Much of the moderation on HN is by the community through flagging and voting, the mods can not possibly read every single comment. Overall it works pretty good

Much of the moderation on HN is by the community through flagging and voting, the mods can not possibly read every single comment. Overall it works pretty good and having a bunch of grayed out comments at the bottom of a thread is hardly a problem. The examples given above show the users responsible are limiting their posting to once a day or so probably to evade triggering any automated warnings that would get the mods attention, so it is up to the community to report them. Not that a ban is going to accomplish much, pretty easy to setup a new account.