to "dead", as if they had been flagged. You can see them if you enable "showdead" in your profile, and if people vouch for them, they can become visible again. See Terry Davis' comment history for examples (this is the only shadowbanned account I know of): https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TerryADavis https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TerryADavis - if you look a few pages in, you'll see some live comments of him talking about the early days of Ticketmaster and such. To me this seems like a better solution than simply kicking people out who are unable to uphold the minimum guidelines necessary to engage in reasonably civil discourse. What would you suggest as an alternative?

account42 4y ago
The crucial part of shadowbanning is that the one subjected to it is can't (easily) see that their comments/post are being hidden from others. It's like the difference between rejecting spam mail and silently dropping it. Since actual shadowbanning is all about showing a different view of the world to the affected user compared to everyone else we can't see if TerryADavis has been shadowbanned or not. Shadowbanning might be effective against actual spammers but preventing the user from seeing that they were banned removes even more accountability from the moderation than other tools which makes shadowbanning particularly prone to abuse as well as mistakes that won't get fixed. I think it's pretty dishonest to punish someone without telling them they are being punished. It's also worth pointing out that shadowbanning is more effective against good faith users than malicious users since all it takes is to check using a disconnected session to uncover the ruse - something that will hardly be difficult for a motivated malicious user.
- maxbond 4y ago
  I've never been shadowbanned on HN but afaik you will see that your comments are flagged. I would disagree with the form of banning you are describing, however.

the_only_law 4y ago

Shadowban is [dead] right? On rare occasion I've seen [banned] accounts as well with showdead on. Weird thing I've noticed is [dead] accounts that aren green tend to be typical troll, spam, or people who can't calm down during certain discussions. They may even have some comments still love. [banned] accounts on the other hand tend to be completely deragned. They seem almost obsessed. Despite being banned they continue to make essay posts about whatever it is that got them hanne over large periods of time. Could be bots, but the complexity and variety of the language in the posts tends to be moderately complex.

Wowfunhappy 4y ago
Interesting! I don't think I've ever seen "[banned]", although I may have not been paying enough attention. I've definitely seen "[dead]" on accounts which, if you go into their post history, were told by dang that they were being banned.