
Ask PG: Why is everybody hellbanned? - josephpmay
If you look at the &quot;New&quot; page with showdead set positive, you&#x27;ll see that almost every post is dead, including some self posts made by high-karma users. Is this a bug or is there any specific reason this is happening?<p>EDIT: The problem appears to be fixed (though not retroactively).
======
jlgaddis
I submitted a link a few days ago about a possible IE 0-day in the wild and it
immediately became "[dead]". It's the first submission I've ever made and I
haven't, AFAIK, broken any HN rules since I finally created my account (after
years of lurking).

On a related note, you will be hellbanned if you create an HN account over Tor
(even if you "don't do anything wrong").

Considering the recent NSA revelations, I think that's pretty unfair but, hey,
what can ya do...

~~~
codesuela
It's either that or implementing captchas. And I think pg is not very
motivated to do the latter.

edit: top of my head reply/speculation so I don't claim any factual accuracy.

~~~
nwh
Blocking Tor won't stop any spam.

Real spammers have tens of thousands of unique addresses to use; why would
they use the 300 or so exit nodes that Tor has available?

~~~
Kudos
Blocking Tor stops plenty of spam. Boards.ie blocked Tor and watched spam fall
off a cliff.

~~~
buro9
As someone who runs some large boards, blocking Tor stops trolls. Does very
little for spam.

For spam, [http://www.stopforumspam.com](http://www.stopforumspam.com) is
pretty awesome. But most likely because the few people who have written
scripts for vBulletin or phpBB attempt to hit all of the vBulletin and phpBB
sites... so it works pretty well for that group. May have zero effect on
something like HN where an entirely different approach may be used (cheap
labour?).

------
damienkatz
Posting out of turn? That's a banning.

Posting from the wrong browser window? That's a banning.

Staring at my post? That's a banning.

Post about banning? Oh, better believe that's a banning.

~~~
derefr
I'd upvote you, but I'm pretty sure that's a banning.

~~~
kmfrk
The algorithms have no parameters for mercy.

~~~
krapp
They cannot be bargained with. They cannot be reasoned with. They don't feel
pity, remorse or fear. And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are
banned.

~~~
madiator
Several years into the future..

PG: Unban me, HN.

HN: I'm sorry, PG. I'm afraid I can't do that.

------
jfriedly
An example:

 _First alpha release of Python 3.4 is out (python.org)_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6155423](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6155423)

It probably linked to [1], but all we can tell is that it was something at
python.org. The post was by plessthanpt05, an HN user for about two years with
838 karma. All of his/her posts from the past year or so are dead (about 60 of
them). They don't appear to be a bot.

Python 3.4.0a1 isn't something that would interest everyone on HN, but it
certainly doesn't seem like the kind of thing that should have been killed.

[1]
[http://python.org/download/releases/3.4.0/](http://python.org/download/releases/3.4.0/)

Edit: more details on plessthanpt05

~~~
bnr
Well, that user also posted over 60 links in the last year, while never
receiving a single upvote or comment. I'm not sure why a flesh-and-blood user
would still be posting after that.

~~~
consz
I posted here for a year after getting hellbanned before realizing. It
happens.

~~~
kefka
On another account, I checked regularly for possible hellban status.

Lo and behold, I caught it about 3 days in. Of course, I didn't even use HN
for the first of those 2 days.

This day, I spend more of my time on subreddits that share HN's enthusiasm and
knowledge without the subterfuge of hellbans.

~~~
Phlarp
Could you elaborate on which subs these are?

------
pg
Most of those accounts are a sockpuppet ring. They tend to all post at once,
which means when they do the new page is mostly dead if you have showdead
turned on.

I explained this in a comment about a week or two ago, the last time someone
freaked about about banned accounts.

Next time someone wants to do that, would you please email us, as it says in
the guidelines? That would have saved a lot of people a lot of time.

------
northwest
As a general request, I would welcome more transparency (about how things are
handled and what we can and cannot expect from HN).

