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If the mountains of downvotes don't do the trick you can ban accounts directly. Hellbanning is cowardly and ineffective. This isn't Wikipedia, it's a discussi
by Helianthus 13y ago
If the mountains of downvotes don't do the trick you can ban accounts directly. Hellbanning is cowardly and ineffective.
This isn't Wikipedia, it's a discussion forum--and the discussion pages on Wikipedia are moderated fairly and openly.
I didn't mean that quality as a whole was fictional, I meant that the notion of quality this policy is attempting to enact was fictional/unattainable.
Flame wars still happen. People still complain about the nastiness of HN comments. It's a discussion forum: angry conversation is what it's for.
Hellbanning does absolutely nothing to improve 'quality of discourse,' it just makes this place nastier.
- Intermernet 13y agoDiscussion forums are for discussion. Angry conversation is an emergent property of some discussions, on the net or off, but not the sole response to anything you may disagree with. My own opinion on hell-banning or any other forms of account "punishment" is that it is, as you say, cowardly and ineffective, as long as the user has no idea that it has occurred. Either inform the user, or completely ban the account. Otherwise you're leaving people screaming into the wind when you could just tell them no-one is listening.
- kristiandupont 13y agoThe whole point is that it's not about punishment, it's about preserving the tone. Telling somebody "you've been banned" will make them upset. Some people get severely offended and they want to fight. So they go and create new accounts and start over, or they seek revenge in other ways. It can be very time consuming to deal with. Granted, this will still happen because some people will realize that they've been hellbanned, but the ones that simply get the impression that people aren't responding to their trolling will get bored with it and go away. Which is a win.