[dang]

There's no automatic unban. That would require writing code that knows how to tell a good (for HN) site apart from a bad one, and if we could write such code, we wouldn't need to keep a list of banned sites in the first place. However, we're always happy to unban a site when we notice that it's actually fine for HN, or when someone points this out to us.

Re shadowbanning (i.e. banning a user without telling them), see the past explanations at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... and let me know if you still have questions. The short version is that when an account has an established history, we tell them we're banning them and why. We only shadowban when it's a spammer or a new account that we have reason to guess is a serial abuser.

[lossolo]

You forgot to mention that you are also shadowbanning the ability of users to upvote or downvote things when you dislike their upvotes or downvotes—instances that you perceive as not contributing to the discussion or that are escalating the conversation.

[dang]

I didn't forget to mention that - it's simply not what the word shadowban means, as I've always understood and used it.

This is a big problem with trying to explain these things - people mean very different things by the same words, and it leads to misunderstanding.

[lossolo]

Which other word do you think would be suitable here? In my view, 'shadowban' aligns with the definition in this context, as you aren't notifying people about it (hence 'shadow') and their actions of upvoting or downvoting have no impact (so same as shadowbanning comments or submissions etc).

[dang]

I would call it either a penalty or a loss of voting privileges, depending on the specific case. It's not a ban because the account is not excluded from participating in other ways. In the same way, downweighted or penalized sites aren't the same as banned sites.

[lossolo]

Well, it seems wikipedia has different definition than yours, it matches to what I wrote before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_banning

> Shadow banning, also called stealth banning, hellbanning, ghost banning, and comment ghosting, is the practice of blocking or partially blocking a user or the user's content from some areas of an online community in such a way that the ban is not readily apparent to the user, regardless of whether the action is taken by an individual or an algorithm. For example, shadow-banned comments posted to a blog or media website would be visible to the sender, but not to other users accessing the site.

This part matches shadow banning voting and is basically the same what I wrote in my previous comment just using different words:

> partially blocking a user or the user's content from some areas of an online community in such a way that the ban is not readily apparent to the user

And this part, which contradicts what you wrote in your last comment:

> More recently, the term has come to apply to alternative measures, particularly visibility measures like delisting and downranking.

[rhaksw]

I use the term "shadow moderation".

[bravogamma]

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Is it also true that users with certain karma count or special permissions have more significant - and potentially lasting - downvoting weight that impacts to the downvoted party's long term reputation?

[dang]

I'm afraid I don't understand your question but here are the basics: HN has downvotes (on comments, not submissions). The ability to downvote requires > 500 karma. When a comment gets downvoted, both its point score and the commenter's karma go down (in most cases - it's more complicated than that but this is the principle). Does that help?

[dredmorbius]

I'm interpreting your question as "are there privileged HN members with supervotes", excluding moderators, and who can single-handedly kill submissions or comments.

So far as I'm aware, no, and there are comments from dang and pg going back through the site history which argue strongly against distinguishing groups of profiles in any way.

The one possible exception is that YC founder's handles appear orange to one another at one point in time (pg discusses this in January 2013: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5025168>). The feature was disabled for performance reasons.

Dang mentions the feature still being active as of a year ago: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31727636>

I seem to recall a pg or dang discussion where showing this publicly created a social tension on the site, as in, one set of people distinguished from another.

dang discusses the (general lack of) secret superpowers here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767204>, which reiterates what's in the FAQ:

HN gives three features to YC: job ads (see above) and startup launches get placed on the front page, and YC founder names are displayed to other YC alumni in orange.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html>

Top-100 karma lands you on the leaderboard: <https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders>. That's currently 41,815+ karma. There are also no special privileges here other than occasionally being contacted by someone. (I've had inquiries about dealing with the head-trip of being on the leaderboard, and a couple of requests to boost submissions, which I forward to the moderation team).

[bravogamma]

Thank you, dredmorbius, for this very helpful response. dang has mentioned a procedure or system that involves making guesses for the purpose of shadowbanning. I wonder if downvotes (edit: or post flags) from special users like the ones you mention are used as strong signals in that guess-making?

[dredmorbius]

I don't know about that, but emails to mods count a fair bit.

(I'll occasionally note an egregiously-behaving account that doesn't seem to have been already banned.)