I am deeply skeptical of this belief. I do not believe such a thing exists, and there are alternate explanations for the behavior you are seeing (other top-level comments have more points).
1) Just bet me that it's not real, and I'll give you some very strong evidence.
2) How about I write a web-app that exposes HN's rank-banning - who's getting rank-banned and what for. You'd be surprised at how it's being used. I found a way of proving it that I'm sure you'll agree is quite accurate, for cases where this approach can be used.
:)
Edit:
Re: lucb1e, the reason is that I'm far from being the only person who's rank-banned / dead here. Sometimes several comment in the same thread.
Re: scott_s, Hey man, no need to insult me. If you don't want to see the hard evidence, then I won't show it to you. Don't worry.
I think it's reasonably likely that rank-banning is real and that solve is rank-banned. I think it's unlikely that ve was rank-banned for pointing out YC's reversal on their stance about board members; but plausible that ve was rank-banned for other reasons, in a comment where ve did that.
That could be yeah, but he isn't stuck at dead-bottom.
I will note, however, that I am continually disturbed by the preponderance of conspiratorial thinking that pervades discussion of how HN works. In particular, how often individuals tend to use their own theory for evidence of their own theory.
Some of the deleted comments are me not wanting to get drawn into a discussion about particular users and etc.