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The goal of HN is post quality. One potential explanation is that false positives (banning a good user) don't bring down overall post quality, false negatives
by GuiA 13y ago
The goal of HN is post quality.
One potential explanation is that false positives (banning a good user) don't bring down overall post quality, false negatives (not banning a bad user) do.
- krapp 13y agoBanning good users does potentially bring down post quality, but other users would remain unaware of that without showdead on.
- kmfrk 13y agoI'd say that's more of a theory than an explanation. The whole is more than the sum of its parts, and when people like I get hellbanned or whateverbanned for long periods of time, it hurts the sense of community and erodes confidence in the management of it.
- t0 13y agoIf they were aware of they ban, they'd just create a new account and circumvent it.
- X4 13y agoWouldn't that theoretically even help creating much better predictions about that user and make auto-banning possible? Maybe you've recently read the post about browser-fingerprinting. That could help to "anonymously" ban this person/bot.
- SapphireSun 13y agoThat is true (assuming it's random). However, it's also unjust and harms the community simply because this issue exists. The goal is to hellban only people who deserve it. EDIT: I just realized I have showdead on and I've barely seen any, so this may not be a big problem.
- ecaradec 13y agoHellbanned people may also get upset of not receiving any feedback from the community from good comments, conclude that the community is not for them and quit which may explain that you only see a few.
- briandear 13y agoMaybe that's the same logic used explain the no fly list.. "The danger of someone being on there that shouldn't be is outweighed by the 'safety' gained." Traffic cameras, NSA surveillance -- the parallel is pretty clear. One solution is to simply use the down voting system already in place, so posts (and people) are judged by the community in a transparent way. Perhaps require a minimum karma limit before being allowed to post; new users can earn karma through comments. Then "bad" users would lose the karma through down votes and the community would have effectively "banned" the user from posting. I'm not familiar with the hell-banning system (I have better things to do than study HN minutia ,) however it seems like, to be banned there ought to be perhaps some more transparency. Or at least a warning system. If there is and I don't know about it, please disregard previous..)