[eldude]

I'm absolutely shocked and disgusted to be be reading this discussion regarding being "hellbanned" only to discover that my account in fact has been hellbanned for the past 1.5 yrs without even knowing it!

http://news.ycombinator.org/threads?id=CrabDude * enable showdead in your profile to read my comments

As you can see from my comments and contributions, most are extremely well reasoned and often entirely unique and invaluable contributions to a given conversation that to my frustration were inexplicably never upvoted or commented on, without any real insight as to why. I honestly am in shock and beyond frustrated that so much of my efforts and attempts to edify and contribute have been undermined by something that is explicitly allowed in comment guidelines. [1]

Specifically, the comment that is apparently responsible for my hellban, was on a post that linked to MY NodeKnockout entry which both won the competition category and received over 60 votes to end up on the front page:

  HEY ALL! REMEMBER TO VOTE FOR US! WE'RE TRYING TO WIN THE INNOVATION CATEGORY!
  http://nodeknockout.com/teams/starcraft-2-destroyed-my-marri...
  AND RETWEET THIS WITH #nodeko! =)

Worse, this manner of comment is explicitly mentioned as okay in the guidelines. [1]

  Empty comments can be ok if they're positive. There's nothing wrong with submitting a comment saying just "Thanks."

And to any who would comment that my use of all caps elicited my ban, I'd respond by pointing out the use of capitalization is used "for emphasis," [2] in this case, specifically, enthusiasm -- unfortunately making the resulting ban all the more disgusting and frustrating.

To any in YC who have control over such things, please unban my account. I would greatly prefer to use it and retain all my contributions than be forced to play wack-a-mole in response to inaccurate rule enforcement.

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_caps

[ericd]

That comment looks a LOT like spam. Hellbanning is necessary, because if a spammer realizes they've been banned overtly, they'll just create a new account and keep on spamming. You do have a lot of legitimately good comments in that list, though.

[eldude]

While I may even agree with you, the unfortunate fact is that it is not in fact spam and violates no rules or guidelines and suffers only from being overly enthusiastic in a positive and friendly manner. In truth, it is not even "empty" in that it provides an important link to the voting page.

At best this is an example of incompetence in the form of a poorly written spam detection algorithm, at worst it represents an admin's lazy disregard for the effects of "hellbanning" on a sincere community.

[burgerbrain]

"With the advent of the internet, all caps in messages became closely identified with "shouting" or attention-seeking behaviour and is considered very rude."

[eldude]

Or in this case it was simply a matter of drawing attention for any who appreciated our entry to show appreciation by helping us win. Considering this was my project, I felt obliged to bring attention to something I felt warranted it. I was neither being rude, nor would it be rude in person (as is often emphasized in the guidelines) to speak loudly in a crowded noisy room filled with people gathering to appreciate what you've built. I often host developer events, and as a host this type of behavior is not only not rude, but often necessary and appreciated. The notion that all caps are "very rude" is at best contextual. In this case, it would seem to be ignorance on the part of the admins to recognize such a purpose and intention.

However, it would appear I stand corrected as I missed the following:

"Please don't use uppercase for emphasis." [1]

However, I stand by the ridiculousness of banning a sincere contributer that's bringing traffic to the site solely due to (positive constructive) ignorance of the rules.

Would you kick a guest out from your home without warning for temporarily speaking loudly in good intention, and exclude them from all future discussions? It would seem in this case HN violates their own rule regarding civility treating people online as you would in a face to face conversation, and please don't give me the excuse of this being necessary in order to deal with spambots. Such an argument defends rudeness and laziness as a better algorithm could easily be written.

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html