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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

by 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)
  - krapp 13y ago
    Hellbanning is not about security; it is about removing people from the conversation. We'll have to agree to disagree about whether that kind of censorship is ever really 'great' for a forum or not. I find the whole idea cynical and offensive.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      Read through losethos's history and tell me if you really think that we would be better off with those posts being visible. His hellbanning is basically just saving everyone else the time it would take to downvote his crap to the bottom manually. Either way it will be sent to the bottom; may as well automate the process.

by jlgreco 13y ago

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)
- krapp 13y ago
  Hellbanning is not about security; it is about removing people from the conversation. We'll have to agree to disagree about whether that kind of censorship is ever really 'great' for a forum or not. I find the whole idea cynical and offensive.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    Read through losethos's history and tell me if you really think that we would be better off with those posts being visible. His hellbanning is basically just saving everyone else the time it would take to downvote his crap to the bottom manually. Either way it will be sent to the bottom; may as well automate the process.