It's worth noting that the Reddit poster is only contributing his personal experiences. There are other posters who've also been banned for innocuous and well-received posts. One is genderfree:
I offer these as proof that I was a good contributor to Hacker News-- abrasive and controversial
I have no opinion on the actual person (I did not click through the comments) but I just want to point out that I personally don't rate someone who is abrasive as a good contributor, and there are a lot of flavours of "controversial" that I have little time for, too.
I also can't figure whether the OP is primarily complaining about being "banned" or by the fact that this is not made clear to the user. I do have some sympathy for the latter, if that is the case. It's pretty grim to be allowed to post but have everything silently sent to /dev/null.
4 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 21.0 ms ] threadhttp://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1114604
http://searchyc.com/user/genderfree
I have no opinion on the actual person (I did not click through the comments) but I just want to point out that I personally don't rate someone who is abrasive as a good contributor, and there are a lot of flavours of "controversial" that I have little time for, too.
I also can't figure whether the OP is primarily complaining about being "banned" or by the fact that this is not made clear to the user. I do have some sympathy for the latter, if that is the case. It's pretty grim to be allowed to post but have everything silently sent to /dev/null.
I would understand banning a troll, but Hacker News is supposed to be above banning people for holding unpopular opinions.