

Why are my hackernews posts not visible to anyone? - gauravsc

My hacker news posts are not visible to anyone except me, when I am logged In. Infact, when I log out, they are not visible to me too, Why, What sort of algorithm does hacker news use to display posts and filter them?
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ColinWright
Firstly, what is the username you're claiming is invisible? I can certainly
see this post.

But apart from that, you have, for some reason, been "hell-banned". Without
seeing your posts and/or comments from around the time it happened I can't
offer any suggestions or advice as to why it happened. Do note that sometimes
it happens by accident. It happened to me the other day, and in a reply to an
email I sent asking about it, PG said I'd been "fat-fingered" by accident.

With regards the algorithms, I have no inside knowledge, just deductions based
on what I've seen and some experiments I've run. However, if you consistently
get flagged, or get downvoted vigorously, I suspect there is an automatic
hell-ban, possibly preceded by a "slow-ban" (wherein everything slows down and
responds like molasses for a while). If PG was being completely honest (and
I'm not suggesting he wasn't, but as a mathematician I tend to try to cover
all bases) then some (and perhaps all) hell-bans are actually performed by the
moderators, possible in response to flags thrown up by automated detection
systems.

As an aside: Do you understand the effects of flags, downvotes, and their
differences?

So if you want to know more, perform searches for "hell-ban", "flag",
"downvote", "dead", and combinations thereof. You'll find plenty of
discussion, and considerable complaints. For one, I think that PG has done
remarkably well in keeping HN civil (although clearly not perfect) in the face
of popularity, and the occasional false-positive and draconian measure might
well be the price paid.

~~~
gauravsc
Yes, this post is visible but all my other posts(which are URL links)
definitely are not visible. This "hell ban" phenomenon is something I am
unsure of how I got, I didn't make any such comments in the past.

~~~
ColinWright
I thought since you were complaining that everything was dead then it must
have been a different username, and that you had created a new one to be able
to post. It wasn't clear, but I guess you just didn't know.

I've never seen this sort of thing happen. Were they "dead on arrival"? When
you posted the links, did you then check to make sure there was a reply
comment box? Did you log out and see if they were there? Did they die after
some time?

There are web sites that are banned, and links to them are simply never alive.
I don't know the list off-hand - you can find them with a search. However it's
certainly true that techcrunch isn't one of them, so that doesn't explain
everything.

I've been on this site for a significant time, and I can't explain _all_ your
links being dead, comment-less and point-less. You might send an email to PG
and ask, but be I would suggest that you be clear, complete, concise, and
patient. The shorter your email the more likely he can reply immediately.

I also suggest you run an experiment and submit a link to a page somewhere,
see if it has a comment box, log out, see if it's still there, log back in,
delete it, then include the result of that in your email.

~~~
gauravsc
thanks Colin, Can you please tell me the email ID on which to send the query?
Thanks very much for your help, I can't find a contact us section here.

~~~
ColinWright
<http://paulgraham.com/info.html>

------
Zarkonnen
They all show up as [dead] for me, which means they've been essentially
deleted. As to why, er, I have no idea. You displeased some algorithm in HN's
guts.

~~~
gauravsc
Exactly, I wish to know the algorithm that HN follows, it must be something
really interesting.

~~~
kinleyd
Read the guidelines for posting, that should give you some clues. Then search
HN.

