[__david__]

I like silent bans. They seem like the appropriate response to real spam. If you give spammers a clear indication that they are blocked then they can immediately start trying a different attack. By removing that indicator then the spammers even know they need to start trying something new. It makes the whole process muddy for them and generally slows down the whole spam "cold war arms race".

It does suck more to be hit with a false positive since you might not notice it right away. But I think overall the system is good. It speaks to my inner passive aggressive. :-)

[jaylevitt]

Sorry, no. I led AOL's mail team in the '90s, and we had the same philosophy. Many, many complaints about lost e-mail, but it was Necessary And Right to block spam, our #1 complaint. (In fact, we once got sued for trying to deliver the bounces back to the spammer.)

We were wrong. It didn't really block much spam; from the very beginning, spammers had "quality control" bots checking delivery rates of their spam, and they'd adapt to new algorithms within hours, demonstrating just how well they could monitor their black hole rate.

Early this decade, the technology to do efficient blocking "at the edge" was finally implemented, and boom - no more lost mail.

Silent bans are really just a way to exert power. They achieve nothing.

[pg]

AOL is a big enough target that it's worthwhile for spammers to write custom code. HN isn't, fortunately, so the technique works well here.

[jaylevitt]

Good point.

[nkurz]

While I appreciate your insight and experience, you might want to view http://news.ycombinator.com/newest with and without "showdead" turned on for your account: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jaylevitt

Frequently over half the submissions are dead spam, presumably killed by the policy in question. I rarely see false positives. While the quality of the remainder isn't always great, it's a lot better than it would be if there were no controls in place.

ps. Flag some spam while you're there :)

[jQueryIsAwesome]

They are not a good way to stop spammers, the bot can easily make a comment and check if its there when it is not logged in. But it is a good way to annoy HN users when they get banned.

[stock_toaster]

I agree. I liken it to "security through obscurity". I imagine it would be quite upsetting to be posting as a reasonable community member, and suddenly discover through some external means that my account had been silently black-holed, without being notified that my behavior was violating some of the community norms before-hand.

But perhaps such measures are needed to defend against the non-bot trolls and other belligerent individuals, and only implemented after numerous attempts at corrective feedback have failed.

[luser001]

"only implemented after numerous attempts at corrective feedback have failed."

That's not how it works. You say something that offends some random moderator, and he/she can trivially silent-ban you. No comment under your comment saying you will be banned etc.

[stock_toaster]

That is indeed unfortunate then. :( Thanks for the clarification.