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How does HN's moderation staff feel about users who are dead, completely oblivious to it, but who continue to post, sometimes for years after the fact without a

How does HN's moderation staff feel about users who are dead, completely oblivious to it, but who continue to post, sometimes for years after the fact without any kind of warning that they are wasting their time. Sometimes I check the comment history of these dead posters; 80% of the time it appears like they are a genuine troll who was correctly moderated out of the community, however, a significant portion of the time, there doesn't appear to be anything particularly inappropriate in the comment history, but the user is still doomed to waste a considerable amount of time attempting to contribute to this board. In the context of internet discussion boards, it seems a little harsh. Off the top of my head, I feel like something akin to an automatic probationary resurrection period would be an interesting idea. Perhaps it occurs one year after hellbanishment, giving the community a chance to organically reevaluate the user's quality of contributions, and giving a second chance to those who have matured in a years time (or who was simply hellbanned in error).

throwit99 12y ago
I had this happen to me when I critiqued a YC backed company. Had a few thousand in 'meaningless internet karma points'. You pretty soon realise after a few further comments anyway, so I doubt it's actually effective. It's pretty mean spirited though - generally a "douchebag" move. It'd be like having a bad employee, but instead of firing him, or discussing his work, just don't bother paying him any more. After being hellbanned I actually realised that commenting on internet forums is toxic, generally a waste of time, and not productive. So I quit. At the start, you sort of care about "karma". But you end up realising it's a measure of two things. 1. How much time you waste commenting on the internet, and 2. How much you can agree with the groupthink echo-chamber. But for those that like spending time commenting, I would have thought following a subreddit model would work better here, with the growth. Spread the power out. If I get hellbanned from the "rust is the future!!!" subhackernews, big whoop. It'd also help with filtering out all the non-interesting (self driving cars) stories. But then perhaps it'd basically be reddit at that stage which would defeat the point...
- dang 12y ago
  Ever notice how people who make claims about why they got banned never provide links to the posts in question? That's because their claims are nearly always false. If users could look at the actual record, their perennial sob story of perfectly reasonable behavior struck down by bullying censors would evaporate. So they make new accounts and post linkless statements designed to be unanswerable. We don't ban people because they "critiqued a YC backed company". Edit: Some of the replies have made good points, and I realize that I overreacted. Sorry about that. Please shoot us an email at hn@ycombinator.com if you feel your account was banned unfairly. We're always happy to look into this—there's no question that we make mistakes; the most I can claim is that we're eager to, and do, correct them when they're brought to our attention.
  - eksith 12y ago
    What are your thoughts on this episode? https://jcs.org/notaweblog/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker_news/ https://jcs.org/notaweblog/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker...
    - dang 12y ago
      That was before I started working on HN, so I don't have any inside details. But I'll give you my take on what I think happened, based on the time I did spend working with pg on the site. I need a few minutes though--there's another comment pending on my stack. Will come back and edit this. (Edit: I haven't forgotten, but have to run out to an appointment, so this will need to wait for another hour or two. Sorry about that.) Edit: back now. My gut feeling is that PG might not have had enough time to look into all the details. I say that because June 2012 was about the peak of when HN moderation was extremely time-constrained (I started a few months later) and the only option was to enforce the guidelines generically.
      - eksith 12y ago
        It's cool. I'm just curious about your take since, by necessity, you get to see far more comments than I do and get to see patterns that I may miss completely. For the record, I don't think he deserved a hellbanning, but then again, this was a while ago. And the wild west hadn't probably settled yet.
