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> There is nothing that hellbanning (the way it's doled out on HN) solves better than regular bans, suspensions or warnings. Sure there is: griefers. The prob

by philh 14y ago

> There is nothing that hellbanning (the way it's doled out on HN) solves better than regular bans, suspensions or warnings. Sure there is: griefers. The problem is that hellbanning is the only kind of discipline, and it gets handed out too easily. And you're (probably) right that this in turn makes it less effective against griefers than it could be. But it's still more effective than a regular ban.

tripzilch 14y ago
Sorry I'm only familiar with the concept of griefers in online gaming. How does the phenomenon manifest on HN?
- potatolicious 14y ago
  Griefer is just a troll - or perhaps a more extreme troll, one that will go substantially out of their way to evade a ban and continue being an asshole. A hellban has its utility, but it cannot be the only method for censuring abusive users. It needs to only be applied in cases where the user is likely to try and continue to antagonize the community by dodging a regular ban, and sparingly. The problem with hellbanning on HN is that everyone knows it's going on, and it's become such a big deal that it greatly reduces its effectiveness. As you said, if a troll suspects they're being hellbanned, they can easily just sign up for another account. I'm of the opinion that hellbans are way too common on HN where in almost all cases a regular old suspension/ban would have sufficed.
  - egypturnash 14y ago
    Shit, I didn't know it was going on here until this thread.
  - CamperBob2 14y ago
    Indeed... a few minutes after you turn on showdead you'll see that hellbanning is not used primarily for troll control. Trolls are people who post goatse links or overtly inflammatory opinions that they clearly don't even hold. Instead, hellbanning on HN is used on people who disagree with someone who has the power to do something about it. It's used to dismiss people who stray outside the hive and fail to toe the party line... a party line that isn't even written down anywhere. It's lame, and IMHO pg needs to reign in some of the more obvious moderation abuses.
    - chc 14y ago
      Amy Hoy and Thomas Ptacek strongly disagree with both the majority here and Paul Graham himself all the time, yet they aren't hellbanned. It's not just "straying outside the hive" or "failing to toe the party line" — much of the time, it's expressing offensive opinions (e.g. "women are inferior"), trying to shove your opinion down people's throats to the detriment of the site overall (e.g. losethos' weird Christian ramblings), or just being very rude about your unpopular opinion (e.g. "Apple is going to fail but you don't see it because you are Tim Cook's gay lover"). You might wish for people to be able to belligerently proclaim any offensive opinion they might hold, but this isn't your site or mine, and PG is within his rights doing what he thinks is necessary to keep the conversation quality at a high level. This is not to say that the system is perfect. Many people get banned wrongly, and I think uriel was one of those. I do think a warning system would be better in many cases. But it seems to me that most hellbans are handed out to people who are indeed simply jerks.
      - potatolicious 14y ago
        Right, which brings to question why hellban jerks instead of just regular-banning them. Hellbans are designed to be undetected by the banned party, to prevent them from reating a cat and mouse situation where site operators constantly fight to keep the banned off the site (new accounts, new IPs, etc). Very few of the people who are being banned from the site appear to be trolls - if they're just jerks, do they not deserve to be told that they are no longer welcome Instead we've simply silenced these people without the courtesy of even telling them, and for what?
        chc 14y ago
        As you just said, it's to prevent the whack-a-mole game of impotently banning an endless stream of new accounts. Being a jerk is strongly correlated with not respecting bans — if they cared about your wishes in the first place, they wouldn't have acted so inconsiderate. If you ban a jerk, they make a new account and keep at it. If you hellban them, they tend to stay that way for a good long while. I do think there should be a lesser level of punishment for people who aren't that incorrigible, but hellbanning jerks definitely has its place. It is the most effective countermeasure available.

by philh 14y ago

tripzilch 14y ago

Sorry I'm only familiar with the concept of griefers in online gaming. How does the phenomenon manifest on HN?

potatolicious 14y ago
Griefer is just a troll - or perhaps a more extreme troll, one that will go substantially out of their way to evade a ban and continue being an asshole. A hellban has its utility, but it cannot be the only method for censuring abusive users. It needs to only be applied in cases where the user is likely to try and continue to antagonize the community by dodging a regular ban, and sparingly. The problem with hellbanning on HN is that everyone knows it's going on, and it's become such a big deal that it greatly reduces its effectiveness. As you said, if a troll suspects they're being hellbanned, they can easily just sign up for another account. I'm of the opinion that hellbans are way too common on HN where in almost all cases a regular old suspension/ban would have sufficed.
- egypturnash 14y ago
  Shit, I didn't know it was going on here until this thread.
- CamperBob2 14y ago
  Indeed... a few minutes after you turn on showdead you'll see that hellbanning is not used primarily for troll control. Trolls are people who post goatse links or overtly inflammatory opinions that they clearly don't even hold. Instead, hellbanning on HN is used on people who disagree with someone who has the power to do something about it. It's used to dismiss people who stray outside the hive and fail to toe the party line... a party line that isn't even written down anywhere. It's lame, and IMHO pg needs to reign in some of the more obvious moderation abuses.
  - chc 14y ago
    Amy Hoy and Thomas Ptacek strongly disagree with both the majority here and Paul Graham himself all the time, yet they aren't hellbanned. It's not just "straying outside the hive" or "failing to toe the party line" — much of the time, it's expressing offensive opinions (e.g. "women are inferior"), trying to shove your opinion down people's throats to the detriment of the site overall (e.g. losethos' weird Christian ramblings), or just being very rude about your unpopular opinion (e.g. "Apple is going to fail but you don't see it because you are Tim Cook's gay lover"). You might wish for people to be able to belligerently proclaim any offensive opinion they might hold, but this isn't your site or mine, and PG is within his rights doing what he thinks is necessary to keep the conversation quality at a high level. This is not to say that the system is perfect. Many people get banned wrongly, and I think uriel was one of those. I do think a warning system would be better in many cases. But it seems to me that most hellbans are handed out to people who are indeed simply jerks.
    - potatolicious 14y ago
      Right, which brings to question why hellban jerks instead of just regular-banning them. Hellbans are designed to be undetected by the banned party, to prevent them from reating a cat and mouse situation where site operators constantly fight to keep the banned off the site (new accounts, new IPs, etc). Very few of the people who are being banned from the site appear to be trolls - if they're just jerks, do they not deserve to be told that they are no longer welcome Instead we've simply silenced these people without the courtesy of even telling them, and for what?
      - chc 14y ago
        As you just said, it's to prevent the whack-a-mole game of impotently banning an endless stream of new accounts. Being a jerk is strongly correlated with not respecting bans — if they cared about your wishes in the first place, they wouldn't have acted so inconsiderate. If you ban a jerk, they make a new account and keep at it. If you hellban them, they tend to stay that way for a good long while. I do think there should be a lesser level of punishment for people who aren't that incorrigible, but hellbanning jerks definitely has its place. It is the most effective countermeasure available.