I wonder if a more appropriate title wouldn't be "How I Got Banned in the First Place". How the author got unbanned isn't really as helpful to know as what he did to get banned to begin with.
I've tweeted a few people before to let them know of their fate when their comment history didn't seem worthy of a ban and I think in all cases I've had to point out that an email needs to be sent to have the ban looked at.
Indeed. I cannot for the life of me understand the logic behind this behavior. If you've been banned or had a comment killed, it would be a basic courtesy to provide some sort of notification/reason in your profile.
Knowing that I'd have gotten a warning/notification means if the site is slow, I'd brush it off as high latency. Now every time the site is a little slow, I panic and think I've been slow banned.
Agreed, and as others mention, a little more transparency would be nice. When I signed up, I think I posted less than 10 comments, all perfectly civil and in-line, before someone informed me I appeared to be hellbanned (and was kind enough to comment on it and say they looked at my comment history and didn't see any reason). I don't know what heuristic I triggered or if it was simply a mistake, but my initial reaction was that banning was so arbitrary and capricious around here that I almost just shrugged and said, "ok, whatever, I'm not particularly invested in this site," and left. Instead I emailed info@ycombinator.com to ask why I was hellbanned, and I never got a response, but soon afterwards, the ban was lifted. I still have no idea what happened, and although I seem to have managed to find the right tone for comment threads, the machinations of the site and its rules remain shadowy and cryptic, so I have no idea if I'm eventually going to be banned again.
Edit: haha, I just went back and looked, and it was you who was so kind. Thanks, parent! :)