

Ask PG: Please allow us to report incorrectly dead accounts - ars

I come across accounts that are incorrectly dead all the time. For example there are two at the bottom here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3669688<p>Both are dead and should not be.<p>Please add a flag link to posts from dead accounts that would report the account to moderators to double check that it really should be dead.<p>I come across dead accounts in virtually every story and almost all of them should not be dead. Whatever moderation you have going on is far too strict.<p>I also think you should require at least one flagged post before killing an account for having too low of a karma.
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zerostar07
I 've had my 2 previous accounts hellbanned and i can only guess someone did
not like my comments or something although they were by far not my worst
comments:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ristretto> (karma 835)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ignifero> (karma 1761)

It's my understanding that it is a normal thing here. I mostly visit the
community for the curated frontpage links. I also have showdead on, as i often
find engaging but controversial opinions at the bottom. Typically the top
spaces are occupied by either extremely long posts or some very politically
correct opinions that offer nothing as debate fodder. Anyway, given that this
is a corporate forum, i think i can live with that.

I would suggest at least letting us know when we are hellbanned, it is a pain
to talk to a black hole.

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brandon
A friend of mine had his account marked dead for some reason. He had no idea
and his comments and submissions were effectively blackholed for weeks. He
eventually stopped participating much in HN because of the lack of
interaction.

Once I noticed, I emailed PG and he fixed it some hours later. Not a terribly
scalable solution, but it got the job done.

~~~
Forrest7778
I agree 100% that you should receive a notification that your account is
blackholed. After reading this and still being new to HN I am a tad terrified
now that I might one day be blackholed and not even realize it.

~~~
dangrossman
The whole point of a hellban is that the person receiving it doesn't know.
Telling a troll they're banned just feeds into their behavior; they'll do
whatever's necessary to circumvent the ban just to fight the site
administrator and other users. A hellban subtly encourages the troll to leave
voluntarily by ensuring they're ignored.

[http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/06/suspension-ban-
or-h...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/06/suspension-ban-or-
hellban.html)

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cianclarke
For some reason, I'm unable to submit new content - has my account been
incorrectly flagged in some way? Tried clearing browser cache, cookies, and
trying across multiple browsers. I don't want to just sign up for a new
account, seems like the wrong way to go about this?!

~~~
cianclarke
Hang on, it's just started working there again, after not for a few hours. How
odd :-)

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bdfh42
I think you may be confused - what in your view constitutes a dead account?

~~~
ars
These for example:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=generators>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=donnawarellp>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=zzz90210>

They have negative karma (which is why they were killed), but they are not
spammers.

~~~
bdfh42
I am not sure I understand what your problem is here. If negative karma
accounts that have not been active for months are downgraded in some way - it
just strikes me as sensible housekeeping.

Perhaps you can explain the issue as you see it?

~~~
ars
Not been active? Two of them posted today, and the other posted yesterday.

Housekeeping? Do you even know what killed accounts are?

> I am not sure I understand what your problem is here.

That's pretty obvious. But please try to understand it before assuming there
is no problem.

PS. I just realized why you think they are not active! You don't have showdead
turned on in your profile, so their dead posts are hidden to you.

~~~
tnorthcutt
_That's pretty obvious. But please try to understand it before assuming there
is no problem._

bdfh42 asked you to explain it as you see it. I think they are trying to
understand it.

