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Comment by feor | Hacker News Reader

They are mostly rehashing old arguments against HN (still valid, just not particularly insightful): Apple fanaticism, the fact that there are less code-related news as time passes, the hellbanning system, etc.

I think the real story is that as usual anything that involves 4chan gets upvoted to the top here, indicating there might be some significant overlap between the two userbases, as much as they might both dislike it.

Here's a link to the archive in case it 404s: http://archive.installgentoo.net/g/thread/26490724

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Arguably, a community has a problem, when meta-discussion of the site keeps cropping up.

At this point, criticizing Hacker News is low-hanging fruit - and as a result gets a lot of karma.

If that's the case, then HN has had a problem since nearly the beginning! You can find posts from its very first year (2007) worrying about whether it's overlapping too much with reddit, how to avoid redditization, etc. (Example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=60767)

I gotta say, the stuff you can get hellbanned for here is petty beyond belief. Last time I got hellbanned for saying "heh." in response to a comment bashing Noam Chomsky in the most knee-jerk and ironic way; I was genuinely left speechless. Sure, "heh" is not a valid response, I didn't expect anything but downvotes -- but hellbanning, for that? Really? And don't even get me started on the whole "pg is the father I never had" stuff, it's nauseating. Sometimes this site feels more like a cult than anything.

Well, if this comment even shows up, I guess that's it for this account, too. Oh well. To each their own.

Did you have a low-karma account when you made that useless comment before? If so, I don't see a problem with the algorithm. Lots of downvotes on a low-karma account is indicative of a spammer, a troll, or someone who hasn't taken the time to figure out the communication style of the site (it's not that hard) and probably won't ever. Hellbanning itself is a great idea; have you moderated a forum before and dealt with abusive trolls who keep coming back?

Nope, actually, I didn't even get a downvote for that comment -- I noticed the site slowed down not long after posting it, so I looked at the thread with another browser, it was fast as ever and my comment didn't show up = slow+hellbanned. The comment was still at 1 though, no downvote. Not even one. Plus, the account is still at 12 karma: http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=hopefully

The comment in question, the "Heh.", is gone -- and so is the comment it was a response to, something about Chomsky being about politics, not science, even more flamebaity than my "heh."

Not that it matters. It's their site: they can do what they want, I can try to get around it until I get bored of that. No hard feelings, but also not a whole lot respect.

> "have you moderated a forum before and dealt with abusive trolls who keep coming back?"

Have you ever been censored for disagreeing? Did that make you a.) more or b.) less of a pain in the ass? But actually, I just make a new account when I want to speak my mind on something, more often than not it's offering a correction or a link. So yeah, I keep coming back. And why not.

You can't just define anyone who gets banned as troll, spammer, or otherwise malicious. That's not what those words mean.

Here's the comment in question you replied to. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4291948 In order to see your own, you have to turn on "show dead" in your profile.

But fair enough. I can imagine a moderator seeing your comment show up at http://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments then either reflexively banning or seeing your karma is sub-100 before doing so.

> Have you ever been censored for disagreeing?

Are you saying your "heh" was disagreement? In any case, yes, and it makes me shrug--it doesn't affect my pain-in-the-ass attribute. If I want my opinion online and google-able, I have places to put it where it won't be censored. If I want to debate, I've found HN is useful for quite a lot of subjects but still shies from those which pretty much everywhere with a karma system shies from (so that includes academia)--HN is nevertheless fairly tolerant if you have a coherent point to make, at least for a while. Even moldbug (http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=moldbug) lasted for quite a while with all his controversy before he got hellbanned. His case of banning is one of several I strongly disagree with, but that's not enough to discount the entire concept of hellbanning. Of course it's not a perfect system--e.g. it'd be nice if HN users with >10k karma could reverse one.

That account hasn't been hellbanned. If it were, ALL of the comments for that account would be invisible, and would only show up if someone turned on "showdead" in their profile page. The site slows down all the time. Once again, that doesn't automatically mean hellban.

Most likely the system just lost that part of the thread. On a big site like this, performance is usually more important than data integrity, so the odd loss of comments is considered acceptable.

I'm very sure hellbanning doesn't affect comments prior to the ban--do you know something I don't?--but when new comments by that user are posted they are instantly marked dead. The slowdown is part of the hellban, the whole point is to make the site unpleasant so that the user leaves instead of coming back to harass. With the user believing the site is slow as tar and no one responding to them, it's quite effective. The downside is that it loses its effectiveness as it becomes public knowledge.

Interesting... I thought they did affect all prior comments. My mistake. He has indeed been hellbanned.

And as your comments show, the opacity of the rules and automated moderation is a problem with the way HN is run.

It's a problem from the point of view of a writer wishing to ensure that his writings will be read.

From the point of view of a reader, however, having information about what will likely get moderated be scattered rather than gathered in one place decreases a reader's exposure to text written by people who have not read a lot of comment sections.

Perhaps your poor experience here is because of the tone of your posts? From your own description, your posts seem to involve (a willful?) mental blind spot around the whole concept of politeness. The implication of your comment is that cleverness trumps all, and that insightful snark is entitled to some sort of social leeway. That's not how things work around here.

In short, your HN comment is a bit clueless.

In other words if you dont' have something nice to say, be passive aggressive about it.

When in Rome...

Downvoting should take care of these issues.

Mental blind spot? You're making stuff up, it's called strawman -- and then you accuse me of having a blind spot for your strawman? And that's not snarky? Irony duly noted and appreciated.

But you're right, it's for example this passive-aggressive condescension by people who don't even know what they're talking about, but want to give their 2 cents anyway, I don't play very nice with.

> Mental blind spot? You're making stuff up, it's called strawman -- and then you accuse me of having a blind spot for your strawman? And that's not snarky? Irony duly noted and appreciated.

Note I did say "(willful?)" Thanks for clearing that question up.

Also, the irony of the functional similarity of your post and its parent is left as an exercise. (Though you're probably feeling too righteous to get it and would be furious if you did.)

To recap: I said "heh" in response to an all out attack on Chomsky's character and motivations, I don't get notified of having done anything wrong, but instead I get slow- and hellbanned. And I'm being impolite? Hellbanning isn't some kind of cowardly BS, saying "heh" is the real horror here.

mind = boggled.

indicating there might be some significant overlap between the two userbases

I am more than willing to out myself. The discussion is exactly proving the point why 4chan is such a fascinating place. Sure it has lots of "distortion" but in the end it is one of the few places that does not sugar coat reality and the absence of any "punishments" produce raw insights. That is why the only "communities" I am somewhat active on are hn and 4chan. One because it provides a more supportive environment, the other because it isn't afraid to go there where it hurts. I never could find a reason to join those in-betweeners ala Reddit.

Me too.

Well, I'm sitting on a 15 day ban right now, so I'm not a 4chan user at the moment.

>> absence of any "punishments" ...

> sitting on a 15 day ban...

Out of curiosity, what earns one a 15 day ban on 4chan?

Porn on a SFW board. (/co/)

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