dang 12y ago
We've got an idea about this that we want to try. It's one of the future experiments Sam alluded to at the end of his post. (I'll add some details in a few minutes. Edit—well, quite a few minutes.) The problem is that banning an account is an all-or-nothing system where inappropriate commenting is not necessarily an all-or-nothing phenomenon. The solution we want to try, which was suggested by several users, is to give the community the power to bring comments out of [dead] status. Letting fellow users make the call when a comment is (or isn't) ok seems like it might work, especially since the recent experiments with flagging seem to have helped. This is one of the things Sam was referring to when he said we plan to experiment more with community moderation.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Very much looking forward to that, it will have two good effects, it will take the edge of hellbanning and it will reduce the load on the moderators. Three good effects, and give those that have been hellbanned (if they are aware of it) a reason to try to be extra good in the future. Four good effects, and it will make hellbanning more effective (because occasionally there will be answers to a comment). Five good... Wait, let me come in again.
  - krapp 12y ago
    > it will make hellbanning more effective Arguably, if a banned account is making reasonable comments worth responding to, that account shouldn't remain banned. Maybe after a certain number of comments a ban should be lifted entirely. Unless that's how it's meant to work anyway?
    - dang 12y ago
      If you mean: after a certain number of comments have been lifted by the community out of [dead] status, the account could also be lifted out of banned status, then I agree—we'd like to try that. Effectively, this would give the community control over banning and unbanning. We wouldn't call these "dead" or "banned"; we'd probably introduce new statuses like "flagged" or "moderated" or something like that. The current form of banning would be reserved for obvious cases of spam, etc.
dec0dedab0de 12y ago
I generally upvote anyone who is hellbanned if they are making a comment that seems like it is in good faith.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
StevePerkins 12y ago
It's an interesting idea. After all, if someone truly is a deliberate troll, they would simply be creating new account(s) to evade moderation anyway.
cm2012 12y ago
Apparently, this is the comment that got my old account banned: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4342935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4342935. I'm not sure though, it's just the last one on the profile before they go dead. I did like my old account.
- Kiro 12y ago
  I very much doubt that was the comment that got you banned.
- DanBC 12y ago
  Pure guesswork: combinations of the several ask HNs and the word jewelery triggered the spam filter. Did you email hn to ask why you were banned?
- lotharbot 12y ago
  I was completely confused by why you were hellbanned. Then I stopped looking at comments and looked at your submissions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4335811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4335811 I'm guessing that got caught in the spam filter for use of the words "jewelry" and some of the other keywords in the Amazon link. This is one of the unfortunate side effects of running a startup that happens to be in a field that generates a lot of (affiliate) spam.
  - cm2012 12y ago
    Thanks - that's probably it!
- dang 12y ago
  Please email hn@ycombinator.com.
  - throwit99 12y ago
    I thought mistakes never happen over there! Hellbanning people, and then asking them to email you later, is still a crappy way to act. It's not a hard problem. Just raise the threshold for hellbanning. Use it sparingly.
Arjuna 12y ago
Maybe an experiment with pending comments [1][2][3] would be beneficial? [1] Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7445761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7445761 [2] Pending Comments Update https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484304 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484304 [3] Pending Comments https://news.ycombinator.com/pending https://news.ycombinator.com/pending
wldcordeiro 12y ago
I had an account get "hellbanned" a while ago (it was an account with less than 20 karma to begin with) and after some stupid comment on my part I got downvoted significantly. Didn't even realize it had happened until someone reached out to me via Twitter informing me that my account was "hellbanned".

