Ask HN: What does [dead] mean and few more | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What does [dead] mean and few more

4 pointsgamebit074 comments

I have a hacker friend, who tried posting stuff on hacker news, it would show to him as posted but would not appear for others to see.(He would send me a link with item it, which i wont be able to open) After some time it would have [dead] marked befor it. Also his username appears in green.

So why do we see the following three things: 1.he posted a message and shared link with me http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3782888 he was able to see it, but i was not.

2. Why/How does [dead] appear before a post?

3. Why do few of the users have their usernames in green?

I like my friend are new over here, hence the question.

Thanks!

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1. He was hellbanned. It's an anti troll mechanism, which used to be quite effective, but now has a lot of false positives, esp since it can be triggered by an unpopular comment by a user with a low karma score.

2.[Dead] appears before a post if the item has been flagged by a lot of people or has been killed by moderators. Also occurs when a hellbanned user posts anything.

3. Usernames in green is to indicate that the user is new - or atleast that's what I think it is for.

It means that you've been "hellbanned". It's in theory reserved for trolls and other zero-value posters, but often it catches new posters when their karma drops below zero (I think that triggers an automatic hellban, but I'm not sure).

I don't agree with it personally - it seems to catch a lot more people than just the trolls.

Eh, if you're new to a place and come in guns a-blazing or commenting on worthless flamebait (which is generally what leads to your karma dropping below zero), that is at least a very bad signal. I have seldom seen such a person go on to be less hostile than they started out.

On the contrary, I've seen several people who post worthwhile things - definitely not trolling - but happen to have a few people downvote them and then get auto-hellbanned for no reason.

The latest one that I've seen is this guy: http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dailyllama He was hellbanned after one of his first three posts, none of which look trollish to me. Are you really saying that he will never produce anything worthwhile in his entire existence?

Update: There are other cases where people have been hellbanned over trivia: CPlatypus (http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=CPlatypus) seems to be exactly the sort of person that HN should be attracting. Read through his comments - experienced dev, multiple start ups, knows what he's talking about, but appears to have been hellbanned over this exchange: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3732360

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