[causi]

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.

[dang]

It doesn't have anything to do with downvotes.

[causi]

Directly? No, but they're the only proxy the user gets. I've certainly never noticed being rate-limited without also being downvoted.

[dang]

I don't know about proxy, but for sure they're correlated, because they have a common cause: breaking the site guidelines.

[hunterb123]

The shadow muting is the most annoying feature ever and leads to an echo chamber.

[dang]

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.

[hunterb123]

What triggers it?

If it's downvotes over a time period I don't see how that's a reliable method to determine whether someone should be on "probation".

If it's manual then I dispute the decision behind it as I'm constantly limited and I'm very cordial while albeit contrarian.

I'm not saying there should be no moderation, just that whatever is triggering the shadow muting is flawed.

If you want post limits, enable them for everyone.

[dang]

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.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

[ryandrake]

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.

[dang]

I agree with your first point. People learn from feedback, so it would be better if we could give more precise and structured feedback. This is a longer term goal.

It's hard though because everyone who asks a question wants a detailed answer and detailed answers take a lot of time and energy, adding up to way more time and energy than we have available, or could ever have. We do our best, but it's a hard constraint problem.

[TigeriusKirk]

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.

[dang]

They do lead to additional explanation—usually lots of it. For example, if you follow the link I just mentioned (here it is again: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...), is it really not obvious what the point is? The point is that we try to optimize HN for curiosity and that this has interesting consequences. You do have to scroll back through the search results to find the good explanations, but that's not so hard.

One thing I intend to do eventually is compile those past explanations into a set of commentaries that could be linked to in the future. For now, the genres through which I explain this stuff are (a) HN comments and (b) emails, and I can't link to emails, so you get past HN comments.

[tptacek]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30461012

[TigeriusKirk]

You're not wrong. It ultimately causes more harm than good. But it's clear the mods are enamored with it, so don't expect it to go away.

[dang]

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.

[tediousdemise]

Yeah, the shadow muting/karma monitoring system leads to inorganic discussion since people are constantly walking on eggshells to protect their karma.

I think 4chan has done moderation better than anyone to date.

[ipaddr]

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.

[wanderer_]

> 4chan has done moderation

This statement may or may not be totally factually accurate.

Heh, look! I didn't break any of the eggshells!