[dang]

Lacero is not "hell-banned" or any other kind of banned. Lacero's comment came from an IP that had been caught by a spam filter. I just unbanned the IP and unkilled the relevant comments.

Please don't claim things on or about Hacker News that you can't possibly know are true. Concerns about dead comments and anything else about HN can be sent to [e-mail].

Edit: I deleted things that were too harsh.

[watsitbang]

I guess we've just found out how we're going to be treated by the new moderators.

eps was obviously trying to be helpful to lacero. If lacero was hell-banned, he wouldn't know it to email you, would he? And for his trouble he gets this mean reply from you.

[dang]

I try hard not to be mean. If you'd care to suggest how to improve my wording, I'd be happy to. It's possible that my frustration after a year and a half of reading such comments as eps's with no ability to reply to them leaked through.

A better way for eps to help lacero, if that's all he or she wanted to do, would have been to email and ask us to check why lacero's comment was dead. We would have replied with a thank-you note saying what the reason was and that we had restored all the comments in question. But it doesn't feel to me like helping others is the only agenda going on with comments like eps's, which as you may know are something of a cottage industry on HN.

How you're "going to be treated by the new moderators" is with as much fairness and clarity as we can possibly muster, and willingness to correct our mistakes.

[supersystem]

"with as much fairness and clarity as we can possibly muster"

When it comes to exercising authority less is more. If you've ever been "forced" to smile at lame jokes from bouncers when going in to a club you probably know what I mean. Your comments reads like passive aggressive lectures rather than "fair and clear" moderation.

[dang]

I think I know what happened here. This was the first false statement about HN moderation I was able to reply to, after seeing hundreds of them on the site over the last 18 months. It was frustrating not to be able to say anything for so long, so—even though I tried to control it—that pent-up energy came out in my comment.

Re "lectures": I've been erring on the side of responding to things and giving information. None of that is really on-topic for HN, of course, and I don't intend to do it for long.

[ronaldx]

> A better way for eps to help lacero, if that's all he or she wanted to do, would have been to email...

This is now understood, but you say it in a severe way - as though you think it should have been obvious for eps to know this. You seem to be making an assumption that, by not doing what you prefer, eps was deliberately acting with negative intent.

From an outside point of view, it is very hard to understand how eps should have known what your preference was (even after rechecking the Guidelines and FAQ). As such, it is hard to understand that eps's intent was anything but positive.

[dang]

This is now understood, but you say it in a severe way - as though you think it should have been obvious for eps to know this

Well, it is what the guidelines say, and what we've been saying on the site for years. But you're right: that doesn't mean it's obvious to everyone, and the benefit of the doubt would have helped a lot. That was my mistake.

[cptn_brittish]

Is it in anyway possible to have automatic emails sent to people who have been hellbanned?

[dang]

Many HN accounts don't have email addresses.

We would like to implement a better feedback mechanism for HN moderation, but that's a long-term prospect.

[pbhjpbhj]

Agreed. eps's comment is as much a product of the opaque nature of moderation here as anything else. Unless users get notified of bans - be they temporary or otherwise - how are they expected to know to modify their behaviour.

Yes I understand there needs to be a balance to avoid an arms race with spammers and the like.

[eps]

1. Emailing is not a viable option. I simply don't have email setup on all but one device that I use to browse HN.

2. You can nitpick on technicalities, but it doesn't matter to lacero if he was hell-banned or ip-blacklisted. All that matters is that his comments go in trash can and that's what I was trying to rectify.

PS. A proper way to support these cases is to add "flag for mod review" option to dead comments and/or user accounts. Unlike the email option, it would be actually usable for everyone. Until then I will keep posting "hell-banned" when I see an account with auto-killed, but otherwise reasonable comments. Have a nice weekend.

[dang]

It would be more appropriate to say that a comment is dead, because you can tell that by looking at it, than that an account is banned, because you can't tell that by looking at it, and when you get that wrong, it's misleading. I definitely should have communicated this more clearly above; I'm sorry I didn't.

It's not just nitpicking. We've gotten many emails from distressed users asking why they were banned because they believed this misinformation. Usually it's nothing more than a duplicate comment that got killed, or something nearly as innocuous.

Edit: I thought about this overnight and I do think there's some merit to your proposal. (I don't buy the thing about email not being accessible enough, but that's separate.) It would need some careful design thinking—something I haven't had a minute for all week—so don't expect anything right away.

[001sky]

@dang can you take a look at this as well.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7537035

[dang]

Sure. I read it, but didn't understand it precisely. If you'd like to take another crack at it, the best thing would be to make your suggestions as concrete as possible and send them to [e-mail].

[eps]

> I don't buy the thing about email not being accessible enough

There's nothing to buy. I will not email mods about false negatives. It's inconvenient.

[morbius]

Using florid vocabulary doesn't legitimize your heavy-handed slap on the wrist to eps, who was, however misunderstood -- trying to help a fellow user. The pg way was to just state what needed to be said and do what needed to be done, not make examples out of innocent people.

Shame on you, Daniel.