6 ms·
This actually wasn't my first account. I lurked for a while and then finally decided to join. When I first joined, I commented for a few weeks and then stumble
by jere 13y ago
This actually wasn't my first account. I lurked for a while and then finally decided to join.
When I first joined, I commented for a few weeks and then stumbled into a conversation that involved Steve Jobs and poaching employees. The top comment was talking about how greedy Jobs was and I replied pointing out that he had taken $1 in salary and no stocks for several years. I wasn't totally clear in my first comment and by the time I got done explaining, I was ghost banned. From a single comment.
I went on for a while and out of spite, I kept posting replies even though I knew they wouldn't be viewed. A few people messaged me on other channels to let me know. I'm not sure what the solution is here, but that experience wasn't fun.
- stretchwithme 13y agoAn appeal process that allows others to point out the unfairness of the situation. Also, look at which down-voters are subject to the most appeals might indicate who's being vindictive.
- clicks 13y agoAn appeal process exists. It's pretty much e-mailing info@ycombinator.com and saying something like "Hey, have I been banned? Please undo!" (if you feel you were unfairly banned), or "Hey, I realize I said something that I shouldn't have said. I'm sorry -- please consider unbanning?" In my experiences the people in charge of making these decisions are fairly prudent.
- chris_wot 13y agoI did this some time ago with another account, and was ignored.
- pbhjpbhj 13y agoHow did you know you were "ghost banned"? Do you get an email or something?
- leephillips 13y agoThis wasn't clear?: "A few people messaged me on other channels to let me know."
- maaku 13y agoHow did those people know?
- jey 13y agoYou can set "showdead" to "yes" in your profile. (This option might only be available beyond some karma threshold.)
- m-r-a-m 13y agoIt's available to new accounts.
- DanBC 13y agoIn your profile you can set an option to "show dead" - this shows hellbanned users.
- MikeCapone 13y agoI just turned this on. What differentiates these comments from others? Do usernames show up in a different color or something like that?
- jere 13y agoThis was a while ago, but I think I had read about ghost banning on HN before it happened. I'm assuming the same for the people who messaged me.
- Samuel_Michon 13y agoAside from someone else clueing you in, wouldn’t you notice after a while that you don’t get any upvotes anymore? (or downvotes for that matter)
- cynicalkane 13y agoDo you have a link to the comments of the old account?
- jere 13y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nluqo https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nluqo I may not have remembered everything perfectly, but there you go.
- invisible 13y agoSometimes people on hacker news would rather vote down a comment than to fact check or try to use compassion and understand the other person's point of view. pg disabled voting down comments within threads you are a part of but I don't know if it's enough...
- joeldidit 13y agoThis is usually what happens in INTJ dominated environments. Trigger happy and sometimes nonsensical.
- msellout 13y agoI'm not sure that "trigger happy and nonsensical" is restricted to "INTJ" communities. As far as I've read, the Myers-Briggs personality test is as predictive of behavior as is a fortune cookie.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- soundgecko 13y agoSlashdot's moderation system is much better in this regard. The users starting score for new posts first goes to 0 and then -1 so that the comment will be collapsed by default reducing visibility but they can still accrue upvotes and karma allowing the users starting score to recover instead of turning the site into a zombie town where the zombies don't know they're dead.