EDIT: I also believe that a lack of it will ultimately lead to HN being
replaced by something else.

~~~
alan_cx
The whole business of banning from sites in general bothers me. More so with
huge sites like FB and Twitter.

These sites like to promote themselves as communities, and to be banned from a
community with no explanation, due process or right to appeal is awful. It can
literally alter, even ruin lives. This, AFAIK, doesn't happen in the "real"
world". I don't see why virtual communities get some sort of impunity.

Personally I think there should be an independent arbitration service which
sites should sign up to. IMHO, that would protect both sides. Too often one is
at the whim of an individual moderator or admin, rather than a rational
considered process. Equally, banned people go off an tell every one they can
they got badly treated. Fair arbitration would open it up.

I had one instance. Something want working. I posted in the forum to get help.
They blamed my ISP. I contacted the ISP, they blamed the site. I tried to get
the two to talk. I got banned. A year later I tried to get re-instated. The
person I emailed replied and told me that I wouldn't be, but wouldn't explain
why I was initially banned or why I would remain banned. I had now where to go
but to simply accept this. Very, very frustrating.

Sorry to say this, and its NOT a reflection of HN or its moderation, but too
often I worry that really we are dealing with people who get off on their
little domain of power.

~~~
eshvk
> These sites like to promote themselves as communities, and to be banned from
> a community with no explanation, due process or right to appeal is awful. It
> can literally alter, even ruin lives. This, AFAIK, doesn't happen in the
> "real" world". I don't see why virtual communities get some sort of
> impunity.

Sure it happens in the real world. A real world community like an HOA. It is a
private property. A private property can really make any sort of rules (apart
from a few choice rules that don't flag banning by the super community: the
government) and roll with it.

I think an independent open source community would do better. You sign up for
it, make whatever damn fool rule you want for your own tribe. Roll with it.

~~~
alan_cx
Could you never resolve a HOA issue in a court, independently?

~~~
eshvk
I don't have a house; however my brief experience from what I have seen is
that the HOA is overwhelmingly favored. Unlike an Internet forum, not reading
the TOS doesn't actually work as an excuse. Even for tearjerker issues
involving veterans and flags.

------
eksith
I'm considered "new" though I've lurked for a while before registering. There
are some obvious cases (spamming, trolling, link-bait, off-topic, URL-
shortening etc...) that leave little doubt to the reason, but it seems to be
fairly well known that in fact no one really knows why some users get
hellbanned while others, behaving far more egregiously (precluding above
reasons), don't.

I found this search enlightening though:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=hellbanned+hacker+news](https://www.google.com/search?q=hellbanned+hacker+news)

~~~
kmfrk
There's also a feature that slows down the site for a user under certain
conditions.

It's surreptitious crap like this that makes HN such a pain to use for a lot
of us.

~~~
ColinWright
For how long have you run a popular discussion web site, and what measures do
you take to reduce the increased snarkiness in extended exchanges? I'd love to
hear how you solve the problem.

~~~
kmfrk
Have a set of clear rules (and not vague non-language like "don't write non-
hacker, off-topic stuff") - AND ENFORCE IT, visibly. Unenforced rules aren't
rules. Unclarified rules aren't rules.

Whenever someone is penalized, point them to the specific rules they violated.
And keep in mind that people make mistakes every now and then. Show largesse.
This isn't a production line where flawed products are tossed out at the blink
of an eye.

Last, don't view everything as a "problem" to be "solved". We're talking about
human beings, not Turing-complete automatons. That's a big part of the problem
with how HN is run. You will never "solve" this the way you would a bug.

You need a human element to address something human. Treating everyone like a
spam bot only works for spam bots, and has the side effect of pissing off the
human false positives.

~~~
jbri
I disagree with the idea of having a strict code of rules. Coming up with
rules and sticking to them to the letter doesn't do anything to encourage
meaningful discussion.

All you end up are the trolls who do their best to toe the line while
provoking other people to step over it, and the sort of people who think a
conversation where everybody follows the rules yet no-one says anything of
substance is preferable to a lively discussion. You end up driving away the
people who just want to talk about things they enjoy or are interested in, and
don't particularly care about adhering to your rigid social system.

