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HN hellbanning is just infuriating, no upsides.

by micampe 13y ago

chalst 13y ago
Are there any actual hellbanning tragedies on HN?
- saalweachter 13y ago
  Imagine the saddest, loneliest, weirdest, most obnoxious kid from your elementary school. Maybe you were that kid. They go up to every little clique and say something, but no one listens. They invite everyone to their birthday party, but no one comes. Would you wish that on anyone, even if they were annoying or angry or wrong?
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    The jump from complete ostracization to having your HN posts hidden is pretty damn large. What would you suggest that we do with posters like losethos, if not hellbanning? The guy knows he is hellbanned, and has at various times made new accounts (which also get hellbanned). A regular banning would just have him creating new accounts anyway, so you may as well just let him keep his regular account. In elementary school people like him would be removed from the normal student population and given special attention/treatment, but that is not an option for HN.
    - krapp 13y ago
      Isn't losethos proof that hellbanning doesn't really work? If a hellbanned user is supposed to get frustrated by the lack of replies to their posts and then go away, then it doesn't. You're not supposed to ever know it's there, after all, and you're not supposed to be willing to put up with it. In the case of someone who might not care about being replied to, or who just doesn't notice they're never being replied to (entirely possible if they don't post often), being hellbanned doesn't work. It's security through obscurity. And as a result of hellbanning, people can become paranoid about speaking their opinion because they never really know if they're actually participating in a conversation or if the system has decided to make a silent mockery of them.
      - jlgreco 13y ago
        It doesn't matter if losethos gives up and leaves or not because he is hellbanned. That is part of the beauty of hellbanning, if you realize you have been hellbanned, give up and leave... then great! If you realize you have been hellbanned, don't care and keep on posting... then great! If you realize that you have been hellbanned, come back with a new account and keep it up, you'll be hellbanned again (and quickly. losethos's new account was hellbanned again with its first comment... so great!) If you realize that you have been hellbanned, come back with a new account and clean up your act... then great! If you don't realize that you have been hellbanned... then great! Hellbanning is not about security; it is about removing people from the conversation. For that it works wonderfully (though I would argue that it is actually too hard to become hellbanned).
        guylhem 13y ago
        By default, I have configured HN to show me hellbanned posts - because someday, maybe I'll be too, and because time to the time I still find some interesting content! IMHO, hellbanning is both cruel and damaging - the community may lose potential interesting contributions. For example, I've watched a bit of what losethos wrote for his 64 bit OS - it's an interesting approach. There are not so much at the time, but he seems to submit articles time to time. I sometimes even read losethos comments, which sound to me like hybrid talk from Galactica. Words linked by references obscure to me, but which still might have a sense (the old greeks did believe in Oracles, so do I. My fault: I shouldn't be a believer, and just accept the traditional medical theory who claims it's just nonsense)
        jlgreco 13y ago
        He has done some pretty fascinating stuff, but aside from discussions about that particular stuff in particular I think we would gain nothing from permitting him to spam^Wcomment as a normal user. I also have showdead enabled, mostly because I like to look back in hellbanned posters histories and see why they were hellbanned. In very few cases do I find someone for which I don't understand the hellbanning. In those cases I usually try to give the person a heads up, but in the vast majority of the cases I realize that the person was excessively abusive, spamming their pet project, participating at a stereotypically "reddit" level, or otherwise submitting crap. (Also, I am pretty certain that losethos's comments are computer generated. He thinks that a god talks to him through a RNG when he initializes markov chains with the bible or something... Any meaning derived from what he says after "god says:" is likely just apophenia)
  - mturmon 13y ago
    It's a flawed analogy. They can go to a different site, or to no site at all, but they cannot go to a different school without divine intervention (parents). Also, commenters here are older, old enough to know better. All analogies are flawed to some extent. I'm responding to this one because, by putting it in emotional terms like you have, you overemphasize the harm to the one, and don't take into account the loss to the rest of the readers of the site.
  - barry-cotter 13y ago
    Yes. Well Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism. http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/
- olalonde 13y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=losethos https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=losethos
  - swombat 13y ago
    That's not a tragedy, or at least not a hellbanning tragedy. Losethos might be brilliant, but he's also completely insane and cannot usefully contribute to the conversation. I'm pretty sure he knows he's hellbanned and doesn't do or want to do anything about it.
- brymaster 13y ago
  > Are there any actual hellbanning tragedies on HN? Yes, https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=there https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=there Story: https://jcs.org/notaweblog/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker_news/ https://jcs.org/notaweblog/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker... And there are plenty more incidents like this.
  - chalst 13y ago
    Story: "Very well-established user complains - because the mods thought the complaint was made in an improper, rule-infringing manner, the user was slowbanned, without dialog" - yes, that does sound like a tragedy. Has this tragedy been told from another viewpoint? Joshua's telling characterises pg/ the modocracy as being almost implausibly high-handed.
  - chalst 13y ago
    The HN link to jcs's story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108008 tptacek's comment also mentions another hellban tragedy: 'Paul Graham personally hellbanned Maciej Ceglowski for calling Sebastian Marshall a "prolix douchebag". Maciej's comment was not a high point of Hacker News decorum and in that instance probably degraded the site slightly, but no reasonable person could have looked at 'idlewords comment record and not come to the conclusion that Maciej is someone we want on the site.'
angersock 13y ago
It need not end an illustrious posting career...the mods are not unreasonable and if you aren't a complete shithead you may be allowed to 'contribute' to the conversation once more.
clobber 13y ago
As someone who was just hellbanned, I can agree :) (I'm hellbanned so you probably won't see this post anyway)

