[doesitwork]

I honestly don't know. The first ban, my comments disappeared, but another person was kind enough to let me know it had happened. I could still see my comments, but nobody else could. The person who let me know was in the middle of a thread/conversation with me, had very high karma, took a look at my account and couldn't find any reason for the ban.

I looked for somewhere to ask for clarification on how or why, but there is nowhere to do so. The whole thing happens in secret, with no explanation and no recourse, which is about as antithetical to open and transparent discourse as is possible.

The intent, I believe, is for every person to develop a 'silent policeman' that asks them before every post 'Is this controversial? Is this an unpopular position on this forum? Does this position agree with the position of the owners/moderators of this forum.' In other words, the intent is discourage dissent from the predominant world view.

Well, that's how I see it. When this account gets banned, this comment will disappear as if it never existed, into the 'memory hole', and no one will ever know that someone disagrees. How that encourages rational debate is beyond my comprehension, perhaps I'm just not smart enough to be here.

[RageKit]

This hole thing is kind of frightening. I'm not sure i like the philosophy here.

[doesitwork]

I think a lot of people find it comforting. Internet forums admittedly attract bullies in the form of trolls, astroturfers and people who are just plain mean. I agree in principle with a moderation system, but to have a secret moderation system, with no transparency and no recourse is susceptible to corruption and abuse, like any secret system is.

At any rate, those who find it comforting that 'big brother' is keeping the comments safe for them will stay around, and those with dissenting views will be banned to oblivion and eventually leave, making the community a small selection of people who both agree with the philosophy, and find it uncomfortable to deal with views that challenge their philosophy.

This is very similar to what happened in Academia in the past 30 years, and succeeded in pushing out all of the interesting, eccentric and creative people, leaving only those who knew the party line, and moderated their speech accordingly. I think this is not healthy for creativity, but then, that's just my opinion, and obviously the forum owner/moderators disagree.

[RageKit]

You could think it might be different in a community promoting startups and out of the box thinking ...

[doesitwork]

I don't think the HN community ever intended to promote out-of-the-box thinking. When I read Paul Graham's essays (and I've read most of them), I get the sense that HN is an attempt to create a community of 'bright lights' i.e. smart people, and provide a supportive environment of other 'smart people' without all the dog-eat-dog, macho,take-no-prisoners, slash and burn nonsense that makes up a good deal of human behavior.

And that's a fine and noble pursuit, however, the market place is not delicate academic utopia, and so one has to wonder how these very bright, but often impractical people, whose genius has been nurtured, pampered and flattered are going to deal with the realities of the market place and the end consumers of their 'product'.

Enter the Y-combinator business model, where for a mere 51% of your company, the harsh realities of business will be taken care of by our team of take-no-prisoners business warriors, leaving you, delicate genius, to be nurtured and cultivated to your fullest potential.

And again, I have no problem with that, I just have a problem with undemocratic secret societies that wield power from the shadows. They are prone to corruption and calcification.