Instead of writing out all my own thoughts on the matter (I've did before on HN, but I don't know how to find those particular 2 or 3 comments), this article pr

Instead of writing out all my own thoughts on the matter (I've did before on HN, but I don't know how to find those particular 2 or 3 comments), this article pretty much covers it: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/06/suspension-ban-or-hellban.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/06/suspension-ban-or-h... The only exception (and this might be in the article as well, but I'll mention it because it's IMO the only exception) is when you've got a recurring troll, one that gets banned, and IP-banned, but returns through a new proxy every time. At that point, wasting as much of their time as possible is pretty much your only defence. Although in my own experience, even then, slow-banning works just as well if not better. And I've experimented with a number of very novel deterrence methods when I was forum-admin on a (sometimes) rather trollish forum, but only against the truly notorious bad apples. That place, it was of utmost importance to be as light-handed with modding as possible, because drama is really sticky. In all other situations you are just wasting the valuable time of normal people. Normal people you may disagree with, or ones that are really really difficult. But some of our favourite hackers and open source coders are really really difficult people. If you hell-ban someone, they might not notice for a few months, spending effort on their posts, you really burned a bridge there. And don't forget you will make mistakes, somebody makes one thoughtless tasteless (awful) joke, gets hellbanned, continues contributing their valuable insights like nothing happened (because they don't know) until they somehow find out (which can take a long time), I have seen this happen on HN, and it is such a terrible waste of the bright minds we have here. That is why I am opposed to hell-bans.