
Speak up - coffeemug
http://www.defmacro.org/2014/08/27/speakup.html
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facepalm
Another thing that could happen if you speak up is that you get hellbanned on
HN. It seems a bit ironic to me to see this on HN, which implements more and
more mechanisms to ensure consent.

Anyway, I think this just highlights the importance of anonymity on the
internet.

~~~
tux3
>Another thing that could happen if you speak up is that you get hellbanned on
HN.

Is that actually possible ? That's disgusting, this makes the admin look like
a piece of shit in my opinion.

I'm not sure what kind of problem this is trying to solve, but I'd rather see
the hellbanned posts and the occasional person with an unpopular opinion that
stay locked in an echo chamber.

I'm not trying to tell HN how to run it's tomato garden, but please, is there
a rationale for hellbanning ?

~~~
thaumaturgy
Since you've got a relatively new account, you might not know that you can see
hellbanned users, posts, and comments by going to your user account page and
changing showdead to "yes".

You can then make up your own mind about whether or not hellbanning on HN is a
problem.

So far, it seems to have the same traits as a spam filter: it's effective most
of the time, but occasionally catches a false positive.

I don't think I'd go quite so far as to say that you get hellbanned here for
"speaking up" \-- there are plenty of unpopular or controversial opinions
here. I _might_ agree that people with those opinions occasionally get tired
of arguing against the crowd and stop contributing as much, and I'd definitely
agree that there have been a case or three where somebody got hellbanned under
suspicious circumstances (idlewords' account, years ago, is a good example).
But that doesn't really indicate a systemic problem here.

The rationale for hellbanning is that it lets actual spammers do their thing
all day long without annoying the regular users, it keeps a few people with
mental health issues from disrupting every conversation here, and it keeps a
few malicious people from being too much of a nuisance.

------
dredmorbius
Another point: anonymity can be used for ill or good, but as a means to allow
one to speak without professional sanction, it's tremondously useful.

As a means to shill or astroturf (look up "Steve Barkto"), not so much.

~~~
yuhong
_As a means to shill or astroturf (look up "Steve Barkto"), not so much._

As a side note, that OS/2 2.0 fiasco was one of my favorite topics in fact.

