4 ms·

Nearly everything that's killed is killed by software, not manually. But if you want you can consider me responsible.

by pg 17y ago

notnotrick2047 17y ago
Now this is ridiculous I have changed two accounts in two days, just because for some reason I have pissed of software. It doesnt give any reason, it just cripples my accounts and kills my posts. This is preposterous. At least a reason should be given for such, an I am rather surprised to say, rude and uncivilized behavior. All the posts that got my accounts killed had one thing in common, I posted something against HN. Cant it even take criticism anymore?
- nitrogen 17y ago
  Just out of curiosity I looked at some of your older posts on your other accounts (turning on showdead). Being relatively new here myself (about 7 months) I can't speak for the staff or the downvoters, but if you were to look at your posting history over the past 21 days you might be able to infer the behaviors that get them upset. You might even try a statistical analysis of your killed posts if you really want to understand what is triggering the automatic kill switch. The point I want to make is that when participating in a community, there is usually a natural feedback process that allows one to discover the rules and values of that community. If one does something out of line, the community will swiftly react. Multiple negative reactions are a sign that one's behavior isn't in line with the community's standards, and should be used as an input to the decision-making loop that says, "Wait, maybe they don't like it when I do X all the time." Then, you either decide to adapt to the community, or you leave. Also, most communities will only accept a limited amount of correction from any given source, which varies by source and by community. One of the behaviors that's likely to earn repeated negative feedback is trying to change the community more than allowed by one's standing within the community.
  - notnotrick2047 17y ago
    just to make it clear, I didnt post a spam site nor was I promoting anything for myself. These were just ideas of mine. Which I think are perfectly legitimate to express. No explicit language was used and there was no blame games. Also for your advice that multiple downvotes got me killed. I made another account (notrick2047) before this (thats was the two nots in notnotrick2047) and it was vetoed out in 2 hours at 3 points. Now 3 points count as a fair or at least competent comment. But still I was crippled. And the most annoying thing is that it didn't give any feedback. I demand an explanation.
- sdp 17y ago
  Sounds like HN is becoming self-aware and vetoing any attempts at critical thinking with regards to its policies. Long live HN Skynet!
  - mahmud 17y ago
    Don't be so paranoid. I recently discovered an account that was being auto-killed and made a small fuss about it. Paul read the comment and found the reason; that user submitted a story from a spam website and all his subsequent non-spam submissions were auto-nuked. Quickly Paul went back and unflagged the guys non-spam submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=862023 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=862023
- by 17y ago
  Good submissions for me are carefully considered and composed. I always proof read mine before submission. I feel it is discourteous to expect 200 people to read something I am unwilling to read twice. I see four obvious mistakes in your post that someone with your clear command of English could have caught before posting. I have no knowledge of your other posts.
  - rick2047 17y ago
    Ok now I have to take remedial grammar lessons?dude, I think it was a totally understandable post.
ryanwaggoner 17y ago
And I'm sure that nearly everything that's killed manually is justified, but that kind of misses the point, doesn't it? The whole point of transparency is so that we can see those cases where it wasn't automatic and where it wasn't justified. And especially so we can see if a particular user is killing stories that disagree with his political beliefs. I'm betting that just displaying his username next to the items he's killed would curb a lot of that. Put another way, why wouldn't you be willing to surface this information?
- pg 17y ago
  If someone started killing stories that disagreed with his political beliefs, I'd notice and unkill them. So you really can act as if anything dead (for long enough for me to have noticed) has my username displayed next to it, because I in effect signed off on it by leaving it dead.
  - ryanwaggoner 17y ago
    I find this really unsatisfactory, but I can't put my finger on why. After all, I would be trusting you in the same way if you did alter the software to put the username next to all killed stories, but something about this answer still doesn't sit right with me.

Nearly everything that's killed is killed by software, not manually. But if you want you can consider me responsible.

by pg 17y ago

Nearly everything that's killed is killed by software, not manually. But if you want you can consider me responsible.

notnotrick2047 17y ago

Now this is ridiculous I have changed two accounts in two days, just because for some reason I have pissed of software. It doesnt give any reason, it just cripples my accounts and kills my posts. This is preposterous. At least a reason should be given for such, an I am rather surprised to say, rude and uncivilized behavior. All the posts that got my accounts killed had one thing in common, I posted something against HN. Cant it even take criticism anymore?

nitrogen 17y ago
Just out of curiosity I looked at some of your older posts on your other accounts (turning on showdead). Being relatively new here myself (about 7 months) I can't speak for the staff or the downvoters, but if you were to look at your posting history over the past 21 days you might be able to infer the behaviors that get them upset. You might even try a statistical analysis of your killed posts if you really want to understand what is triggering the automatic kill switch. The point I want to make is that when participating in a community, there is usually a natural feedback process that allows one to discover the rules and values of that community. If one does something out of line, the community will swiftly react. Multiple negative reactions are a sign that one's behavior isn't in line with the community's standards, and should be used as an input to the decision-making loop that says, "Wait, maybe they don't like it when I do X all the time." Then, you either decide to adapt to the community, or you leave. Also, most communities will only accept a limited amount of correction from any given source, which varies by source and by community. One of the behaviors that's likely to earn repeated negative feedback is trying to change the community more than allowed by one's standing within the community.
- notnotrick2047 17y ago
  just to make it clear, I didnt post a spam site nor was I promoting anything for myself. These were just ideas of mine. Which I think are perfectly legitimate to express. No explicit language was used and there was no blame games. Also for your advice that multiple downvotes got me killed. I made another account (notrick2047) before this (thats was the two nots in notnotrick2047) and it was vetoed out in 2 hours at 3 points. Now 3 points count as a fair or at least competent comment. But still I was crippled. And the most annoying thing is that it didn't give any feedback. I demand an explanation.
sdp 17y ago
Sounds like HN is becoming self-aware and vetoing any attempts at critical thinking with regards to its policies. Long live HN Skynet!
- mahmud 17y ago
  Don't be so paranoid. I recently discovered an account that was being auto-killed and made a small fuss about it. Paul read the comment and found the reason; that user submitted a story from a spam website and all his subsequent non-spam submissions were auto-nuked. Quickly Paul went back and unflagged the guys non-spam submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=862023 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=862023
by 17y ago
Good submissions for me are carefully considered and composed. I always proof read mine before submission. I feel it is discourteous to expect 200 people to read something I am unwilling to read twice. I see four obvious mistakes in your post that someone with your clear command of English could have caught before posting. I have no knowledge of your other posts.
- rick2047 17y ago
  Ok now I have to take remedial grammar lessons?dude, I think it was a totally understandable post.

ryanwaggoner 17y ago

And I'm sure that nearly everything that's killed manually is justified, but that kind of misses the point, doesn't it? The whole point of transparency is so that we can see those cases where it wasn't automatic and where it wasn't justified. And especially so we can see if a particular user is killing stories that disagree with his political beliefs. I'm betting that just displaying his username next to the items he's killed would curb a lot of that. Put another way, why wouldn't you be willing to surface this information?

pg 17y ago
If someone started killing stories that disagreed with his political beliefs, I'd notice and unkill them. So you really can act as if anything dead (for long enough for me to have noticed) has my username displayed next to it, because I in effect signed off on it by leaving it dead.
- ryanwaggoner 17y ago
  I find this really unsatisfactory, but I can't put my finger on why. After all, I would be trusting you in the same way if you did alter the software to put the username next to all killed stories, but something about this answer still doesn't sit right with me.