Hacker News Reader

Comment by aspensmonster | Hacker News Reader

@sabat, you're hellbanned. Looking through your comment history I can't tell why.

His comment:

>Anecdotally, when my son was a baby, I definitely knew his cry, and it felt instinctual (although in truth, it's probably just subconscious recognition).

View on HN

The comment that triggered the hellban was:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5399303

"I love how Jason Fried, the most self-important man in software (who can't code) is first on the list to diss the security patches. Fuck you, Jason. Learn to code. Then you can diss."

I imagine that telling someone "fuck you" directly is a hellbannable offense (even if the sentiment is genuine)

I'd expect more than a single off-color comment before banning someone. This particular user has a long set of perfectly valid and relevant comments throughout his comment history. There should be a pervasive problem with the user that fails to be resolved, even after an open dialog with others, before the community resorts to the boot. Even then, there's no reason for a hell ban specifically. Hell bans are meant to throw off unmonitored spammers who aren't meticulous enough to check that they do in fact have clean accounts to spam through. The Jesus-Spam that's been making the rounds recently is a good example; lots of Bible verses and more or less the exact same message in every post, not at all relevant to the link. Obvious spam. Sabat obviously isn't in this category.

However, the moderation system on HN isn't even opaque; it's a pitch black box. Zero accountability.

What you refer to as "Jesus-Spam" is the tragic rambling (and randomly generated "messages from God") of a talented software developer with schizophrenia.

http://qaa.ath.cx/LoseThos.html

https://www.hnsearch.com/search?q=losethos

https://www.hnsearch.com/search?q=sparrowos

And the messages are not random! If you read them you'll see they always have relevance to the topic at hand.

Usually I've seen a paragraph or two of related and often insightful commentary, interspersed with randomly selected biblical verses or Markov chains (the "God says" sections).

I've known two people that have been hell banned here for single one-off comments. In both cases it had to do with supposedly disrespecting prominent Silicon Valley big shots that are worshiped on HN (eg in one case it was about Chris Dixon).

In my opinion the fastest way to get banned from HN, is to say anything negative about the elites. Even if you're just criticizing, that'll be enough to do it.

Zero accountability indeed.

Were they profane comments? Telling someone to fuck themselves isn't exactly the most appropriate thing to say

The next comment was also very "unpolite": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5399305 Perhaps it triggered the hellbanning.

That's not that bad is it. Yes, it's wrong to say someone cant criticize something they couldn't do better, but it wasn't that offensive was it? I'd say a bit of down voting would have had the desired correctional effect.

In the spectrum of inappropriate things to say, this is far from the worst. My point was that 'Fuck you, Jason' is never appropriate. I don't think he would have been hell banned had he said 'screw you' or just omitted the three words, but saying 'Fuck you, Jason' crosses the line (and to be fair, I don't disagree with Sabat's point)

If sabat is hellbanned, how did you see his comment, and if you saw his comment, how did you know he was hellbanned?

There is a mechanism called showdead that allows you to see hellbanned comments. It's in your profile.

+1 thanks

Reply on news.ycombinator.com