Shadow muting isn't directly related to how fast you're posting, but how many of your comments are downvoted within a certain period of time. If your comments are well-received you can make much more of them in a given span than if most or all of them are downvoted.
No doubt it's the worst solution, except for all the others. We have few software tools for dampening the descent of this place into flamewar. If HN burns itself to a crisp, what good does that do anyone?
I do think it can be improved by making it more of a probation system that explains what's happening and how long the probation period is, presumably with some sort of exponential backoff so that over time probation converges to a permanent penalty. This is on the list to implement.
We rate limit accounts when they post too many low-quality comments too quickly and/or get involved in flamewars. If an account is doing a lot of things that damage HN for its intended purpose, obviously we have to do something.
> If you want post limits, enable them for everyone.
That would be inconsistent with optimizing for curiosity [1]. There are heaps of users from whom the more comments HN is lucky to receive, the better.
It would be great if admins had a way to tag the "low-quality" comments that triggered the rate limiting, so people can kind of learn by example. Like "Please slow down and stop posting things such as <link>, <link>, and <link>."
This rate limiting seems to happen to me quite a bit, and when I've E-mailed, it's "Hmm, you look like you're posting fine now. We'll remove the limit." Leaving me scratching my head, searching in vain through my comment history for anything that might have plausibly triggered the action.
What's the purpose of links like that in your moderation comments? I click on them assuming they'll lead to additional explanation, but they're only ever showing that you've used some particular word or phrase before.
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be taking away from that.
We're not enamored with rate limiting. By temperament I'd far rather not penalize anybody, plus it would be a gift from heaven to be free of the enormous number of demands it leads to. (We could ignore the demands, but that would be bad, so we don't.)
We do it because it's one of the few tools we have to try to prevent this place from destroying itself. Most of the other tools (such as replying to comments) take enormous much time and energy. It's necessary to have at least a few measures that can be done in software.
I wish that everyone complaining about this could realize the irony of the complaint: one of the reasons why the thing valuable enough to be worth complaining about exists in the first place is measures like rate limiting. But I know that's too much to ask.
As someone forgets his password often and has to create another account. Half the fun is making it to 500.. once you hit 525 it's hard to slide back under if you act semi-responsibly.
It's easy enough to get un-rate-limited. Just build up a track record of making substantive, curious contributions—that is, of using HN as intended—and then ask us at hn@ycombinator.com. It's not as if we're unresponsive (although the inbox does have poor worst-case latency).
Actually we often take rate limits off accounts without being asked. It's a matter of looking through the history and seeing if the account has stopped taking threads further into flamewar and/or is no longer making a habit of unsubstantive comments.