Sure their posts are hidden now, but why are they able to post at all? Why is anyone able to post like this? It's not good for the site, but it's endemic. Equating opinionated and acerbic comments like the one above with flamebait while saying and doing nothing about overtly abusive behavior makes no sense, and is not good for HN.
> Maybe you should be focusing more effort on users like this one, who has been posing nothing but abuse for a month
That account has been banned since the day it was created. Its comments have never been anything but [dead]. That's the maximum penalty that exists on HN. Several other accounts related to that one are also banned. This is standard.
(For readers who don't have "showdead" turned on in their profile: the account anigbrowl mentioned has been posting things like "Shut up, $SLUR", "Fuck off, $SLUR", and worse. They are banned and all their comments are killed automatically. This means that no one sees them unless they turn the 'showdead' setting on in their profile. Any user is welcome to turn that setting on, but please don't forget that if you do, you're signing up to see the worst that the internet has to offer on HN.)
Banned accounts can continue to post, but their comments are killed by default. Why? Because otherwise they'd just create new accounts and pick up where they left off. Since new accounts are unbanned at first, there would be a time lag before we could catch those and ban them again. In the meantime, more abusive posts would get through.
In other words, allowing banned accounts to post (but making their posts default-invisible) is the way to minimize their effect on a large open forum like HN, where there's no barrier to creating accounts. Attempting to restrict them further would just end up exposing more people to the abusive posts.
HN would have ceased to exist long ago if we were "doing nothing about overtly abusive behavior", so I was a little taken aback at your assumption there.
I agree, of course, that 13_9_7_7_5_18's posts were worse than computerthings's. That's why we banned the former immediately, and the latter only after warning them (many warnings, actually, if you count previous accounts that we banned) and only after they'd broken the site guidelines many times.
> Banned accounts can continue to post, but their comments are killed by default. Why? Because otherwise they'd just create new accounts and pick up where they left off. Since new accounts are unbanned at first, there would be a time lag before we could catch those and ban them again. In the meantime, more abusive posts would get through.
In other words, allowing banned accounts to post (but making their posts default-invisible) is the way to minimize their effect on a large open forum like HN, where there's no barrier to creating accounts. Attempting to restrict them further would just end up exposing more people to the abusive posts.
But maybe there should be some friction to creating accounts, like requiring a few worthwhile submissions before granting commenting privileges (which is already how it works with downvoting and flagging), or revealing the email addresses of persistently abusive accounts. Just wiping he accounts and forcing them to create new ones increases the friction, which lowers the incentive to keep doing it.
HN would have ceased to exist long ago if we were "doing nothing about overtly abusive behavior", so I'm a little taken aback at your assumption that we were doing nothing about these.
But you're not, really. Shadowbanning abuse accounts with a keyword filter is the weakest possible response, and that's why there's an endless influx of them. Since you can't really impose consequences (because usage is anonymous, any email address will do and VPNs make it impossible to track abusers), there should be some more friction to make casual abuse a less attractive pastime.
Maybe you should be focusing more effort on users like this one, who has been posing nothing but abuse for a month: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=13_9_7_7_5_18
Sure their posts are hidden now, but why are they able to post at all? Why is anyone able to post like this? It's not good for the site, but it's endemic. Equating opinionated and acerbic comments like the one above with flamebait while saying and doing nothing about overtly abusive behavior makes no sense, and is not good for HN.