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turn on showdead and you'll find dozens of other cases where people have been banned for similarly egregious reasons. In some cases people go on posting for yea
by phpnode 13y ago
turn on showdead and you'll find dozens of other cases where people have been banned for similarly egregious reasons. In some cases people go on posting for years without knowing their posts are dead. it's the most horrible aspect of HN.
- kintamanimatt 13y agoPeople should post some contact information in their HN bio. I agree, this is the ugliest part of HN, and it's sometimes nice to be able to give someone a heads up as to what's happened so they don't go on wasting their time posting comments that most people won't see. Granted, there are other cases like losethos (or whatever his screenname is) that are repeat offenders and deserve to be hellbanned. (Yeah, I know his case is due to mental illness.)
- beedogunami 13y agoMy email address is in my HN bio. Never received a thing.
- kintamanimatt 13y agoIf that's the case it seems your profile got blanked when you got shadowbanned. Here's a screenshot I took of it: http://i.imgur.com/KbS3heF.png http://i.imgur.com/KbS3heF.png --- It's just occurred to me that you're probably referring to the email field, not the about field. Anything in the email field isn't public, and I'm under the impression you don't get notified when you're hellbanned, which is pretty much how it gets its name! If, on the other hand you put your email address or other contact details in the about field, and they're no longer there, then that's a different matter. For example, my email address is in the email field of my profile but it's not public. The only public information that's there right now is my Twitter name.
- PavlovsCat 13y agoWow. I'm trying to think of something more to justify this comment, but "wow" is all I can come up with. There's moderating, and there' being kinda inhumane :(
- beedogunami 13y agoYou're right - I meant the email field. Sorry about that; I didn't know it wasn't publicly viewable until I checked.
- phpnode 13y agocall them out in the thread, at least it highlights the issue to other people, even if the person in question doesn't see your post.
- kintamanimatt 13y agoThat's what I did this time. I tried to Google some contact details for the guy (Twitter account, etc), but who knew there were bee costumes for dogs? His profile was blank too.
- RexRollman 13y agoThere are other options. For example, if someone's status = hellbanned, them change the header bar to reflect it. It's simple and doesn't require anything to be sent out.
- phpnode 13y agothat would just be a ban - the hell in hellban refers to the fact that you don't even know that you're a victim.
- kintamanimatt 13y agoYeah, to add to this further, the reason is to slow down the user so it takes them a while (if ever) to figure out they're banned, otherwise they'd just create a new account which would be more work for the mods and would drag down the quality of comments and content submitted. (Of course, this assumes the person being banned is being banned for justifiable reasons.)
- RexRollman 13y agoInteresing. Thank you for the info.
- dools 13y agoOkay so what about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6191092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6191092
- RexRollman 13y agoI've seen mentions of of this but didn't realize that people weren't even being notified. That's fucked up and I really think this policy needs to be reevaluated.
- mjn 13y agoI was also surprised to find it here. Afaik the name (and popularization as a forum-management technique) comes from SomethingAwful, but it fits the culture there.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- harrytuttle 13y agoYes this happened to me, despite being polite and courteous. Was very fucking annoyed. It's unethical. Surely locking a thread is ok, but allowing people to toil away without any remark is just plain wrong regardless of who it is or what they say. I mean even 4chan manages to reach a higher ethical plateau than HN on the moderation front.
- burntsushi 13y agoPragmatic response: If you can, put some way of contacting you in your HN profile. Conscientious HN readers will send you mail if you're posting thoughtful comments but are hellbanned. You can then contact the admins, and I've found they are typically amenable to restoring your account.
- jordanthoms 13y agoCouldn't you also just occasionally check to see if your comments show when you are logged out?
- burntsushi 13y agoSure. But that's a pain and easy to forget. :-)
- crazygringo 13y agoI've always been kind of confused about that... after a few comments, if you see they never get a single upvote, and never get a single reply... wouldn't it quickly become pretty obvious?