[throwit99]

I had this happen to me when I critiqued a YC backed company. Had a few thousand in 'meaningless internet karma points'. You pretty soon realise after a few further comments anyway, so I doubt it's actually effective.

It's pretty mean spirited though - generally a "douchebag" move. It'd be like having a bad employee, but instead of firing him, or discussing his work, just don't bother paying him any more.

After being hellbanned I actually realised that commenting on internet forums is toxic, generally a waste of time, and not productive. So I quit. At the start, you sort of care about "karma". But you end up realising it's a measure of two things. 1. How much time you waste commenting on the internet, and 2. How much you can agree with the groupthink echo-chamber.

But for those that like spending time commenting, I would have thought following a subreddit model would work better here, with the growth. Spread the power out. If I get hellbanned from the "rust is the future!!!" subhackernews, big whoop.

It'd also help with filtering out all the non-interesting (self driving cars) stories.

But then perhaps it'd basically be reddit at that stage which would defeat the point...

[dang]

Ever notice how people who make claims about why they got banned never provide links to the posts in question? That's because their claims are nearly always false. If users could look at the actual record, their perennial sob story of perfectly reasonable behavior struck down by bullying censors would evaporate. So they make new accounts and post linkless statements designed to be unanswerable.

We don't ban people because they "critiqued a YC backed company".

Edit: Some of the replies have made good points, and I realize that I overreacted. Sorry about that. Please shoot us an email at [e-mail] if you feel your account was banned unfairly. We're always happy to look into this—there's no question that we make mistakes; the most I can claim is that we're eager to, and do, correct them when they're brought to our attention.

[glimcat]

* Ever notice how people who make claims about why they got banned never provide links to the posts in question? That's because their claims are nearly always false. If users could look at the actual record, their perennial sob story of perfectly reasonable behavior struck down by bullying censors would evaporate. *

When that kind of response comes from the site's moderator, I really don't see the level of toxicity improving any time soon.

It's likely statistically factual, but in context it's just another of the "mean, stupid things" that Paul Graham called you out as being here to address. And you appear to have done nothing to investigate whether the previous user's post was factually correct before slinging personal accusations.

If this gets me hellbanned too, so be it. Conversation and community on this site is a toxic mess that leaves people afraid to post anything. The main good thing is following users like patio11 and tptacek.

http://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-the-people-taking-over-hack...

[tptacek]

I'll go ahead and call Dan a friend, display my "not a shill for YC" bona fides, vouch for Dan as not a toxic person, and go on to criticize him for being so concerned about the appearance of toxicity that he's backing down on an issue he should stand his ground over. If he says HN moderation won't hellban someone for criticizing a YC company, take it to the bank.

[cs702]

I feel compelled to add: the accusation seems baseless. Over the several years I've been participating in these forums I cannot remember a single instance of anyone getting hellbanned or otherwise penalized just for criticizing a YC company.

[dang]

You may be right. I'll look at the comment later and see if I should have written it differently. There's no time to reflect just now.

I try hard not to let personal irritation leak through in my HN comments, but I do fail at it. The most I can claim is a willingness to correct mistakes.

[gohjo]

It's wildly inappropriate to lob a blanket accusation of fraud against every single person who has ever complained about your moderation.

People have wildly divergent views as to what's appropriate, what's a little rude, and what's over the line. This means that even if you really truly believe that there was NEVER a mistake made during moderation, that some people will truly believe what they said.

Good moderation requires a ton of empathy and kindness.

[dang]

It's probably a lesson to me that the one time I didn't hedge by saying "almost" or something like that, someone objects to my "blanket accusation". Actually, I originally wrote "almost never" (or something similar). But then I realized I couldn't actually remember a case where someone provided a specific link to back up his or her grand claim of why they were banned. So in a fit of impetuousness I lopped off the "almost". I did leave in "nearly always", though.

> Good moderation requires a ton of empathy and kindness.

I try, but don't always succeed. Thanks for the reminder. I appreciate it.

[hueving]

Keep in mind that people might not want to link the example to associate their current account with a banned account to avoid getting banned again.

[PavlovsCat]

For what it's worth.. I don't even read that much, and I've not been here for that long, but I often was impressed by how much you actually do engage and do seem to care, a lot, to do right by everyone, in public. To say you lack empathy and kindness as a moderator in general would be just silly. I say this as someone who strongly dislikes hellbanning and even grey text (I still think slashdot nailed it with voluntary, customizable filtering), so you know I mean it :P

[logicallee]

I disagree! (with your pre-edit, reading "It's not that you expressed yourself poorly").

