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>Another thing that could happen if you speak up is that you get hellbanned on HN. Is that actually possible ? That's disgusting, this makes the admin look lik

by tux3 12y ago

>Another thing that could happen if you speak up is that you get hellbanned on HN. Is that actually possible ? That's disgusting, this makes the admin look like a piece of shit in my opinion. I'm not sure what kind of problem this is trying to solve, but I'd rather see the hellbanned posts and the occasional person with an unpopular opinion that stay locked in an echo chamber. I'm not trying to tell HN how to run it's tomato garden, but please, is there a rationale for hellbanning ?

facepalm 12y ago
They try to solve a difficult problem and they want to do the right thing. Personally I also think hellbanning is a bad move. But perhaps they have the experience that it works.
thaumaturgy 12y ago
Since you've got a relatively new account, you might not know that you can see hellbanned users, posts, and comments by going to your user account page and changing showdead to "yes". You can then make up your own mind about whether or not hellbanning on HN is a problem. So far, it seems to have the same traits as a spam filter: it's effective most of the time, but occasionally catches a false positive. I don't think I'd go quite so far as to say that you get hellbanned here for "speaking up" -- there are plenty of unpopular or controversial opinions here. I might agree that people with those opinions occasionally get tired of arguing against the crowd and stop contributing as much, and I'd definitely agree that there have been a case or three where somebody got hellbanned under suspicious circumstances (idlewords' account, years ago, is a good example). But that doesn't really indicate a systemic problem here. The rationale for hellbanning is that it lets actual spammers do their thing all day long without annoying the regular users, it keeps a few people with mental health issues from disrupting every conversation here, and it keeps a few malicious people from being too much of a nuisance.

by tux3 12y ago

facepalm 12y ago

They try to solve a difficult problem and they want to do the right thing. Personally I also think hellbanning is a bad move. But perhaps they have the experience that it works.

thaumaturgy 12y ago

Since you've got a relatively new account, you might not know that you can see hellbanned users, posts, and comments by going to your user account page and changing showdead to "yes". You can then make up your own mind about whether or not hellbanning on HN is a problem. So far, it seems to have the same traits as a spam filter: it's effective most of the time, but occasionally catches a false positive. I don't think I'd go quite so far as to say that you get hellbanned here for "speaking up" -- there are plenty of unpopular or controversial opinions here. I might agree that people with those opinions occasionally get tired of arguing against the crowd and stop contributing as much, and I'd definitely agree that there have been a case or three where somebody got hellbanned under suspicious circumstances (idlewords' account, years ago, is a good example). But that doesn't really indicate a systemic problem here. The rationale for hellbanning is that it lets actual spammers do their thing all day long without annoying the regular users, it keeps a few people with mental health issues from disrupting every conversation here, and it keeps a few malicious people from being too much of a nuisance.