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I read about this when I first heard of hellbanning: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/06/suspension-ban-or-hellban.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2

I read about this when I first heard of hellbanning: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/06/suspension-ban-or-hellban.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/06/suspension-ban-or-h... (There is one additional form of hellbanning that I feel compelled to mention because it is particularly cruel – when hellbanned users can see only themselves and other hellbanned users. Brrr. I'm pretty sure Dante wrote a chapter about that, somewhere.)

jiggy2011 14y ago
I have HN set to show me comments from hellbanned users. A lot of them are just trolls/spammers , however there are a number that I feel sorry for because they post relevant and sometimes long comments on threads and I imagine that they wonder why they are not getting any votes or replies. I think it's easy to get off to a bad start on an online community simply because you don't understand it's ethos rather than outright malice.
- disgruntledphd2 14y ago
  So do I. I tend to upvote the sensible (i.e. not crazy) ones, in the hopes that someday they'll make it back to positive karma.
  - ramidarigaz 14y ago
    I don't think the votes actually go through on hellbanned users unfortunately.
    - hef19898 14y ago
      Hellbanned? what does that actually mean? Seems i missed a lot online since around the early 2000s...
      - neutronicus 14y ago
        Your account appears, to you, to function normally, but your posts are not visible to any other users. The rationale is that trolls and spammers will usually register new accounts upon being notified of a ban, but a hellbanned troll/spammer might continue to use the hellbanned account without realizing that their posts are ignored.
        JohannL 14y ago
        If only people would not downvote instead of voicing disagreement; just because someone is actually mistaken, or worse, simply not going along with whatever fad might be the issue, is hardly justification to waste their time like this. The rationale is that a non-troll/spammer can simply realize they have intruded on a circlejerk, instead of wasting their time making posts nobody even sees. While I get that there may be actual good uses for this, it is super silly to assume "they must be trolls/spammers, or they wouldn't be hellbanned". That doesn't follow logically at all. What is common though, you might even say well-reasearched, is that when other people get treated unfairly by our own peers, we route around the damage with neat little stories about fairness. It's sociology 101, nobody wants to be a tyrant, or in bed with them. We want the power, just not the shame, and how mediocre and small it makes us seem in the right light. So we tell stories, and sometimes those stories happen to be true, but that's just because we got lucky, not because we actually inform ourselves. It's also very convenient that those affected can not give any feedback, they're banned after all. Also: dunno about trolls (except that assholes or ignorant people are often called that, when in fact "trolling" implies deliberate deceit and trying to play mind games, instead of just being stupid or a jerk; but who needs to think when you can have labels), but why would a spammer not simply use a new account for each post? It seems like that would be actually less effort. Now vote me down or whatever, I'd rather be banned than suck up :P I'm aware it's kinda off-topic, because none of this applies to gaming... but those are the posts I'm replying to, hah. I just think that modding people, not posts, is highly flawed; even ignoring the moral high horse for a second, it doesn't produce good results either.
        hef19898 14y ago
        Ah! thanks for the quick answer!
    - A1kmm 14y ago
      The public code in news.arc (which doesn't the anti-abuse code) suggests: * The test for a comment being auto-killed (marked [dead]) is "(or (ignored user) (< (karma user) comment-threshold*))" * comment-threshold* = -20 * Karma is still updated on item authors if their post is dead - as long as the tests on the person doing the voting pass. * Once you have the ignore flag set, only administrators can remove it - it is independent of karma. * You get the ignore flag set for posting a link to a banned site, posting a comment containing banned text, or if one of your posts is blasted or nuked by an administrator.
  - StavrosK 14y ago
    I repost them with attribution and a message that the account is dead.
  - cpeterso 14y ago
    Will a positive karma score automatically un-hellban a user?

jiggy2011 14y ago

I have HN set to show me comments from hellbanned users. A lot of them are just trolls/spammers , however there are a number that I feel sorry for because they post relevant and sometimes long comments on threads and I imagine that they wonder why they are not getting any votes or replies. I think it's easy to get off to a bad start on an online community simply because you don't understand it's ethos rather than outright malice.

disgruntledphd2 14y ago
So do I. I tend to upvote the sensible (i.e. not crazy) ones, in the hopes that someday they'll make it back to positive karma.
- ramidarigaz 14y ago
  I don't think the votes actually go through on hellbanned users unfortunately.
  - hef19898 14y ago
    Hellbanned? what does that actually mean? Seems i missed a lot online since around the early 2000s...
    - neutronicus 14y ago
      Your account appears, to you, to function normally, but your posts are not visible to any other users. The rationale is that trolls and spammers will usually register new accounts upon being notified of a ban, but a hellbanned troll/spammer might continue to use the hellbanned account without realizing that their posts are ignored.
      - JohannL 14y ago
        If only people would not downvote instead of voicing disagreement; just because someone is actually mistaken, or worse, simply not going along with whatever fad might be the issue, is hardly justification to waste their time like this. The rationale is that a non-troll/spammer can simply realize they have intruded on a circlejerk, instead of wasting their time making posts nobody even sees. While I get that there may be actual good uses for this, it is super silly to assume "they must be trolls/spammers, or they wouldn't be hellbanned". That doesn't follow logically at all. What is common though, you might even say well-reasearched, is that when other people get treated unfairly by our own peers, we route around the damage with neat little stories about fairness. It's sociology 101, nobody wants to be a tyrant, or in bed with them. We want the power, just not the shame, and how mediocre and small it makes us seem in the right light. So we tell stories, and sometimes those stories happen to be true, but that's just because we got lucky, not because we actually inform ourselves. It's also very convenient that those affected can not give any feedback, they're banned after all. Also: dunno about trolls (except that assholes or ignorant people are often called that, when in fact "trolling" implies deliberate deceit and trying to play mind games, instead of just being stupid or a jerk; but who needs to think when you can have labels), but why would a spammer not simply use a new account for each post? It seems like that would be actually less effort. Now vote me down or whatever, I'd rather be banned than suck up :P I'm aware it's kinda off-topic, because none of this applies to gaming... but those are the posts I'm replying to, hah. I just think that modding people, not posts, is highly flawed; even ignoring the moral high horse for a second, it doesn't produce good results either.
      - hef19898 14y ago
        Ah! thanks for the quick answer!
  - A1kmm 14y ago
    The public code in news.arc (which doesn't the anti-abuse code) suggests: * The test for a comment being auto-killed (marked [dead]) is "(or (ignored user) (< (karma user) comment-threshold*))" * comment-threshold* = -20 * Karma is still updated on item authors if their post is dead - as long as the tests on the person doing the voting pass. * Once you have the ignore flag set, only administrators can remove it - it is independent of karma. * You get the ignore flag set for posting a link to a banned site, posting a comment containing banned text, or if one of your posts is blasted or nuked by an administrator.
- StavrosK 14y ago
  I repost them with attribution and a message that the account is dead.
- cpeterso 14y ago
  Will a positive karma score automatically un-hellban a user?