That's exactly what happened here. (And maybe Daniel can edit his comment.)

Daniel does a really good job, and is extremely responsive by email and on here. It is obvious where he wrote "Ever notice how people who make claims about why they got banned never provide links to the posts in question?" is borne of deep frustration. He would like to follow those links and improve the site, but can't. It's obvious that his comment is written out of frustration.

Let's be very clear: hellbanning is the worst and rudest thing that exists on any respectable Internet forum. Hellbanning literally wastes hours of the time of people who contribute great insight for free. The comments on this site are good and provided for free by people. Hellbanning turns this goodwill on its face, like a goodwill jar you can put bills into but which go into a furnace.

Daniel (and PG) knows very well that hellbanning is a nuclear weapon and the rudest thing that any Internet forum can possibly do, that is actually being done.

You have stories of people only learning they were hellbanned after literally taking the time to email someone a link to something thoughtful they had written. A lot of hellbanning has been (historically) in error.

It is one of the main reasons that I would never consciously leave a comment up if it reaches -3, even if I stand by it 100%, it's important, and the community happens to be wrong in its groupthink and I clearly have explained why. I would delete it instead.

Note that I have learned this behavior, and so have other contributors on this site.

It's one of the things that makes this site great.

So even though it is a nuclear option and the worst, rudest thing that any respectable forum does, in the sense that time is money literally stealing from users, and stealing donations at that and throwing them away, at the same time it is one of the things that allows this site to function as one of the best sites on the planet.

So you can bet that Daniel is extremely serious about following hellbanning claims and improving this process. It is difficult and he walks a very fine line.

He's doing a fantastic job at present in a very difficult undertaking. Kudos, Daniel, and keep up the good work. I can read your comment for what it is :)

[gregpilling]

"It is one of the main reasons that I would never consciously leave a comment up if it reaches -3, even if I stand by it 100%, it's important, and the community happens to be wrong in its groupthink and I clearly have explained why. I would delete it instead."

I am confused. Your preferred path is to avoid conflict such that you would rather delete than be disagreed with? If your opinion differs from groupthink, you would make it go away? I guess that is similar to not posting in the first place (because of groupthink you disagree with) , just retroactive.

Probably better than my not posting in the first place :)

[morganvachon]

> Good moderation requires a ton of empathy and kindness.

Which is sadly lacking among many, if not most, moderators of online communities across the net. I'm not saying that's the case with dang; in fact, I wouldn't know. But it's a thankless job that is akin to working in a call center without pay. It takes a strong personality to keep one's head above the layer of filth floating atop the waters of discourse.

[scott_s]

I do know, and Dan has an enormous amount of empathy and kindness. But it is a hard job, it takes a toll, and I think this thread demonstrates how much he's willing to re-visit what he's said. (Even though I'm quite sympathetic to what Thomas said upthread.)

[dllthomas]

I agree with this, but I think it's worth noting that the prompt here was someone making a specific claim. One doesn't need to believe they have made no mistakes to be certain they've never made a particular mistake, and there's significantly less room for differences in interpretation (though that's not to say there's none).

[gohjo]

I was responding to this part of dang's post:

If users could look at the actual record, their perennial sob story of perfectly reasonable behavior struck down by bullying censors would evaporate. So they make new accounts and post statements designed to be unanswerable.

I interpreted that as dang attributing essentially every complaint to malice, and simultaneously dismissing all other explanations.

[foxhill]

> I try hard not to let personal irritation leak through in my HN comments, but I do fail at it.

we are all, for good and for bad, unavoidably human.

[makmanalp]

I don't even think that answer was even that bad, especially when compared to the parent. Here was a wild and personal accusation with no support at all, not even anecdotal, and pretty toxic itself.

Replying courteously even to baseless and ranty accusations is probably a good idea, but I can't say I'd blame someone for not doing it.

I see the mod(s?) deal with this kind of conspiracy accusation almost on a daily basis, and I can definitely see how patience can wear thin when every nut does that. Dang implying that this accusation was baseless was probably rash, but that's the only thing I see even remotely out of line here.

Moderation is a pretty thankless job, and like sysadmins, people never appreciate you for getting things to work right when they work right. The definition of success is invisibility to users. But the second it goes even a bit wrong, it's a shitstorm. Here's yet another piece of empathy that one needs to consider.

