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Comment by intenex | Hacker News Reader

How does shadowbanning even work on HN? Do you still get random increments to karma on different comments?

If not, I find it hard to believe that after long enough a period of time of noticing absolutely no activity on your posts, people won't catch on.

Also, yeah if someone is a troll I feel like it's 100% fair game to troll them back. And this is the best counter-troll of them all. I had exactly the opposite reaction of yours when I found out about the shadowban - finally! Some way for us to fight back and give them a taste of their own medicine. Assholes that they are.

There are only two problems with this - one, when people are shadowbanned wrongly/arbitrarily with no right to a fair and speedy trial in a court of their peers, and two, hypocritically I have a tendency to troll sometimes and this may or may not suck >_>

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I don't even know how trolling is defined here; and without a clear definition that is actually used when hellbanning, I call BS on that. Trolling doesn't mean whatever you consider bad for whatever arbitrary reason; if it means that it means nothing, and is just an excuse and circular reasoning (ultimately defining trolls as those who got banned for whatever reason).

I can only speak for myself, but I got slowbanned for just being argumentative several times, and the fact that I got NO signal other than "somebody didn't like something in the hundreds of posts you wrote" means I can't really get invested in HN further than the comment I am reading or writing at any given moment. There is zero rhyme or reason and no class to such a process, and for all I know I just get punished for pointing out a truth someone likes to delude themselves about; so I can't even regret anything without knowing what the supposed error was. I just argue less because at the end of the day, what do I care if someone is wrong, and why spend, say, moral outrage or humour on a site that doesn't get or appreciate it, instead of letting it build up and blogging about it? That way everybody is happy :P

That said, for something like credit card fraud it actually seems smart, just like it might be for cheaters in games, or wherever you have an actual clear definition of "crime". This is not the case here, and it shows sometimes.

karma on hn is kind of odd, though; people simply don't seem to interact with the upvote button much. i wondered at one point if i had triggered some sort of ban because i had several submissions in a row sitting at 1 point, but then i got a comment upvote so i figured not. there simply isn't enough of a feedback loop for you to know for sure.

Timing is important as well. If you comment early on an article that gets lots of upvotes later on, you're more likely to get upvotes for your comments. As for submissions, it takes a lot of both luck and timing to get enough people to vote them up for them to reach the front page.

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