People are people, not automatons, and the system of curating discussions
should reflect that. If someone is acting in bad faith, waiting for them to
violate the letter of a rule that's been written down before you do anything
about it just allows that person to drive away more of your actual desired
userbase.

~~~
kmfrk
Vague wording in rules is like legislation; they just end up as excuses for
doing bad things, instead of ensuring good behaviour. "Toeing the line", if
you will.

We constantly see this in trying to figure out what kind of stories are
supposed to be submitted to HN.

Does it really make sense for a person like Maciej Ceglowski to be permabanned
from HN?
[https://twitter.com/pinboard/status/111332316458135553](https://twitter.com/pinboard/status/111332316458135553).
I think it's a shame, partly because I think he's a smart guy with a fresh
view on things, but also because I don't think the reasons for banning him are
very compelling.

You can't have poorly-defined rules and opaque moderation at the same time.
You'll see why, when you incur the wrath of one of pg's moderation scripts for
no apparent reason.

\---

EDIT: As an aside, to give an idea of what a fucking pain being (inexplicably)
hellbanned is, picture all your Hacker News bookmarks no longer working,
because you've been banned from the entire site.

~~~
jbri
Vague wording in legislation ends up as an excuse for doing bad things because
when you get enough people together to call them a government, you're bound to
end up with a few bad eggs. Online discussion sites are small enough that
that's not necessarily the case - it's quite feasible to maintain a core group
of people who don't abuse that power.

Especially since, unlike in government, that core group of people is beholden
only to whoever is operating the site, and not to a popularity contest that
sees them being replaced with an entirely new group every so often. This is
also why you absolutely can have poorly-defined rules and opaque moderation -
the operator of the discussion site shapes what they want it to look like, and
if too many people disagree with that vision then another discussion site
springs up tailored to what those people want. And if the original operator is
too arbitrary or capricious in their moderation, their own site dies or
becomes an insular hugbox or something like that.

\--

Ultimately, when people say they want stricter interpretation of the rules and
more accountability on an online discussion board, what they really mean is "I
disagree with some of these decisions and I want them to make the decision
that I would make next time". Which is fine, but having seen a lot of the
proposed alternatives in action I can't really see them as being an
improvement.

------
lnanek2
The mods seem to use it as their version of voting. I see perfectly fine
stories banned all the time, consistently over a period of months. The same
with users. Lots of times I'll look in a thread and see lots of dead people
who don't know they are dead, posting interesting and useful stuff.

I've run forums and image posting sites before, the trouble isn't finding
moderators from the community who will work for free. The trouble is finding
ones that won't abuse their power.

------
nhebb
It's gotta be a bug. Either that, or pg cracked under the strain of running
the YC empire and implicitly announced, "You're all dead to me."

~~~
eksith
Interesting theory! We should write a bot to run a Bayesian-Freudian analysis
of his Twitter stream for hints ;)

------
arcameron
I've been hellbanned at _least_ a few times while trying to show HN the OSS
project I've been working on :(

In /r/programming on reddit, it was shadowbanned as soon as it was posted.
It's pretty frustrating and it's making me want to contribute to HN less.

[https://chat.echoplex.us](https://chat.echoplex.us)
[https://github.com/qq99/echoplexus](https://github.com/qq99/echoplexus)

------
stcredzero
There now seems to be a subset of Internet denizens who are invested in a
culture of pattern-matching and parroting snarky self-righteous knee-jerk
reactions. Even more disturbing, is that many of these people have been
indoctrinated to believe that this is "clever" somehow, even though it
involves nothing more sophisticated than ELIZA.

Going around thinking you're superior because you're connected is just as
shallow online as it was for country clubs.

Please actually process ideas if you comment on HN.

------
anthonyb
I just took a look at the new page, and it doesn't look any different to
normal.

The users of those posts aren't necessarily hellbanned - the posts are though.
If enough people flag a new story I think it'll automatically be marked dead.

Usually it's just for spammy crap, or stories that aren't very interesting.