[gohjo]

No, here's what you do:

1) you ban people who are rude and who you disagree with philosophically, while you do NOT ban the equally rude people who you agree with.

For evidence of the above, look at users like etherael (and his other names; not sure if he tors/vpns or if you can find them), who are raging assholes on a semi-routine basis, but who aren't banned because Libertarian BitCoin Lover matches your values. And let's face facts, you're less willing to ban people who agree with you, even if they're toxic assholes.

If you banned people who you agreed with for the same exact crimes as those you disagree with HN would be a better place.

As it stands, people who agree with you are allowed to be ruder and more toxic than people who disagree with you. This is used as a game by some of HN's worst users who brag on IRC about how it's fun to try to engage in flamewars where they don't get banned but the other individual does.

edit:

Not to mention other game that's played by a lot of folks, which is to be as big of a dick as is possible without actually using openly aggressive language. The goal there being to generate an emotional reaction while retaining some semblance of plausible deniability, because everybody knows that you won't ban them for "polite" taunting, even if it's toxic shit that can't go anywhere useful or interesting.

[dang]

The people who hold the opposite ideology believe fervently that HN is biased the other way (liberal, politically correct, socialist, etc., are some of the terms they use). I realize it's a bit facile to say "both sides claim bias therefore we must be doing something right". But for what it's worth, no, we don't consider ideology when banning people, we consider incivility.

[tptacek]

Dan is a libertarian bitcoin lover? I've spent several hours in person talking to him. I'm a statist liberal Democrat who believes bitcoin is a ponzi scheme. He did not set off my spidey sense. I think you might be attributing generalized fears and frustrations onto specific people you don't know.

[djur]

Being in the same ideological quadrant, I can say that I tend to get as many or more upvotes on political comments as on apolitical/tech-focused comments. And I tend to follow responses to my more contentious comments closely, and I have only very occasionally noticed even a single downvote on said comments.

I think there's a lot of outspoken libertarian/anti-statist types around here, and that's fine, but I don't think it's even the plurality among political stances of HN readers. I suspect being invested in politics to the point that you'll regularly engage in political discussions online is very strongly correlated with holding atypical political views (I include myself in that set).

[throwawayaway]

sorry, it's a pyramid scheme not a ponzi scheme but yeah agree with your sentiment.

although maybe it is a ponzi scheme for the miners now that I think about it.

[etherael]

The worst I ever do is respond rudely to people who have already attacked me, and even there I try to avoid doing so. As for using other names that's just flatly false, as is any gloating about baiting people into flamewars and laughing when they get banned. I haven't even used irc in over a year.

Basically I have no idea what you're talking about.

[yummyfajitas]

So on the topic of unfair bans and the new system, here is a useful way for you to both improve transparency and figure out for yourself if the new system is working.

Post a list of comments which were [dead]ed under the new system but would not have been [dead]ed under the old system.

If the list contains a bunch of comments like "u r a gay homoz", you'll make a pretty convincing case (both to yourself and everyone else) that the new system is awesome. If the list contains a bunch of "I'm concerned about the security implications of ordinary users putting significant money into bitcoin..." then maybe the new system isn't so awesome.

[edit: I realize it's probably too late for this to be seen, perils of posting from IST.]

[jacquesm]

It's being seen. (Perils of getting up in the middle of the night. ;) )

[rudolf0]

>Ever notice how people who make claims about why they got banned never provide links to the posts in question?

>their claims are nearly always false.

>perennial sob story

Hmm, I wonder where these fall on Graham's disagreement pyramid...

Seriously, how hard is it to tell the guy "shoot me an email and I'll look into the ban" and then make your judgment after that? Maybe the guy's bullshitting us. Or maybe he really was banned unjustly. How can you possibly know?

[dang]

> Seriously, how hard is it to tell the guy "shoot me an email and I'll look into the ban" and then make your judgment after that?

You're absolutely right. I'll add that to my comment.

[eksith]

What are your thoughts on this episode? https://jcs.org/notaweblog/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker...

[dang]

That was before I started working on HN, so I don't have any inside details. But I'll give you my take on what I think happened, based on the time I did spend working with pg on the site. I need a few minutes though--there's another comment pending on my stack. Will come back and edit this.

(Edit: I haven't forgotten, but have to run out to an appointment, so this will need to wait for another hour or two. Sorry about that.)

