4 ms·

I am opposed to hellbanning on hacker news. I believe it hurts our community for the following reasons: * It lacks transparency - nobody knows who is hellbann

by luke_s 13y ago

I am opposed to hellbanning on hacker news. I believe it hurts our community for the following reasons: * It lacks transparency - nobody knows who is hellbanned, and why they were hellbanned. There is no appeal. * It is a crude tool - hellbanning somebody fails to take into account that they could reform their behavior, or just have made some bad decisions in the heat of an argument. * There have been cases I have seen where useful or interesting comments have been lost because the poster is hellbanned. This demonstrates that it doesn't just have theoretical flaws - it actually is causing us to lose valuable content.

DanBC 13y ago
> There is no appeal. Someone who is hellbanned can come back with a new account. Or, if they feel it was a mistake they could write a short email explaining this and asking for an unban. > useful or interesting comments have been lost because the poster is hellbanned. What? The content is still there.
- tripzilch 13y ago
  > Someone who is hellbanned can come back with a new account. Or, if they feel it was a mistake they could write a short email explaining this and asking for an unban. Um, are we talking about the same word here? How can they do that? The whole point of a hell-ban is that for them everything looks normal, just the way it should be if nothing had happened. Unless they happen to stumble upon it (viewing from another IP, maybe a friend emailed them), there's no reason to assume any action at all is required. That is my whole point: the useless waste of time in order to even find out you were hell-banned. As soon as you start noticing your comments haven't been getting any replies or upvotes for a couple of days: start getting nervous. You might've tripped a mod, they are often fair, but they are also human, and that's a couple of days of comments that the large "showdead=0" majority of HN simply hasn't seen.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    Many people who see hellbanned posts check the history of the poster. If they can't see a reason for the ban they try to let the person know. (Another reason why it's a good idea to include an email address in your profile information.) While HN HellBanning has banned some people unfairly it also bans a lot of spam and disruptive trolls. I appreciate that we have different attitudes here. I'm happy with a small false-positive rate. I guess people could check their comments using incognito mode; maybe there's even a plug-in to do that?
    - tripzilch 13y ago
      I see your point why it's not as hurtful as it could be. In practice, 99% of the time it isn't. I am of the opinion, however, that there's time-tested tried and true more classic modding and adminning solutions, that are just as effective, that do not take significantly more effort either. And that's the thing, except for the few rare cases I've outlined (IMO so rare that it's cost effective to just special-case it in code, rather than making an easy admin button for it), it's just not necessary to waste people's time like that. One other aspect in which it actually performs worse: if you get banned, you get noticed. so you know you did something wrong. and you can work to fix this. the amount of people for which this "slap on the wrists" actually works, is actually a lot larger than the amount of sociopaths that will never ever learn and actually require hellbanning and other tricks to get rid of.
nmcfarl 13y ago
I am opposed as it is implemented in some cases algorithmicly and I've been hellbanned for using the wrong brand name in an on topic comment. I don't use brand names in comments anymore.
- nmcfarl 13y ago
  Looking at my threads page I found that I lied: I used to brand-name today. I suck. And brands are unescapable....

by luke_s 13y ago

DanBC 13y ago

> There is no appeal. Someone who is hellbanned can come back with a new account. Or, if they feel it was a mistake they could write a short email explaining this and asking for an unban. > useful or interesting comments have been lost because the poster is hellbanned. What? The content is still there.

tripzilch 13y ago
> Someone who is hellbanned can come back with a new account. Or, if they feel it was a mistake they could write a short email explaining this and asking for an unban. Um, are we talking about the same word here? How can they do that? The whole point of a hell-ban is that for them everything looks normal, just the way it should be if nothing had happened. Unless they happen to stumble upon it (viewing from another IP, maybe a friend emailed them), there's no reason to assume any action at all is required. That is my whole point: the useless waste of time in order to even find out you were hell-banned. As soon as you start noticing your comments haven't been getting any replies or upvotes for a couple of days: start getting nervous. You might've tripped a mod, they are often fair, but they are also human, and that's a couple of days of comments that the large "showdead=0" majority of HN simply hasn't seen.
- DanBC 13y ago
  Many people who see hellbanned posts check the history of the poster. If they can't see a reason for the ban they try to let the person know. (Another reason why it's a good idea to include an email address in your profile information.) While HN HellBanning has banned some people unfairly it also bans a lot of spam and disruptive trolls. I appreciate that we have different attitudes here. I'm happy with a small false-positive rate. I guess people could check their comments using incognito mode; maybe there's even a plug-in to do that?
  - tripzilch 13y ago
    I see your point why it's not as hurtful as it could be. In practice, 99% of the time it isn't. I am of the opinion, however, that there's time-tested tried and true more classic modding and adminning solutions, that are just as effective, that do not take significantly more effort either. And that's the thing, except for the few rare cases I've outlined (IMO so rare that it's cost effective to just special-case it in code, rather than making an easy admin button for it), it's just not necessary to waste people's time like that. One other aspect in which it actually performs worse: if you get banned, you get noticed. so you know you did something wrong. and you can work to fix this. the amount of people for which this "slap on the wrists" actually works, is actually a lot larger than the amount of sociopaths that will never ever learn and actually require hellbanning and other tricks to get rid of.

nmcfarl 13y ago

I am opposed as it is implemented in some cases algorithmicly and I've been hellbanned for using the wrong brand name in an on topic comment. I don't use brand names in comments anymore.

nmcfarl 13y ago
Looking at my threads page I found that I lied: I used to brand-name today. I suck. And brands are unescapable....