throwit99 12y ago

I had this happen to me when I critiqued a YC backed company. Had a few thousand in 'meaningless internet karma points'. You pretty soon realise after a few further comments anyway, so I doubt it's actually effective. It's pretty mean spirited though - generally a "douchebag" move. It'd be like having a bad employee, but instead of firing him, or discussing his work, just don't bother paying him any more. After being hellbanned I actually realised that commenting on internet forums is toxic, generally a waste of time, and not productive. So I quit. At the start, you sort of care about "karma". But you end up realising it's a measure of two things. 1. How much time you waste commenting on the internet, and 2. How much you can agree with the groupthink echo-chamber. But for those that like spending time commenting, I would have thought following a subreddit model would work better here, with the growth. Spread the power out. If I get hellbanned from the "rust is the future!!!" subhackernews, big whoop. It'd also help with filtering out all the non-interesting (self driving cars) stories. But then perhaps it'd basically be reddit at that stage which would defeat the point...

dang 12y ago
Ever notice how people who make claims about why they got banned never provide links to the posts in question? That's because their claims are nearly always false. If users could look at the actual record, their perennial sob story of perfectly reasonable behavior struck down by bullying censors would evaporate. So they make new accounts and post linkless statements designed to be unanswerable. We don't ban people because they "critiqued a YC backed company". Edit: Some of the replies have made good points, and I realize that I overreacted. Sorry about that. Please shoot us an email at hn@ycombinator.com if you feel your account was banned unfairly. We're always happy to look into this—there's no question that we make mistakes; the most I can claim is that we're eager to, and do, correct them when they're brought to our attention.
- eksith 12y ago
  What are your thoughts on this episode? https://jcs.org/notaweblog/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker_news/ https://jcs.org/notaweblog/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker...
  - dang 12y ago
    That was before I started working on HN, so I don't have any inside details. But I'll give you my take on what I think happened, based on the time I did spend working with pg on the site. I need a few minutes though--there's another comment pending on my stack. Will come back and edit this. (Edit: I haven't forgotten, but have to run out to an appointment, so this will need to wait for another hour or two. Sorry about that.) Edit: back now. My gut feeling is that PG might not have had enough time to look into all the details. I say that because June 2012 was about the peak of when HN moderation was extremely time-constrained (I started a few months later) and the only option was to enforce the guidelines generically.
    - eksith 12y ago
      It's cool. I'm just curious about your take since, by necessity, you get to see far more comments than I do and get to see patterns that I may miss completely. For the record, I don't think he deserved a hellbanning, but then again, this was a while ago. And the wild west hadn't probably settled yet.

dang 12y ago

We've got an idea about this that we want to try. It's one of the future experiments Sam alluded to at the end of his post. (I'll add some details in a few minutes. Edit—well, quite a few minutes.) The problem is that banning an account is an all-or-nothing system where inappropriate commenting is not necessarily an all-or-nothing phenomenon. The solution we want to try, which was suggested by several users, is to give the community the power to bring comments out of [dead] status. Letting fellow users make the call when a comment is (or isn't) ok seems like it might work, especially since the recent experiments with flagging seem to have helped. This is one of the things Sam was referring to when he said we plan to experiment more with community moderation.

jacquesm 12y ago
Very much looking forward to that, it will have two good effects, it will take the edge of hellbanning and it will reduce the load on the moderators. Three good effects, and give those that have been hellbanned (if they are aware of it) a reason to try to be extra good in the future. Four good effects, and it will make hellbanning more effective (because occasionally there will be answers to a comment). Five good... Wait, let me come in again.
- krapp 12y ago
  > it will make hellbanning more effective Arguably, if a banned account is making reasonable comments worth responding to, that account shouldn't remain banned. Maybe after a certain number of comments a ban should be lifted entirely. Unless that's how it's meant to work anyway?
  - dang 12y ago
    If you mean: after a certain number of comments have been lifted by the community out of [dead] status, the account could also be lifted out of banned status, then I agree—we'd like to try that. Effectively, this would give the community control over banning and unbanning. We wouldn't call these "dead" or "banned"; we'd probably introduce new statuses like "flagged" or "moderated" or something like that. The current form of banning would be reserved for obvious cases of spam, etc.

dec0dedab0de 12y ago

I generally upvote anyone who is hellbanned if they are making a comment that seems like it is in good faith.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

StevePerkins 12y ago

It's an interesting idea. After all, if someone truly is a deliberate troll, they would simply be creating new account(s) to evade moderation anyway.

cm2012 12y ago

Apparently, this is the comment that got my old account banned: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4342935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4342935. I'm not sure though, it's just the last one on the profile before they go dead. I did like my old account.

Kiro 12y ago
I very much doubt that was the comment that got you banned.
DanBC 12y ago
Pure guesswork: combinations of the several ask HNs and the word jewelery triggered the spam filter. Did you email hn to ask why you were banned?
lotharbot 12y ago
I was completely confused by why you were hellbanned. Then I stopped looking at comments and looked at your submissions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4335811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4335811 I'm guessing that got caught in the spam filter for use of the words "jewelry" and some of the other keywords in the Amazon link. This is one of the unfortunate side effects of running a startup that happens to be in a field that generates a lot of (affiliate) spam.
- cm2012 12y ago
  Thanks - that's probably it!
dang 12y ago
Please email hn@ycombinator.com.
- throwit99 12y ago
  I thought mistakes never happen over there! Hellbanning people, and then asking them to email you later, is still a crappy way to act. It's not a hard problem. Just raise the threshold for hellbanning. Use it sparingly.

Arjuna 12y ago

Maybe an experiment with pending comments [1][2][3] would be beneficial? [1] Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7445761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7445761 [2] Pending Comments Update https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484304 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484304 [3] Pending Comments https://news.ycombinator.com/pending https://news.ycombinator.com/pending

wldcordeiro 12y ago

I had an account get "hellbanned" a while ago (it was an account with less than 20 karma to begin with) and after some stupid comment on my part I got downvoted significantly. Didn't even realize it had happened until someone reached out to me via Twitter informing me that my account was "hellbanned".