We've asked you a ton of times not to post uncivil and unsubstantive comments here. Since you can't or won't stop, we've banned your account.
If you don't want to be banned, you can email hn@ycombinator.com. We're happy to unban anyone when (and only when) there's reason to believe they'll follow the rules in the future.
The wording in your message seems to imply that unsubstantive comments can get you banned. Is this only for really unsubstantive stuff like the "this" comments?
Or am I misreading and a comment has to be uncivil AND unsubstantive for it to be ban worthy?
I'm not sure I can express this in propositional logic :)
In the above case, there were many comments that were both uncivil and unsubstantive, as well as many warnings and requests to stop, so we were squarely in the ban zone.
Incivility is worse than unsubstantiveness, so the threshold for getting banned for the former is lower. We've banned accounts that only posted fluff comments, though, since that's not the intended use of this site.
One thing HN users should know is that the substantiveness rule has an exception for empty, friendly comments such as "thank you" and "congratulations", because while those aren't substantive in content, they are salutary for the community.
I always wonder about the people that control the social media accounts. I couldn't toe the company line and color a restriction as some kind of benefit, and I kind of wonder how they deal with the cognitive dissonance.
It's a weird culture, where an "update" is a universally, unquestionably good thing. To me, it always means "trouble", and often (but not always) means a useful enhancement that might balance out the inconvenience imposed by the change. But the process of enhancement shouldn't ever interfere with basic use of the device. Forced updates make me want to abandon the product.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 24.9 ms ] threadIf you don't want to be banned, you can email hn@ycombinator.com. We're happy to unban anyone when (and only when) there's reason to believe they'll follow the rules in the future.
Or am I misreading and a comment has to be uncivil AND unsubstantive for it to be ban worthy?
In the above case, there were many comments that were both uncivil and unsubstantive, as well as many warnings and requests to stop, so we were squarely in the ban zone.
Incivility is worse than unsubstantiveness, so the threshold for getting banned for the former is lower. We've banned accounts that only posted fluff comments, though, since that's not the intended use of this site.
One thing HN users should know is that the substantiveness rule has an exception for empty, friendly comments such as "thank you" and "congratulations", because while those aren't substantive in content, they are salutary for the community.
It's a weird culture, where an "update" is a universally, unquestionably good thing. To me, it always means "trouble", and often (but not always) means a useful enhancement that might balance out the inconvenience imposed by the change. But the process of enhancement shouldn't ever interfere with basic use of the device. Forced updates make me want to abandon the product.
Tbh I rather have forced updates, than a billion owned internet of things devices being part of a botnet for spam or ddos.