
Hellbanned from Hacker News - yankcrime
https://jcs.org/notaweblog/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker_news/
======
tptacek
Nine times out of ten, the cabal makes good calls about hellbanning people,
and the bans improve the site.

But when they get it wrong, boy, do they ever get it wrong. For instance, Paul
Graham personally hellbanned Maciej Ceglowski for calling Sebastian Marshall a
"prolix douchebag". Maciej's comment was not a high point of Hacker News
decorum and in that instance probably degraded the site slightly, but no
reasonable person could have looked at 'idlewords comment record and not come
to the conclusion that Maciej is someone we want on the site. Sometimes, you
take the bad with the good.

There have also been times where it's apparent that there is, if not
"automatic", than at least "mechanical" banning for reasons other than nasty
comments. I don't know or care what the abuse mechanisms being tripped are ---
I buy into the idea that in this case, obscurity is making some baseline level
of security cost-effective for Graham and his team. But it's important to know
that whatever mechanical process is banning people for abuse, it's imperfect.

Ultimately, I think Graham is in a bind here. A more typical forum site would
enlist more community support to help police the site. Graham can't do that,
because HN also runs important parts of YC's (very sensitive) applications and
communications process.† I have a hard time holding this against him. Managing
a sprawling forum site is a hard problem. Doing that while having the site do
double-duty as the front-end for your startup seed fund system must be a
nightmare.

So I'd generally say: assume good faith; don't make a production of the
mistakes; but, know that the mistakes do happen, are pretty annoying, and are
worth at least remarking about.

† _(It's worth knowing that YC members also have some silent perks on HN,
beyond the job ads)._

 _e45f8d80989cd423c9bfa66738395f8d71c89d8f_

~~~
pg
_For instance, Paul Graham personally hellbanned Maciej Ceglowski for calling
Sebastian Marshall a "prolix douchebag"._

No I didn't. If I had, his comments after that would be dead.

Edit: tptacek points out that he was briefly banned, though not long enough to
cause any of his comments to be killed.

~~~
saurik
<assuming notion="your edit is in regards to tptacek's response">No, what
tptacek actually said was: "he did have comments killed; that's how we noticed
he was hellbanned".</assuming>

I personally remember seeing a few that were dead after the "prolix douchebag"
one when I was looking into it. (I am known in my friend circle to maintain a
database of users that are hell-banned; so, when Maciej, a long-friend-of-a-
close-friend, seemed to be hit, I was notified almost immediately.)

I also remember those comments mysteriously being un-killed when his account
became un-banned. (So, if you are using the current status, that isn't
accurate anymore; or, if you are relying on us to not have seen the temporary
status, we did.)

~~~
pg
Yeah, that must have been it. When I unban someone who was only recently
banned, I often unkill the stuff that got killed while they were banned.

------
pg
I only banned him while I was waiting for a reply to the email I sent him. In
fact I thought I'd already unbanned him, though I noticed just now that he was
still banned. What a tempest in a teapot.

Incidentally, this post and its predecessors illustrate perfectly why the site
guidelines ask users to contact us about problems with moderation rather than
posting on the site about them. Though nearly empty of content, they get
upvoted faster than anything else.

~~~
horsehead
I would assume they are typically upvoted for a reason. Obviously you have
access to data I'm not privvy to, but 400+ upvotes in that little time would,
I imagine, represent a _significant_ portion of people who read the post.
Obviously the site is no democracy, and I think we all understand that. But I
would also guess that user feedback is appreciated (hence the request to send
feedback via email). I would also think that many users have the same
questions, but do not bother with an email because it is not really worth the
hassle, and upvote a thread like that just to voice their agreement [else they
would not upvote, unless they were simply trying to troll].

The whole scenario is fairly minor, but it seems to raise at least a small
concern among what I would guess is a respectable portion of the userbase.

edit: grammar.

------
Cherian_Abraham
I can relate. I posted a story about Apple's disruption at the POS talking of
how the new retail App allows for purchases in store without ever having to
contract a store rep. I posted that alongside why I believe this is important
considering the missed opportunity that was GoogleWallet. The post got front
page before getting sunk by mods. I dont know why, but there was nothing
sensationalistic about the title or the content. And this is a space that I
have considerable capabilities in. And I was not trolling.

Since then none of the stories I post under this handle ever see the light of
day. They cannot be voted up and they just face a slow death. I stopped
spending any time posting on other threads since then because I cannot see the
value in contributing to stories if my stories are not allowed to play fairly.

~~~
cremnob
The alternative is becoming like reddit so I personally like the heavy
moderation, warts and all.

~~~
kmfrk
False equivalence. It doesn't have to be one or the other.

------
gamache
During my hellban about two years ago (I posted an article which had been
silently banned, and was flagged for spam, I guess?), I was anonymously
advised that the HN moderators were "capricious and tone-deaf", and that my
recourse was to contact PG directly.

