The goal of HN is post quality.
One potential explanation is that false positives (banning a good user) don't bring down overall post quality, false negatives (not banning a bad user) do.
One potential explanation is that false positives (banning a good user) don't bring down overall post quality, false negatives (not banning a bad user) do.
EDIT: I just realized I have showdead on and I've barely seen any, so this may not be a big problem.
One solution is to simply use the down voting system already in place, so posts (and people) are judged by the community in a transparent way. Perhaps require a minimum karma limit before being allowed to post; new users can earn karma through comments. Then "bad" users would lose the karma through down votes and the community would have effectively "banned" the user from posting. I'm not familiar with the hell-banning system (I have better things to do than study HN minutia ,) however it seems like, to be banned there ought to be perhaps some more transparency. Or at least a warning system. If there is and I don't know about it, please disregard previous..)
Maybe you've recently read the post about browser-fingerprinting. That could help to "anonymously" ban this person/bot.