[un_publishable]

> Despite being banned, Unidan has already made a new account, called UnidanX, and has been posting for most of the day under that username. It's looking like he hasn't been banned with that username yet.

What's the point of trying again, he's already lost the trust of the community and his name is a red flag. Is that subreddit super-forgiving? Or maybe the turnover is so high people will just forget?

[rohit89]

All of his posts in his new account[1] have been massively downvoted. So they are not forgiving right now. His account shows 6k+ comment karma though. That's strange unless gold gets you some karma?

[1] - http://www.reddit.com/user/unidanx

[erichurkman]

I'm not 100% sure how the total karma is calculated, but IIRC if you downvote someone from their user page, it does not really count. The idea is that if you're hunting to downvote/upvote all posts from the same user, you're probably up to no good.

[wamsachel]

It's because for the most part he posts some very educational stuff. So hopefully he just learned his lesson.

[middleclick]

Not to be cynical, I don't think he did. He was doing what he was doing till the time he was caught. It's not like he told the community himself.

He is just trying to play the nice guy game to save his image. His doing this is dishonest -- plain and simple. Don't get me wrong. He is really good in his field and knows a lot. I learned a lot from him and if he posts stuff, I will read it again. But this behaviour is dishonesty.

[floatrock]

> He is just trying to play the nice guy game to save his image. His doing this is dishonest -- plain and simple.

If he was being honest, would it look any different? Or is the pitchfork mob just demanding blood?

On the one hand a reputation takes years to create and only a second to destroy. On the other hand, holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.

Personally I think if you want to be angry at something there's much more insidious manipulation going on. Unidan makes great content and gets people excited about his biology research... remember him for that, not for his amateur inability to execute a proper astroturfing botnet campaign.

At the very least, let him be reborn with a new username and see what he can build. Isn't the ability to bounce back from failure and mistakes what we celebrate here on hn?

[shitlord]

He actually lied, straight-up. He said he only downvoted misinformation, but it turns out he downvoted others' submissions (to make his own submissions look better).