Edit: back now. My gut feeling is that PG might not have had enough time to look into all the details. I say that because June 2012 was about the peak of when HN moderation was extremely time-constrained (I started a few months later) and the only option was to enforce the guidelines generically.

[eksith]

It's cool. I'm just curious about your take since, by necessity, you get to see far more comments than I do and get to see patterns that I may miss completely.

For the record, I don't think he deserved a hellbanning, but then again, this was a while ago. And the wild west hadn't probably settled yet.

[tptacek]

I think you could, when Paul Graham was actively moderating the site, get hellbanned for unproductively pissing Paul Graham off. I think it happened more than once.

[throwit99]

This is still true, and will always be true.

If a moderator has a button "ban", and you piss them off enough, you'll get banned.

Give people buttons, and they'll use them. Probably more than they actually should.

[opendais]

> The guidelines (as you probably already knew) also say that if you have a question about moderation, send us an email instead of posting about it on the site.

So it sounds like got banned for refusing to follow the guidelines?

[jrochkind1]

I don't see that in the guidelines, nor do I see an email address to contact anyone in the guidelines (or anywhere else).

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[DanBC]

On that very page:

Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something (e.g. to ask us questions about Y Combinator, or to ask or complain about moderation). If you want to say something to us, please send it to [e-mail].

[opendais]

Dan beat me to it.

I'll admit it could be clearer but it has always been there since that page went up as far as I'm aware. Ctrl+F for hn@

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I haven't been banned here. Yet.

But in the places I have been banned, it's not been my fault. The people who say "we don't ban people because of X" are, like most people, just telling themselves a pleasant lie.

There's that one guy, who while never doing anything outrageously obnoxious, rubs you the wrong way. And eventually you're going to find something borderline or even milder than that, and use your petty powers. This is human nature, I'd almost certainly do the same. Everyone would.

[amyhoy]

Hi there.

Why not tell me why I was hellbanned then?

Here's my comment history. Such bullying, so horrible, wow: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ahoyhere

The only conclusion is that HN hellbans dissent. I'm about as far from a troll as you can get.

It's your platform; do what you want. But don't lie about it.

[lotharbot]

It appears the last activity you posted was in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6472749

You called Alex (whose friend had died and he didn't find out for two years) a "shitty friend" and said he didn't "think of, or care for, others".

I don't know if that's worthy of a hellban. But I do know I wouldn't consider the offending comments mere "dissent".

[amyhoy]

Neither of your things in "quotes" are things that I said. The "shitty friend" was alexcap's own words. The phrase "think of, or care for, others" didn't show up in my comment at all.

I didn't call him a shitty friend. He wrote, "Now you’re probably thinking I’m a real shitty friend" after his explanation of the events — which I quoted, in quotes, very clearly a direct quote from his own words — and I wrote "Yes" to answer the question. 95% of my comment was advice for people on what to do in the situation that the friend is reaching out to them as that friend did, who got ignored and later died and that person didn't know for years.

If you write an essay about something you did that you think was bad, and post it to Medium, and post it to HN, and then say "You probably think I did something bad," is it reaaaally so controversial to comment with "Yes, I agree, I think you did something bad"?

Also, if you thought that was my last comment, maybe you don't see my actual last exchange? It was about my bootstrapping conference and upcoming web site. Perhaps it's truly hell banned as in not visible? It was this:

http://skitch-replacement.s3.amazonaws.com/ahoyhere_s_commen...

[lotharbot]

> "The phrase "think of, or care for, others" didn't show up in my comment"

It's a direct quote of a dead comment you wrote in a reply. Turn on "showdead" to see it [0].

The dead "think of" comment in the "shitty friend" thread appeared 405 days ago. Your comment about the bootstrapping conference was 406 days ago. (There's also a dead reply in the bootstrapping thread dated 405 days ago, which fits the timing of being hellbanned for the "think of" post.)

[0 - edited my comment to add this footnote] in response to sage_joch's response to you in that thread. Link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6473532

[amyhoy]

You call it the "shitty friend" thread is pretty inflammatory considering, again, that was the OP's own words (not mine). I turned on showdead and my dead comment that you're referring to sure looks reasoned and measured to me:

I never said anyone specific is self-centered. I said:

>How self-centered do you have to be to not even wish a friend with obvious health problems "good luck" or "feel better"?

That's a rhetorical question.