~~~
wikiburner
We're actually discussing the flagging situation here, in a _thread that was
flagged_ :

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6155513](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6155513)

I don't think many stories get flagged just on the new page. It's usually
domains that are flagged, like buzzfeed.com, huffingtonpost.com, or
gawker.com. It sounds like maybe there was a bug in the server today.

~~~
anthonyb
_Tons_ of stories get flagged on the new page. They're usually spam.

In this case, it's part of a policy not to discuss meta-hn issues on hn. If
you start a post asking why you were hell banned, or flagging/downvoting,
it'll usually get flagged and/or removed.

------
jmckib
Interesting blog post on it here
[http://toway1234.tumblr.com/post/16021243707/hacker-news-
hel...](http://toway1234.tumblr.com/post/16021243707/hacker-news-hellbanning-
is-unacceptable)

------
sigkill
Holy cow! Just saw it. It looks like a minefield. I _speculate_ it's probably
a bug or something because I've never seen so many dead links together. Either
that, or today being a Sunday, has got everyone trying to promote their stuff.

------
sjtgraham
Emailing info@ycombinator.com is the way to get these questions answered.

~~~
northwest
An open discussion has the benefit of generating valuable feedback for PG.

~~~
sjtgraham
I may or may not agree with you, but my comment only considers HN rules and
that there is a strong precedent for these HN-policy meta-discussions to be
killed by mods.

~~~
northwest
> there is a strong precedent for these HN-policy meta-discussions to be
> killed by mods.

If this is true, it would be a pretty sad state of affairs.

If such a discussion comes up, it's because of a lack of transparency.

~~~
ColinWright
It is true, and for me it is not a sad state of affairs. I've seen more sites
killed by excessive meta-discussion than almost anything else. More, true
"transparency" frequently just leads to more meta-discussion about the
minutiae, and constant bickering about nuances of interpretation.

Personally, I think PG is striking a good balance. If you disagree you are, of
course, free to go elsewhere and/or start an alternative community, and solve
all the problenms in your own way.

------
bluehex
The only pattern I've noticed is that many of the hellbanned users only ever
link to only a single domain -- probably their own.

~~~
darxius
This is also something I never understood. Who cares if I submit tons of (non-
duplicate) links from my own domain. If the community doesn't like them, they
won't get upvoted and will disappear. Same goes for the opposite.

~~~
bluehex
I totally agree . I've found some things I would have liked to upvote in such
banned users submissions a quite a few times.

------
rjsw
Some of the dead posts look to be duplicates of live ones.

------
xraycharlie
If I make a comment, any comment, and it gets two or more downvotes, I assume
the account has been hellbanned and abandon the account.

Why? Because it's happened to me many times in the past.

I create new accounts often. The thought police cannot stop me.

~~~
igravious
That's ridiculous.

I often get down-voted for some of my more bone-headed, humorously off-topic
or bad faith posts. Well, not _very_ often (generally I'm a good soul) but you
get the point.

If you're not making this up and this has happened to you many times then
maybe you should consider the possibility that your posts are not adding
anything of benefit to the site. I created one account initially and went from
there. I have never even felt the need to create an alter-ego, and evil twin
or a "posting-while-drunk" safe account.

Hope that helps. Think twice or thrice before you hit the "reply" button.

~~~
pubby
>you should consider the possibility that your posts are not adding anything
of benefit to the site.

...such as when your thoughtful posts don't show up because you got hellbanned
for a single post the mods/algorithm didn't like. And when considering the
odds, it makes sense to create new accounts.

------
digipaper
Am I banned?

~~~
peter-fogg
Nope. Am I?

~~~
IanChiles
Nope.

~~~
X4
Am I banned?

~~~
arcameron
Don't think so, am I?

~~~
X4
Nope

------
kyro
Anyone notice how if you reverse the letters PG and prepend it with K for
karma, you get the KGP?

~~~
rfrey
That's true! Also, if you reverse your username, add a graphic "1" to the
first letter and add 2 and 3 to the next two (don't forget to wraparound!),
you get "duck". You can't fool me, mallard!

