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Comment by kmfrk | Hacker News Reader

Have a set of clear rules (and not vague non-language like "don't write non-hacker, off-topic stuff") - AND ENFORCE IT, visibly. Unenforced rules aren't rules. Unclarified rules aren't rules.

Whenever someone is penalized, point them to the specific rules they violated. And keep in mind that people make mistakes every now and then. Show largesse. This isn't a production line where flawed products are tossed out at the blink of an eye.

Last, don't view everything as a "problem" to be "solved". We're talking about human beings, not Turing-complete automatons. That's a big part of the problem with how HN is run. You will never "solve" this the way you would a bug.

You need a human element to address something human. Treating everyone like a spam bot only works for spam bots, and has the side effect of pissing off the human false positives.

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I disagree with the idea of having a strict code of rules. Coming up with rules and sticking to them to the letter doesn't do anything to encourage meaningful discussion.

All you end up are the trolls who do their best to toe the line while provoking other people to step over it, and the sort of people who think a conversation where everybody follows the rules yet no-one says anything of substance is preferable to a lively discussion. You end up driving away the people who just want to talk about things they enjoy or are interested in, and don't particularly care about adhering to your rigid social system.

People are people, not automatons, and the system of curating discussions should reflect that. If someone is acting in bad faith, waiting for them to violate the letter of a rule that's been written down before you do anything about it just allows that person to drive away more of your actual desired userbase.

Vague wording in rules is like legislation; they just end up as excuses for doing bad things, instead of ensuring good behaviour. "Toeing the line", if you will.

We constantly see this in trying to figure out what kind of stories are supposed to be submitted to HN.

Does it really make sense for a person like Maciej Ceglowski to be permabanned from HN? https://twitter.com/pinboard/status/111332316458135553. I think it's a shame, partly because I think he's a smart guy with a fresh view on things, but also because I don't think the reasons for banning him are very compelling.

You can't have poorly-defined rules and opaque moderation at the same time. You'll see why, when you incur the wrath of one of pg's moderation scripts for no apparent reason.

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EDIT: As an aside, to give an idea of what a fucking pain being (inexplicably) hellbanned is, picture all your Hacker News bookmarks no longer working, because you've been banned from the entire site.

Vague wording in legislation ends up as an excuse for doing bad things because when you get enough people together to call them a government, you're bound to end up with a few bad eggs. Online discussion sites are small enough that that's not necessarily the case - it's quite feasible to maintain a core group of people who don't abuse that power.

Especially since, unlike in government, that core group of people is beholden only to whoever is operating the site, and not to a popularity contest that sees them being replaced with an entirely new group every so often. This is also why you absolutely can have poorly-defined rules and opaque moderation - the operator of the discussion site shapes what they want it to look like, and if too many people disagree with that vision then another discussion site springs up tailored to what those people want. And if the original operator is too arbitrary or capricious in their moderation, their own site dies or becomes an insular hugbox or something like that.

Ultimately, when people say they want stricter interpretation of the rules and more accountability on an online discussion board, what they really mean is "I disagree with some of these decisions and I want them to make the decision that I would make next time". Which is fine, but having seen a lot of the proposed alternatives in action I can't really see them as being an improvement.

Hellbanning is necessary because of the low barrier to creating a new account. You are assuming that all users are well-intentioned and can be reasoned with, but this is simply not the case. Any sizable only community will develop a number of hard-core anti-social trolls exhibiting behavior which they can only undertake online (because in real life they would get their asses kicked on a regular basis). When said trolls are also hackers you need some relatively automated and powerful tools to keep them in check. It's unfortunate that there is some collateral damage, but please understand that the choice is not between new users being inconvenienced for not, the choice is between HN being a place where civilized discourse can exist and spiraling towards a 4chan-like atmosphere.

Serious trolls know about hellbanning and how to figure out whether an account they're using has been hellbanned. The primary effect of hellbanning is to drive away well intentioned new users who are unlucky enough to break some of the unwritten rules in their first few posts.

This is all very hand-wavy. First of all, hellbanning is not always the same thing everywhere, so no, there's no guarantee that a serious troll knows how hellbanning works. More importantly, I have actually had to deal with forum trolls as an under-resourced dev for a very popular and long-running forum. It's an arms race, plain and simple. Information asymetry is to the developer's advantage. Have I gotten to the point of implementing hellbanning? No... but I understand the justification for why it's done.

How do you know this? Have you run a forum or community website, or have you been on the other side? Serious question. Must know data and provenance of data.

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