[dang]

It's just an attempt to manage overwhelming case load with limited resources. It's on my list to build a system that gives better feedback.

On the other hand, I'm not sure that it won't just make things worse, since not everyone is going to respond as well as you might to a message like "Your account has been rate limited."

[dredmorbius]

Amplifying on dang's comment: from my own experience moderating, many people respond in a strongly negative fashion to moderation, up to and including prolonged attacks on the site itself and threats to moderators. Effective moderation on large sites is a careful balance between transparency and pragmatism, to the extent that even well-intentioned initiatives such as the Santa Clara Principles (<https://santaclaraprinciples.org/>) may not be practical.

Something I note having been caught up on both sides of this issue: as moderator and moderated.

HN itself is not one of the super-sites, but it is amongst the better discussion platforms on the internet here and now (boys), and has been for far longer than virtually any other instance I can think of (dating to 2007). Metafilter would be the principle other exemplar.

Usenet, Slashdot, Kuro5hin, Google+, Reddit, Ello, Diaspora*, Imzy, FB, Birdsite, and others, would be amongst the failures IMO. Not all are now defunct (though about half that list are), none remain usable.