After a curt and unpleasant email exchange, I was back on my feet. Pretty
stupid that I had to bother PG at all, and even stupider that my one
interaction with him was so needlessly distasteful.

~~~
muyuu
Not this time I guess, it was pg personally who hellbanned him. I hope he
listens and drops it.

I think it's massively disrespectful to users to hellban and delete from view
strongly upvoted posts, or to silently mass-downvote them. Pg and mods,
respect your users' opinions a bit more than that, please...

~~~
gamache
PG has the right to curate HN posts as he sees fit. I just think a little more
transparency would go a long way. Hellbanning is, by design, sneaky. The fact
that it's the predominant ban method is extremely frustrating for a non-
malicious user.

------
pbhjpbhj
Got to say that this all looks pretty bad for the mods.

\--

Edit:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/NewsForHackers/comments/v0f8u/overmo...](http://www.reddit.com/r/NewsForHackers/comments/v0f8u/overmoderating_on_hackernews/)
is this worth discussing outside?

~~~
guard-of-terra
Violent moderation leads to people being annoyed, some questions, more
moderation; a minor outrage, bans;amajor outrage spilling to social media,
nuclear wipes. Damaged community, sometimes even dead community.

If you see a flamebait post, you delete it. But if you see a question about
where the original post go, and you delete it: then you just started a toxic
flame war with your own hands.

And "guidelines" never help. When people are outraged they would not observe
same rules they supported a day before. Sorry, not going to happen, so don't
blame flame war on public.

------
comex
I consider hellbanning a rude and deceitful tactic that should only be used
against users who immaturely refuse to accept a regular ban. Having hellbans
as the only type of ban is rather odd.

~~~
Confusion
It's hard to detect whether someone refuses a regular ban. People use proxies.
It's more trouble than it's worth. A account hellban is the simplest ban that
works.

------
daenz
Whenever you give some people more power than others, in _any_ form, abuses of
that power will eventually happen. Police, prison guards, bosses, government
officials, parents, website moderators, etc, etc, etc. The system becomes
dysfunctional.

Power just amplifies people's egos, personal insecurities, and prejudices. We
can't deal with it.

------
gyardley
Hellbanned for violating a site guideline, huh?

 _Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to
have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good.
Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about
observing proprieties._

If neglecting to observe proprieties is a characteristic of the most
successful founders, surely we can shrug off a minor violation of the site's
rules that led to what many thought was an interesting discussion.

------
joering2
you gotta be kidding me! Just this morning I started writing an article about
my experience being hellbanned.

I will still post it at some point, but seriously I mentioned that yesterday
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4102431>

edit: (since I cannot add new comment): also, you cannot upvote this post
since its dead (I just learnt that and decided to share)

edit: as of 4:35 est, article is not dead anymore. 5 min ago it still was
dead...

edit: 4:43 dead again.

edit: now its back from dead again. but you can't upvote it (arrow dissapears,
score remains the same).

------
wmf
Basically you can't use HN to discuss itself. Although I'm not a believer in
the "wisdom of crowds", I think many-to-many discussions about HN could be
more productive than many-to-pg private emails. Maybe there are some lessons
to be learned from MetaTalk here.

------
ck2
Tell me about it. My old "_ck_" account was killed and I still have no idea
why.

------
ddfall
Is it just me or did this get post just get banned for a few minutes and then
return?! Admins can't make up their minds now? Regardless, glad to see it
back.

Update: Yup, had the dead one in another tab still and now it's back. For
now...

Update 2: It's now dead again. It looks like it only came back for about five
minutes.

Update 3: And it's back again. Really wish I had put times on my updates now.
Oh well. I wonder how long it will take until it gets pulled yet again.

------
ghurlman
Hellbanned from the internet as well, apparently; notsomuch as a google cache
available.

------
veb
Those guidelines are silly, life always finds a way... to bypass guidelines.

------
billswift
PG posted an excuse (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4103210>), then the
thread he posted it on was killed -
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4102907>

------
jlgreco
Anyone else notice that this post was dead for a few minutes, just a few
minutes ago? Seems it is back now...

Ok, and now it's dead again. Looks like it only came back for a few minutes
and in those few minutes PG posted...

------
kmfrk
I've had plenty of time where I was hell-banned through IP ban or something to
that effect, never knowing what the hell the reason was. Often, I could just
browse it with Tor, but obviously few, if any, sites are worth doing that.

Is this some kind of weird flood control or a opaque and stupid moderation
policy I am not aware of? I am not the kind of person to call people names,
and I have often received the supposed bans after I have written some of my
most popular posts or threads.

------
pxlpshr
Moderators may make mistakes here and there; they are human so just deal with
it. It's what makes this place great. The hand of god's helpers has always
been here, most of the time you don't know it.

Can you imagine how snarky this place would be without it? I don't think
(reddit * intellectuals * anonymous) would sustain for very long.

------
_mayo
looks like it's down.

------
guard-of-terra
My old account was banned too, in orwellian style: ilyak does not exist; ilyak
never existed.

Some of my comments were surely flamebait but so am I; at least they were
honest. But I still do not know the exact reason, obviously.

------
antidaily
Smell ya later.

