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Comment by jart | Hacker News Reader

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The other side of this story:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36735833

One small note I'd add is that the Lobsters software has had at least one very unfortunate bug that led to pushcx claiming that I had "disowned all my comments"[1] when I left Lobsters. I had, in fact, not done so.[2] The bug was later fixed[3], but even today, over 2 years later, my comments remain disowned. They were never recovered. Textually, they're still on the site, but no longer associated with my account, which makes them very difficult to find. I'm still a little salty about that because I contributed a sizeable body of comments to Lobsters that would be at least nice to link occasionally.

Anyway, my point is, when pushcx says, "all banned users get an email notifying them of a ban with the Reply-To header set to my email," that's only true if at least the Lobsters software is behaving as it is intended to behave. It may not be.

[1]: https://lobste.rs/s/zp4ofg/lobster_burntsushi_has_left_site#...

[2]: https://lobste.rs/s/zp4ofg/lobster_burntsushi_has_left_site#...

[3]: https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters/issues/1004

This is interesting, but I'm having trouble connecting it to the comment I just wrote, and I'm wondering if I'm missing a connection that would be more obvious if I paid more attention to Lobsters.

I'm just saying that you can't necessarily trust that an email was sent to banned users. It's a small point. I honestly don't know what to make of the situation as a whole. It is strange.

Oh. I perceived the parent commenter to simply be saying they were surprised at why they were banned. But 'pushcx explained what happened in detail, and if that explanation is correct (I have no insight into it, other than generally liking 'pushcx, who is not a friend or anything) it's hard to see how they would be confused about what happened.

But I'm just overexplaining myself now. What happened with you and Lobsters is also very interesting (and also yikes, and sorry that happened; I'd be pretty upset if all my HN comments got disowned).

No I like pushcx too. Does a great job running Lobsters.

> Lobsters banned me for spamming and self-promotion along with every single person I invited to the site over the years.

From the admins:

> Inviting many spammers and helping them circumvent the restriction on unseen domains from new users for spam.

Seems justified.

You are assuming the moderators are not lying. Unfortunately, mods on some sites do lie and do claim innocent posters violated rules. I myself was temporarily banned on one site because I argued that the Epic game store was good for competition and would help bring down prices for both consumers and game developers.

The stated reason for the banning was something like “trolling”. Not much to say other than some mods are good but some abuse their power.

Lobste.rs has an open moderation log: you can see what was done by who. It's one of the few places where I think it's possible to actually trust the moderators are treating things fairly.

I will handily take the mods side of the story, it’s quite clear from the effort put in the respective comments, and the underlying incentives (what would a mod win from making up such a complicated story, vs that of the offender party?)

Other people posting your stuff gets a lot of love though.

It says you invited spammers. Did you try discussing the matter with the mods?

Lobsters doesn't have any contact information (I later learned they have an IRC channel) so I didn't get to hear an explanation from the Lobsters moderator until the topic came up here and ended up getting mediated in a Hacker News thread. The moderator was very clear that I was not only spamming myself, but I was encouraging my friends to spam too. For example, one thing I got specifically called out for was I invited my friend from the University of Tokyo to Lobsters so he could share his https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Lisp_in_Life project. This turned out to be very bad per Lobsters cultural norms.

The Lobsters moderator wants new people to earn their place in the community before doing anything that serves their personal interests. It matters not if your self-interests are aligned with giving the Lobsters community what they want. The moderator said they're a smaller platform where it's not difficult to influence the algorithm, and as a result he's very protective of that. You can't just play the upvote game. You have to make sure the mod knows you and likes you before doing that. Another thing I did was I used a loophole to help my friend share his project. In my culture, figuring out how to work around the rules without breaking them is considered a highly prized skill. When the Lobsters algorithm said his account was too new to post a link, I thought I was vouching for and reviewing his project link by posting it myself. But the Lobsters moderator took it as a personal insult and challenge to his authority.

I've read the moderator's description[1] of this event and I don't think you're portraying things fairly.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36735833

Lesson learned: the people who make the rules are less appreciative of the well, technically, I worked around the rule but didn't break it skill.

> When the Lobsters algorithm said his account was too new to post a link, I thought I was vouching for and reviewing his project link by posting it myself.

I'm pretty sure this would be considered a normal vouching & introduction of a member to the site, if those members did not then repeatedly follow up your introduction with repeated self-promotion (including bonus violation of the spirit of the unseen domain policy). As someone inviting others to Lobsters, you were trusted with a small duty to introduce them to the site properly. For most of those you invited, you were both the person initially posting the invitee's relevant unseen domain and the inviter for that invitee. It's respectful there to warn new users of site policy that you don't expect them to know.

When I invited a friend to Lobsters a few months ago so they could post their cool new project there, I made sure to educate them about the self-promotion policy so that both they could continue to use the site and so that I didn't become a problem for the site.

I thought I was. It's just no one told me about the Lobsters policy. I consistently violated the Lobsters policy for several years and no one warned me. I'm just someone who quit her job at Google Brain to build open source code all day in service to the commons. The thought never occurred to me there's people out there who view what I do as spamming and self-promotion. Before I got banned, I'd never heard the word spam used that way, which is why I was so confused. I wish I'd known beforehand that I wouldn't be welcome there, since then I wouldn't have engaged. Honestly I think the real victims here are the Lobsters community members. My work still gets promoted on Lobsters, even though I'm banned. When I publish something new or end up in the news, there's usually a Lobsters thread about it. The only difference is that now I'm not allowed to make myself personally available to my fans, answering their questions, and fixing the bugs they encounter. So I feel like I'm gaining publicity unfairly since Lobsters denies me the ability to fulfill my moral obligation to serve the people whose respect I'm earning.

> I think the real victims here are the Lobsters community members.

And yet Lobste.rs members aren't the ones complaining ad nauseum about it.

> the people whose respect I'm earning.

I'm not sure there's much danger of that with anyone who reads through all this.

> I always felt like the Lobsters crowd is the kinds of people who'll tell you what they really think I genuinely would not have guessed that this would ever be a problem on the internet.

May we get a link to your Lisp GC article?

https://justine.lol/sectorlisp2/

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