HN hellbanning is just infuriating, no upsides.

by micampe 13y ago

HN hellbanning is just infuriating, no upsides.

chalst 13y ago

Are there any actual hellbanning tragedies on HN?

saalweachter 13y ago
Imagine the saddest, loneliest, weirdest, most obnoxious kid from your elementary school. Maybe you were that kid. They go up to every little clique and say something, but no one listens. They invite everyone to their birthday party, but no one comes. Would you wish that on anyone, even if they were annoying or angry or wrong?
- jlgreco 13y ago
  The jump from complete ostracization to having your HN posts hidden is pretty damn large. What would you suggest that we do with posters like losethos, if not hellbanning? The guy knows he is hellbanned, and has at various times made new accounts (which also get hellbanned). A regular banning would just have him creating new accounts anyway, so you may as well just let him keep his regular account. In elementary school people like him would be removed from the normal student population and given special attention/treatment, but that is not an option for HN.
  - krapp 13y ago
    Isn't losethos proof that hellbanning doesn't really work? If a hellbanned user is supposed to get frustrated by the lack of replies to their posts and then go away, then it doesn't. You're not supposed to ever know it's there, after all, and you're not supposed to be willing to put up with it. In the case of someone who might not care about being replied to, or who just doesn't notice they're never being replied to (entirely possible if they don't post often), being hellbanned doesn't work. It's security through obscurity. And as a result of hellbanning, people can become paranoid about speaking their opinion because they never really know if they're actually participating in a conversation or if the system has decided to make a silent mockery of them.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      It doesn't matter if losethos gives up and leaves or not because he is hellbanned. That is part of the beauty of hellbanning, if you realize you have been hellbanned, give up and leave... then great! If you realize you have been hellbanned, don't care and keep on posting... then great! If you realize that you have been hellbanned, come back with a new account and keep it up, you'll be hellbanned again (and quickly. losethos's new account was hellbanned again with its first comment... so great!) If you realize that you have been hellbanned, come back with a new account and clean up your act... then great! If you don't realize that you have been hellbanned... then great! Hellbanning is not about security; it is about removing people from the conversation. For that it works wonderfully (though I would argue that it is actually too hard to become hellbanned).
      - guylhem 13y ago
        By default, I have configured HN to show me hellbanned posts - because someday, maybe I'll be too, and because time to the time I still find some interesting content! IMHO, hellbanning is both cruel and damaging - the community may lose potential interesting contributions. For example, I've watched a bit of what losethos wrote for his 64 bit OS - it's an interesting approach. There are not so much at the time, but he seems to submit articles time to time. I sometimes even read losethos comments, which sound to me like hybrid talk from Galactica. Words linked by references obscure to me, but which still might have a sense (the old greeks did believe in Oracles, so do I. My fault: I shouldn't be a believer, and just accept the traditional medical theory who claims it's just nonsense)
        jlgreco 13y ago
        He has done some pretty fascinating stuff, but aside from discussions about that particular stuff in particular I think we would gain nothing from permitting him to spam^Wcomment as a normal user. I also have showdead enabled, mostly because I like to look back in hellbanned posters histories and see why they were hellbanned. In very few cases do I find someone for which I don't understand the hellbanning. In those cases I usually try to give the person a heads up, but in the vast majority of the cases I realize that the person was excessively abusive, spamming their pet project, participating at a stereotypically "reddit" level, or otherwise submitting crap. (Also, I am pretty certain that losethos's comments are computer generated. He thinks that a god talks to him through a RNG when he initializes markov chains with the bible or something... Any meaning derived from what he says after "god says:" is likely just apophenia)
- mturmon 13y ago
  It's a flawed analogy. They can go to a different site, or to no site at all, but they cannot go to a different school without divine intervention (parents). Also, commenters here are older, old enough to know better. All analogies are flawed to some extent. I'm responding to this one because, by putting it in emotional terms like you have, you overemphasize the harm to the one, and don't take into account the loss to the rest of the readers of the site.
- barry-cotter 13y ago
  Yes. Well Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism. http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/
olalonde 13y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=losethos https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=losethos
- swombat 13y ago
  That's not a tragedy, or at least not a hellbanning tragedy. Losethos might be brilliant, but he's also completely insane and cannot usefully contribute to the conversation. I'm pretty sure he knows he's hellbanned and doesn't do or want to do anything about it.
brymaster 13y ago
> Are there any actual hellbanning tragedies on HN? Yes, https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=there https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=there Story: https://jcs.org/notaweblog/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker_news/ https://jcs.org/notaweblog/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker... And there are plenty more incidents like this.
- chalst 13y ago
  Story: "Very well-established user complains - because the mods thought the complaint was made in an improper, rule-infringing manner, the user was slowbanned, without dialog" - yes, that does sound like a tragedy. Has this tragedy been told from another viewpoint? Joshua's telling characterises pg/ the modocracy as being almost implausibly high-handed.
- chalst 13y ago
  The HN link to jcs's story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108008 tptacek's comment also mentions another hellban tragedy: 'Paul Graham personally hellbanned Maciej Ceglowski for calling Sebastian Marshall a "prolix douchebag". Maciej's comment was not a high point of Hacker News decorum and in that instance probably degraded the site slightly, but no reasonable person could have looked at 'idlewords comment record and not come to the conclusion that Maciej is someone we want on the site.'

angersock 13y ago

It need not end an illustrious posting career...the mods are not unreasonable and if you aren't a complete shithead you may be allowed to 'contribute' to the conversation once more.

clobber 13y ago

As someone who was just hellbanned, I can agree :) (I'm hellbanned so you probably won't see this post anyway)