Then, in the dead comment, I wrote:

> Being a bad friend in this way doesn't make you a bad person…

> But it does make it seem kinda iffy to write a blog post about it, even include screenshots of the conversation, and not (apparently?) be socially aware enough to realize that the deceased man was nearly begging his friend to express some interest and concern. And so many of the commenters, from my perspective, were not picking up on anything the OP did not explicitly lay out in the essay itself, which is to say: his friend was telegraphing his problems in every possible way, and the OP ignored it. People seem to be reading it and thinking, "Oh, just one of those things." But it's only one of those things if you don't think of, or care for, others.

Again, I didn't personally attack alexcap. You are quoting it out of context.

Real inflammatory stuff. If this is what I got hellbanned for, it really makes me wonder about the actual, deliberate, specific, personal cruelty that goes by on a regular basis without banning.

Meanwhile the other dead comment… the one that's actually newest, not the one you claimed above was the newest… is about my bootstrapping conference and upcoming site:

> Oh, good question. I can see why you'd think that. > Nope, BB will be more like HN, but specifically for bootstrappers and related topics only. IOW: public-facing, free to use. (Although I think we're going to do a MeFi-style $5 or $10 join fee, to encourage good citizenship.) > It's not going to be a product. I'm not going to run it unilaterally, either. It's for the community.

That is the last thing I posted before being hellbanned.

[jacquesm]

Wow, I didn't even realize ahoyhere was hellbanned, I thought you just drifted away from the site.

[throwit99]

You'd be surprised just how often this happens.

[amyhoy]

Oooh, is being saucy or mildly disagreeable not allowed either? I get the hint.

[tptacek]

No, being saucy is fine, and people much more disagreeable than you (cough) seem to thrive here. I can't see why you were banned, but I asked, because that's weird.

[morganvachon]

I think it's pretty complicated, actually. I've lurked here for years but only made an account within the last year. In that short time, I've said arguably worse things than you have (though not with ill intent; I can just be abrasive and opinionated) and as far as I can tell I've not been hellbanned yet.

It probably helps that I'm a "nobody"; I'm not a member of the startup culture, just an outside observer and occasional commentator. If it's true that politics are a factor in bans and heavy-handed moderation, then I can understand (though not agree with) you being hellbanned for what are fairly mild comments as judged by an outsider like me, as you are a member of the startup club.

And I hate to say it, but misogyny might even have played a role in it. I have zero evidence of that and it's not meant as an accusation, just that it's a remote possibility. It's a real problem in just about any internet based community, and I really doubt this one is immune to it.

[krapp]

You don't tell people why they've been banned at all, or even when they've been banned. Is it any wonder that conspiracy theories would arise around such a purposely opaque practice?

[mpyne]

My experience comes from a different (IRL) context, but the type of people you need to moderate or ban are also often the type of people who will move right up to the edge of any bright line you draw, and use it is a shield for further antisocial behavior. Sometimes ambiguity is its own reward, especially when the lines are well-understood by most already.

As just one example I'm the resident "soldier" for the government (as one HN user was so nice to call me), I often post comments that are in opposition to many of the tenets that are popular on HN, and yet I've not been banned, my karma is not negative, and those I debate with generally treat me and my arguments with respect. If it were just up to ideology I should have been hellbanned by now, and yet here I am.

[existencebox]

For what its worth, validity of the hellbanning aside, I do agree with the points he brought up re: emergent problems in scored boards. The karma system does tend to contribute heavily to the echo-chambery nature of many of these discussion forums; and while I certainly think HN is in a much better state than any others that come to mind, it's not immune. (Mentioning because to me, this point is far closer to home than the actual reason for the ban, yet often seems to go without effective discussion of possible remediation.)

[PavlovsCat]

Maybe sorting options would help? I'd prefer to sort responses by time (and maybe some javascript to mark new comments since last visit on the page, but I dream..), or even sorted randomly because why not. Maybe serve that from a static cache that only gets refreshed every 5 minutes or so? I would still use it, gladly.

[krapp]

I think account-level filters might alleviate a number of problems users tend to complain about here.

Just imagine how useful people might find it to simply block posts by keyword, or not show threads with a certain ratio of upvotes to downvotes, or be able to train their own Bayesian filter.

They wouldn't even have to change the UI (which they seem to not want to do) apart from what a particular user sees.

