[tripzilch]

I agree that hellbanning on HN is completely out of control.

I've seen people (that otherwise posted useful contributions, before and after) hellbanned for making a rather tasteless joke. The joke was sufficiently tasteless that I can totally see a moderator suspending or even banning that user. But not hellbanning. Not that it's strictly worse or anything, it's just so utterly useless and childish.

This user had no idea that anything had happened, and he just kept posting for weeks. All that wasted time! And I'm fairly sure that if a moderator would have just told him "hey we'd rather not have people make jokes about dead children here" the guy would have replied "right, my bad that was out of line, won't happen again" cause the rest of his comments didn't seem very inflammatory or anything.

Instead the guy gets no message at all and keeps on posting invisibly. A regular ban would have at least sent some message.

... and then there's these things I've heard about people getting temporary hellbans? So people can come back all butthurt after realizing they've been tricked into invisibly wasting their time? That's the dumbest kind of moderation I've ever heard about, really. A hellban should be forever, or not at all. There is no such thing as a "hell suspension".