While I have never been banned, I have been warned several times by dang about my behavior and I deserved every one of them. It seems to have worked too, because a lot of times I'll write a nasty comment and there will be this little voice in my head asking "what's dang going to think of this?" and I'll either edit it, not post it, or delete it.
When I feel a bit to much about a subject I open notepad and write the comment there and then just close the window if it feels inappropriate. This way there is no risk that I accidentally post it but it still feels like I got to say what I wanted to say. And then I can write something more levelheaded.
There's also the 'delay' setting that you can set in your HN user profile, which gives you 1-10 minutes to edit your comment before it becomes visible to others. This has saved my bacon on many occasions.
I really need to start using this, thank you so much! Not sure why I never payed much attention to those settings... but I know I edit my comments way too much after posting.
As for dang and his moderation, I appreciate very much his not-so-gentle nudging towards better conversation. I still fail frequently, but I try (and hope I am doing better). I had a particular ban that I got annoyed about because I thought the other guy deserved one too, but the real lesson was that it was about my response... and while it took a while, I took the correction to heart. Thanks dang for that, and for putting up with my more unothordox comments in a time when that is less and less tolerated.
Oh man, I do love it when systems provide me tools to stop my arsehole nature coming out. Sometimes I can't do it myself. I'll be enabling this for sure.
Never knew it was built in. I do the same as other people: I type it into the text box, walk away, come back to my computer later and if I still think it’s worth posting, do so. Probably abandon 75% of my “contributions” that way.
It also helps that you can only post like 5 times per 24 hour period. Helps me to not waste my quota on low value replies. It doesn’t look like everyone on the site is subject to that limit though—still trying to figure that one out... are there commenters with super powers that can ignore the 5/day limit?
You've been experiencing that because your account is rate limited. We rate limit accounts when they post too many low-quality comments too quickly and/or get involved in flamewars. I've looked through your recent history and it seems fine, so normally we'd remove that restriction from your account—but you just said it was helpful, so maybe I shouldn't? You're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com if you want it removed.
