[BonoboIO]

I think this is not a private or personal thing, this just unprofessional handling of an yet unclear situation.

Like beeing conficted without a trial (of course this is just a business relationship between him and the conference).

Imagine that Hacker News would ban your account jakobegger, no explanation, no way to get informations why or what you did wrong. Would you just accept this as just "leave me alone"?

[goldenkey]

The reason we respect HN and its respective admins, is because they explain their decisions quite openly and transparently, and will even discuss issues over email. I was actually banned a few years ago because I was being a negative, hateful, POS due to some events in my life combined with clouded judgment. But I appealed, and began posting better comments that were more in line with what one would expect from a discussion forum for positivity (startups) and rationalism (tech.) I'm sure there are many others like me who the admins treated quite fairly and with respect. "Silent treatment" is a last resort, in all other cases it is just a weak and impotent thing to do.

[PhasmaFelis]

> The reason we respect HN and its respective admins, is because they explain their decisions quite openly and transparently

...Except when they shadowban people. (Who aren't obviously spammers or dedicated trolls.)

[goldenkey]

Shadowban is mostly a tool to deal with idiots constantly posting attention-seeking comments. If someone isn't smart enough to realize their comments are not being replied to, they aren't the kind of person you really want to contend with. Shadowban deals with people who post comments where the intent is to rouse, not to converse. So much of the time, they don't expect replies, and thus they can continue to post their crap to themselves, and only themselves. I don't think shadowban is polite or nice but it is effective.

[dang]

Those are indeed the categories that we shadowban, so if you know of exceptions I'd like to see them.

[tpush]

> Imagine that Hacker News would ban your account jakobegger, no explanation, no way to get informations why or what you did wrong. Would you just accept this as just "leave me alone"?

I mean, they literally do this in the from of shadow banning.

[dang]

That's not accurate. Shadow-banning is rare to begin with (reserved for spammers, serial trolls, and other forms of abuse), and even when we do it it's always possible for people to get information by emailing us. I can think of a couple exceptions to that but they've all been preceded by long email chains.

If an account has been posting to HN for a while and hasn't been banned under other guises, we always tell them when we're banning them, and nearly always after multiple warnings.

[hycaria]

I doubt they'd do it without warning you before hand to comply to the guidelines.

[thinkingemote]

The thought experiment in the GP was what if they didn't