[existencebox]

The filters would get very complex very fast though, I imagine. The symptoms of "echo-chamber-itis" are as varied as the humans that exibit them. Sometimes it's aggressive downvoting of an idea that doesn't align with the status quo despite validity for discussion, sometimes it's aggressive upvoting of an idea that aligns better, sometimes it's an aggressive amount of churn as various subgroups battle for "placing" the item, which results in the item being read as a net 0. (I'm being very hand wavy and referring to patterns I see broader than just HN; before anyone starts jumping up and down about how the HN algorithms avoid any specific problem I mention :P )

[krapp]

You're probably right - even though I think people do want their own bubbles, attempting to provide them might just result in more complaints when the filters inevitably fail.

Then again, there does appear to be a confligt in the way the HN community seems to be growing, with the site itself still geared towards providing a relatively low amount of content through a single channel. Stories overwhelming the site and reposts are a known problem, and probably almost no one bothers watching past the first page of /news so those top 30 slots might as well be the entire site. Although, many of the most obvious remedies to this would make the site look more like reddit, and we can't have that I guess.

[madrobby]

Ohai, I've been hell-banned and don't know why. I guess as someone successfully running a software business _and_ being a well-known open source person I have to place in a forum for people who want to run successful internet businesses and are into tech.

[DanBC]

What account was hell banned?

[throwit99]

Maybe you don't personally, maybe you don't as a group anymore.

As I suggested in my original post though, I have more useful things to do than look back at comments I posted years ago and compile evidence. I've moved on.

I'm sure it happens a lot more often than you realise, because in general when people get hellbanned, they come to the same realisations as me.

[dang]

> anymore

Not only did we never ban people for criticizing YC companies, the very first thing PG told me when I started moderating HN, and the thing that he emphasized most strongly after that, was never to do things that could be construed (or misconstrued) as censorship of anti-YC stories.

(I've edited out some irritation that leaked through in my original version of this comment.)

[selmnoo]

dang, I think HN has improved for the better, especially since some effort has been made to make things more transparent.

But it would be despicably dishonest for you guys to deny that routinely you guys do things here to protect YC companies (including manipulating voting points on comments/ submissions).

One example (on the top of my mind) is the drchrono post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7178004

Even though Skeletor made that comment like ... 20 days after the HN submission, it somehow found its way to the top. Obviously, this was through manual action. Obviously, a non-YC company is not afforded such a privilege.

Idling in #startups of freenode (unofficial HN channel), I've heard too many of these stories. The stories of rankban upon some critical comment on a YC-funded company, a slowban because of a critical comment on some YC personality, etc. etc. There are countless examples.

When these things happen one after the other, you lose trust, we cannot believe you anymore. Please stop doing this. I think the only way to win trust back at this point is if you again expose voting points at all times.

[dang]

I'm glad that you agree that HN has been getting better. We obviously have a way to go to win you over, but challenge accepted, we're absolutely willing to try.

It isn't hard to deny that general impression you're reporting, because it isn't true. But I don't see any way to refute such a sweeping claim convincingly. As far as I can tell it exists only on the level of rumor and is unanswerable. But I'm happy to reply about specific cases.

In the Drchrono case, we got an email from the founder asking to post a response after the commenting window had closed. I agreed, but not because this was a YC startup, but rather because we would do this for any startup in this situation, and have indeed done so for at least one non-YC startup I can remember. Before I agreed to the Drchrono founder's request, I told him I needed to make sure that we would do it for any startup in that situation, and I thought long and hard before concluding that was true. It was by far the most important factor in that decision.

[selmnoo]

Consider that the post was killed by moderators, then brought back alive, then drchrono individuals made a comment, and then that comment was shot up. There were a slew of submissions crying out "censorship" this day and they were all similarly killed. I can recall like 20 such instances of similar happenings involving YC-funded startups, and having a similar situation around them. So, honestly, dang, the plausibility of the chain of events you've listed from your side in this specific instance is tenuous at best, and unfortunately again, dishonest and deceitful at worst. But I'm going to suspend my tingly senses and give you the benefit of doubt at this moment, and not go on any further about this particular issue.

dang, I understand that you, in your position, have to be mindful of optics, you have to think of ways to say things that are best for YC. That's great, you should do that. All individuals of a company who have a public presence have to do that. The thing is, you must not focus entirely on optics -- you absolutely must in your heart have the right view. Not only because if you don't, some people will eventually find out what's up, but also because it's the right thing. Actions that favor YC companies (beyond a certain line) on a public forum such as HN are unethical. I think there have been enough things done at this point that the only way that trust can again be restored is by having more transparency -- for example, by showing comment scores at all times in some way.

