

Ask PG: Auto-ban commenters who repeatedly respond to replies? - erichocean

Background: I've noticed that the commenters on HN who are the least useful, most adversarial, and who generally <i>I</i>, at least, could do without on HN have the following behavioral signature:<p><i>They respond to most (or even all) of the people that reply to their comments, especially in a deeply nested fashion.</i><p>This commenting behavior is independent of the actual topic, so there's no need to evaluate the quality of the comment (or whatever). It's more like spam.<p>Now, of course, <i>all of us</i> reply to people who ask us questions, or for clarification, or whatever. Infrequent replies shouldn't trigger any kind of action.<p>But the commenters I'm talking about essentially comment spam entire threads with their replies, and it's really, <i>really</i> obvious who they are. I'm certain a Bayesian filter could easily detect them.<p>My proposal is to consider auto-banning, or otherwise slowing down these people (perhaps reducing their ability to post replies for a period of time). Their behavior is hurting the whole community.<p>If other HNers have any other suggestions on how to improve this aspect of HN, please let PG know in the comments. Thanks.
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_pius
_My proposal is ... perhaps reducing their ability to post replies for a
period of time._

This kind of flame retardant has been built in since 2009:

 _We also have some new features to prevent flamewars. The most conspicuous is
an exponential delay before reply links appear on deeply nested comments. We'd
noticed these were rarely the most interesting comments on the site. We're
hoping that instead of killing stupid arguments, it will be sufficient to
apply gradually increasing drag to them._

<http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html>

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erichocean
I'm suggesting applying that logic to commenters that have been previously
identified as described above, not just individual comment threads.

In other words, be more proactive about it, when we already know said
commenter spams the comment sections.

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_pius
Just out of curiosity, would this reply — which is now deeply nested — be
considered spamming if you had your way? How about your subsequent reply to
this one?

~~~
erichocean
It would depend on your (and my) behavior everywhere, not just in this
particular comment thread.

If you (or I) had a history of making replies to (almost) everyone who replies
to you (or I), then yeah, I would want the system to curb your (or my)
instinct to reply to everything with some kind of waiting period, and I'd want
that to kick in very, very early.

My sense is that the people that do this aren't very self-aware (i.e. have
poor social skills), and as a result, it's not really possible to convince
them to stop making things bad for everyone -- since they don't know, and
don't think, they are.

An impartial filter would eliminate the drama and achieve the desired result
without having to try and change their behavior, or publicly shaming them (as
other commenters have suggested).

~~~
DanBC
> My sense is that the people that do this aren't very self-aware (i.e. have
> poor social skills), and as a result, it's not really possible to convince
> them to stop making things bad for everyone -- since they don't know, and
> don't think, they are.

An interesting interface experiment might be to apply a color filter (or
somesuch) to these users, so that they become aware that their posts are
deemed by an algorithm to be sub-optimal.

Seeing your posts start at a healthy color, and then gradually dip down into
an unhealthy red might train people to stop replying everywhere?

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ScottWhigham
The tl/dr; version of your post could be summed up:

"Ban commenters who have a style different than what I like"

Since that's the case, I don't really see a reason to continue.

Or... the flip side is that you've discovered something meaningful but, in the
attempt to "be nice", you've left out critical information that I apparently
need to see your post as anything other than the tl/dr; version. Name names or
cite examples and maybe I can 'see' what you're talking about.

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1123581321
I see more problems with mobs of stupid comments attacking one person. Should
that person let them alone? Probably, but explaining something to several
people who are wrong is a good thing for each person receiving the reply and
to a degree third party readers.

After reading some egregiously bad posts on here in a couple threads I'm
thinking that a Chrome extension to collapse threads started by certain
people, user's choice, is the best idea. That way if you and I think different
people are the problem in a thread, we can each hide what we'd rather not see.

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DanBC
There are extensions available to let you collapse threads.

There are probably extensions available to let you filter certain users.

While these don't have the automatic filtering that's probably a good thing.

(BTW: I have an email address in my profile and if my posting style is
annoying anyone I welcome email about it.)

EDIT: You have a perhaps over-strict deletion policy. People often make a
mistaken down-vote, and those get corrected after a few hours.

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btian
> commenters who repeatedly respond to replies

But isn't that the whole point of Show HN posts?

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erichocean
Good point. I agree those are comments we wouldn't want to trip the filter.

A simple hack might be to just turn off the Bayesian filter on post titles
beginning with 'Show HN'.

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unimpressive
Since your essentially calling for these people to be banned, I don't think it
would be impolite to name names.

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Mz
I think this is a bad idea. You cannot weed out bad behavior like that. It is
like bad language filters: People get past them by using asterisks, etc.
Someone who is pathological will just find other ways to be a persistent
asshole. I think being too controlling winds up creating more problems than it
solves, especially when you are controlling via this sort of filter. Reminds
me of the sitcom where "black tie" invitations got changed to "African
American Tie Ball" by a PC filter intended to root out unacceptable racial
language.

