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Ask PG: Want to settle on one account but everything from it gets killed

6 points by iptoc ↗ HN
Hi PG and HN community,

I am new to this community. I started visiting this community after someone posted one of my blog posts here which received a lot of hits from this community about 6 months ago. Back then, I was an infrequent visitor to HN and I ended up creating a couple of new accounts every time I tried to login.

Gradually, I've come to like this forum because of the good quality posts that appear on the home page and I want to contribute regularly in discussions. As a result, I want to abandon this account I am posting with and settle with only one: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=spal My reason for settling on this account is that I use this nickname in most other online forums and IRC networks. This nick provides me the right mix of anonymity and identity.

Unfortunately, whatever I post with that other account gets killed automatically. As a result, I am forced to continue using this account. I am not sure why anything from that account gets killed. I've posted only a couple of links to my own blog as well as other articles on the web from both these accounts. I'm not sure if that amounts to spamming considering I've only posted 3 or 4 links only from each account.

Is there a way to resolve this issue? Any help or suggestion on this matter would be very appreciated.

Also, if this isn't the right place to ask this question, could you please give me the contact details where I can ask this question?

6 comments

[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 22.1 ms ] thread
davidhansen
Been there, done that. I have two other accounts that have been hellbanned for comments that moderators most likely disagreed with. I have learned to filter my posts through a "would this opinion be unpopular?" filter. It's unfortunate, but self-censorship of even slightly controversial ideas is the only way to maintain a viable account on HN.
achompas
Comment content on HN is user-moderated. Your account won't get nuked by mods for anything but spam, but the community will vote you down for violating the rules:

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

People don't get "hellbanned" here, there are no dictatorial moderators.

EDIT: the above is false--please see child comment.

allenbrunson
That is completely false. There have been hundreds of accounts hellbanned for bad behavior. Here's a random sampling:

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=gilesgoatboy http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sharkfish http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=losethos http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Arrington

if you turn on showdead in your profile, you'll see that all of these people tried to comment past their bannings, but they were silenced.

iptoc
How do I find out why my other account was banned? I've hardly used it and never been rude to anyone with it. Or could it be that multiple accounts for the same user isn't allowed and that's why that one is banned?