Ask HN: why is ftse dead ? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: why is ftse dead ?

22 pointsjacquesm17 comments

I just noticed that user ftse is 'dead', any comments he/she makes are not normally visible, is there a record of why this is happening ?

With 'showdead' on his/her stuff appears but is blended in to the background to the point where you have to select it to see it.

I went through his/her submissions and comments and can't see a reason why there would be a ban on this persons account.

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for those who don't have 'showdead' on:

ftse here.

I didn't know my account was dead to the world, but thanks jacquesm for letting me know.

In hindsight my comment at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=765153 does appear trollish, but I assumed the bright sparks reading would have taken it in context. It was exactly the type of comment Dvorak would have made in defence of the accusation that he is a professional troll. Anyway, he has admitted this on video to Dave Winer, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMQv0j29WHA. The fact that I was posting this comment in irony was obviously lost, though, on mustpax who said I should be civil.

As much as I admire what pg has done here with NH, I really can't be bothered writing to him to explain all this if his code doesn't have the charity to let me know when I'm wasting my time talking to myself.

i really don't think this is a good way to go about this.

when editors kill accounts here, that person doesn't know that his or her account is dead without going to a lot of trouble to find out. that's done for a reason. making account killing into a big public deal short-circuits the original intent.

> when editors kill accounts here, that person doesn't know that his or her account is dead without going to a lot of trouble to find out.

You've got to be joking I hope ?

So, not only are you dead to the world, you are not even aware of it ?

that's correct. to the person who's logged in with a dead account, it looks like their submissions and comments are just fine. i've personally observed people going on and on for a year or more, not aware that their account is dead.

here's another point. having your account [dead]ed is not a death sentence. if you write pg a sincere note and say you're sorry, 98 times out of 100, he'll let you back in. i've also seen this happen many times. but if you're so oblivious to the people around you that you're supposedly interacting with, that you don't even notice that your account is dead ... well, those people deserve to be off in the weeds talking to themselves, if you ask me.

> if you write pg a sincere note and say you're sorry, 98 times out of 100, he'll let you back in.

But for that to be possible you first have to know that you are dead right ? And since the system seems to be engineered in such a way that you can not find out this is a bit of a weak point I think.

Maybe you wonder why you are 'impopular', maybe you are not aware that your account even could be dead.

It's not that users can't find out that they've been deaded, it's that it requires a little bit of work. If one simply logs out and tries to look at their comments, they'll notice it right away. This account that I'm posting under actually started out as a dummy account that I specifically created so that I could ensure that my primary account hadn't been deaded. (This was right after I'd done a couple of very provocative things) Of course, if one makes half a dozen straight comments that never get voted up or down, it should be pretty clear that something is going on.

Also, it's worth considering the reason why it isn't made obvious to deaded users why they've been deaded. If you notify a troll that you've killed their account, they simply create a new account and continue. At that point you've effectively accomplished nothing by deading their account, and they whole point is to do something about trolls.

> But for that to be possible you first have to know that you are dead right ?

That's the point. If a persistent troll is aware of their banishment, they will just create another account and continue causing problems. The only way to kill a troll is to starve them to death - and they feed on attention.

If this person you're asking about didn't make any trollish comments, then it's unfortunate they were killed. It's also possible they made a trollish comment and later edited or deleted it.

i'm not an editor on this site. i haven't interacted closely with anybody who is. i haven't read the arc source code. yet i know all this stuff about the history, values, mores, and rules of news.yc that i just explained to you. all i did was observe. anyone else here is also free to observe, just like i did, and could figure out all the rules and nuances.

really, jacquesm, this is an impedance mismatch. i've read a lot of your comments by now. you are a big loud personality type, you like everything spelled out in big bright letters. you're probably an extrovert in real life. pg is not like that. he's far more subtle than you are.

you are a big loud personality type, you like everything spelled out in big bright letters. you're probably an extrovert in real life

Funny, I've read a lot of jacquesm's comments and didn't get that impression at all. He's certainly "into it" and really likes to participate. For all we know, he may be a real introvert in real life and is much more comfortable expressing himself on-line. I know I am.

It's true, I was banned once and it took me about two weeks to figure out what was going on. I probably wouldn't have caught on at all, except I'd heard of other forums doing similar things. The only trouble is, I'm not a troll. I was told that I was banned due to a server error - not sure if that's true or not.

Somethingawful forums do something similar, called "hellbanning". It's a great way to combat trolls because they think they're still active, just no one is biting.

For a persistent troll I can see the point, but for a regular and active user that makes an offcolour remark seems to be a little bit over the top.

To get shot in the neck without any kind of reason why is one thing, to not even know that you've been shot is a different matter.

So, effectively the only way that you 'defen' know that you're still and active user is because I answered your comment ?

I think it's pretty obvious if you look at the comments just prior to the [dead]ing. (It looked like ftse started exploring troll country.)

I see 10's of pretty good comments, some reasonable submissions and one comment that had only reached -2 when the account was killed.

Surely modding to -7 or so would have sent the same message in a better way ?

If someone would persist in behaviour like that you can always get rid of them but this seems to be a bit too trigger happy for my taste.

Also, in spite of being 'dead' ftse continues to participate and as far as I can see behaviour after being banned was pretty much in character with earlier postings.

Take in to account the context of that comment:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=765153

He merely answered the question, maybe not in the most elegant way but that's what you get with subjects like that.

I don't really disagree with you; I just know that it was the sort of behavior that causes accounts to get [dead]ed.

There wasn't enough comment history there to know whether or not it was about to become a troll account. A large part of the reason this community has been successful is that the editors are willing to ghost accounts if it looks like someone can't play nice.

Seems pretty arbitrary. I'm amazed I was never put on perma-dead.

I thought u meant footsie 100. Was going to say that it is bank holiday today in UK, therefore it might not be opened.

As for your actual inquiry, perhaps you need to make the title clearer. I personally do not know.

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