I leave it turned on, because while hellbanned users don't often contribute a lot, many of their posts are still interesting.
For example, take losethos, who is afflicted with schizophrenia and writes his own operating systems so he can make music with God. (You'll have to turn on showdead to see his comments): http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=losethos
I no doubt misinterpreted your comment.
Rather, I find it to be a interesting window into the mind of a highly intelligent programmer afflicted with a tragic mental disorder. I enjoy reading his comments because I feel it allows me to understand, if only in a tiny way, what he's going through (although maybe this is simply hubris on my part).
If not, I find it hard to believe that after long enough a period of time of noticing absolutely no activity on your posts, people won't catch on.
Also, yeah if someone is a troll I feel like it's 100% fair game to troll them back. And this is the best counter-troll of them all. I had exactly the opposite reaction of yours when I found out about the shadowban - finally! Some way for us to fight back and give them a taste of their own medicine. Assholes that they are.
There are only two problems with this - one, when people are shadowbanned wrongly/arbitrarily with no right to a fair and speedy trial in a court of their peers, and two, hypocritically I have a tendency to troll sometimes and this may or may not suck >_>
I can only speak for myself, but I got slowbanned for just being argumentative several times, and the fact that I got NO signal other than "somebody didn't like something in the hundreds of posts you wrote" means I can't really get invested in HN further than the comment I am reading or writing at any given moment. There is zero rhyme or reason and no class to such a process, and for all I know I just get punished for pointing out a truth someone likes to delude themselves about; so I can't even regret anything without knowing what the supposed error was. I just argue less because at the end of the day, what do I care if someone is wrong, and why spend, say, moral outrage or humour on a site that doesn't get or appreciate it, instead of letting it build up and blogging about it? That way everybody is happy :P
That said, for something like credit card fraud it actually seems smart, just like it might be for cheaters in games, or wherever you have an actual clear definition of "crime". This is not the case here, and it shows sometimes.
Also most [dead] comments I see aren't from hellbanning.
Generally astute people notice when, if they are talking to someone, and that someone is answering in monosyllables and not paying attention that the conversation is unwelcome. It often isn't all conversations, sometimes its just this conversation. People are busy, people are distracted.
I am often surprised when hell banned people say really outrageous things, and nobody responds, how do they rationalize that? Do they consider it incomprehension? Silent agreement?
Finding effective ways of detecting someone who deserves a hellbanning vs a college campus which has all users behind NAT who will all be upset when the cards they ordered don't arrive as expected (let's assume users don't check their statements daily so won't notice a lack of charge) is a difficult task. It's quite the tightrope you end up having to walk.
That said, I'm in no way suggesting that payment services need to take up this responsibility at the expense of protecting legitimate users.
That being said I feel like this is way it should be handled online, something like hellbanning being the last option. Unfortunately the difference between real conversation and online is that online a person can simply reenter a board with a completely different name or "face," it could be literally impossible to tell whether a new board spammer is a first-time offender or someone who's been peacefully told to quit in the past. I'm not sure that off-line morals and psychology applies here in the same way