[jacquesm]

This is an unsolvable problem. As good a job as you're doing, YC is the sponsor of HN and just because of that there will always be this perception. The only way to get rid of this issue would be to completely divorce YC and HN, something that may for a variety of reasons not be possible and for a whole pile of other reasons not be desirable.

You're doing an absolutely super job, probably far better than most or all of us here will ever realize simply because moderation when done properly is all but invisible so don't sweat it, this is a thing that is as far as I can see not solvable in the current set-up. Those lines were drawn long before you showed up and within those lines you're doing the best you can.

FWIW I too recall several instances of users that were banned imho unjustly as well as some threads where the pro-YC bias broke through but over the vast amount of content generated here those are very very few instances, not by far enough to claim systematic bias or to be used as evidence for some nefarious plot. More like genuine mistakes and things done in the heat of the moment. And on later reflection some of those were reverted.

(If you want I can probably dig them up for you but you're busy enough as it is.)

[tlb]

Skeletor's comment is a first-party report of the eventual resolution of the issue. It's the most substantive top-level comment on the page, so it belongs at the top.

We want to see such comments highly ranked regardless of YC affiliation. If you post such an important update and don't get organic upvotes because the story is old, plead your case to [e-mail].

[danielweber]

IF someone is a genuine troll, then hell-banning is a great way of dealing with it, because it maximizes the time wasted by the troll and minimizes the time used by the moderator.

However, if the person isn't actually out-and-out to mess with your site, it sucks. I've seen lots of communities go down the tubes because the moderators get busy with life, and then Something Happens On The Forum, and moderators passive-aggressively go "fine, we're just gonna act like this, and if you don't want us to do that, then you should make the community act better!" Basically announcing that they are going to put in minimal effort to moderation, and the community definitely notices.

Professional moderation, like HN uses, seems like the best way to go.

[morganvachon]

Indeed, it's a situation where the needs of the many (HN community as a whole) outweigh the needs of the few (banned non-troll commentators). The danger lies in becoming such an elite, closed group due to blind moderation and banning even the most innocent members over a perceived slight, that the moderators themselves end up the trolls of what is left of the community.

For example, there's a certain GNU/Linux distro that is maintained by a core group of devs who have become overtly hostile to any new users of their project, and actively seek to discourage "newbies" from seeking help and getting any benefit out of the project. One would think the toxic atmosphere would have killed the distro off long ago, yet it's maintaining popularity and even seeing an uptick in a certain niche community. I certainly don't understand how it thrives with such a rotten core; yes, it's overall a very well done distro, but even the best product normally can't survive that kind of cancer.

That's not to say that HN would ever end up like that; indeed, from what I've seen they are doing an excellent job overall with maintaining and moderating this community. I just hope it continues to stay that way or improve, instead of going down a dark path towards chaos.

[bootload]

"... After being hellbanned I actually realised that commenting on internet forums is toxic, generally a waste of time, and not productive. So I quit. ..."

Yes.

... But for those that like spending time commenting, I would have thought following a subreddit model would work better here, with the growth. Spread the power out. ..."

Agreed.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

It's little different than pre-internet communities. I mean, we paint this adorable picture of small-town life from some previous golden era, in movies and in books, and even in the stories of your great-grandparents.

But people are assholes. And they found a few people they didn't like (for good reasons, for bad reasons, for none at all) and did the meatspace equivalent of hellbanishment.

Yeh, here, you're just wasting time on the internet, maybe you can stop caring about it. But people do this the world over, and there's no escaping it. This is what people do. They're mean fucks, and if you don't fit in, you're just left out in the cold.

[segmondy]

My account segmond got hell banned, it's a miracle that this is not. HN will downvote any comment that they don't like down to hell. An opinion that is disagreeable with is flagged, it's like the opposite of facebook like button. Dislike.

You don't have to spam or be disruptive. I'm putting my account name on here so folks can look at it. I was new to HN, didn't know much, had no idea I was dead. :)

This account get's a decent amount of flag too when I make unpopular opinion, I have to stop myself from censoring myself because the moment I feel like I can't talk or participate, I will just leave the community. If I can't express myself around a bunch of "hackers" then what's the point?