[eindiran]

That defeats the entire point of shadowbanning someone. Shadowbanning is used primarily _because_ it is opaque to the person who is banned. If you told them, they might then make a new account, rather than thinking that people aren't engaging with them and moving on. If you give them a notification that they have been banned and why in the interest of transparency, its no longer a shadowban.

[pmiller2]

Or, maybe the first ban shouldn't be a permanent shadowban. Maybe actually telling people what they're doing wrong would get them to not do it.

There is, in fact, research showing that this is how it works on Reddit: users who get told why they're being banned or their post removed go on to be better contributors than those who don't. I can dig up the paper if you're interested, but I don't have it on hand.

[eindiran]

I 100% agree, and think that in general shadowbans are a gross idea. But my point is that if you send out info about why you banned someone, then you are explicitly not shadowbanning them, by definition. The whole concept of a shadowban is that it must be opaque to the person being banned; if you change that then you aren't shadowbanning them.

Personally, I think that moderation transparency is a noble goal: I'd be in favor of all forums keeping explicit, public moderation logs with all moderator actions. But then again I have never had to moderate a particularly large forum, so perhaps my opinion would change when forced to deal with the same spammers, day after day.

[pmiller2]

I don't disagree with shadowbanning as a concept; rather, I disagree with HN's implementation of it. Being shadowbanned should be a last resort, after a warning and a more transparent ban. Once you've gotten a certain amount of strikes within a certain period, then I have no problem with a shadowban.

I agree with you on moderator transparency. There should be a certain amount of it visible to all, and that amount should definitely be more than what's available here on HN and Reddit.

Reddit is far worse, because you can be banned for arbitrary things without recourse, even though it's theoretically against the site moderation guidelines. You can be banned from one subreddit simply for participating in another.

I don't think HN has the same degree of problem, but I think the solution is the same. Sometimes, sunlight really is the best disinfectant.