HN Explorer

Ask PG: Please allow us to report incorrectly dead accounts

17 points by ars ↗ HN
I come across accounts that are incorrectly dead all the time. For example there are two at the bottom here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3669688

Both are dead and should not be.

Please add a flag link to posts from dead accounts that would report the account to moderators to double check that it really should be dead.

I come across dead accounts in virtually every story and almost all of them should not be dead. Whatever moderation you have going on is far too strict.

I also think you should require at least one flagged post before killing an account for having too low of a karma.

14 comments

[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 48.7 ms ] thread
bdfh42
I think you may be confused - what in your view constitutes a dead account?
ars
These for example:

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=generators

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=donnawarellp

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=zzz90210

They have negative karma (which is why they were killed), but they are not spammers.

bdfh42
I am not sure I understand what your problem is here. If negative karma accounts that have not been active for months are downgraded in some way - it just strikes me as sensible housekeeping.

Perhaps you can explain the issue as you see it?

ars
Not been active? Two of them posted today, and the other posted yesterday.

Housekeeping? Do you even know what killed accounts are?

> I am not sure I understand what your problem is here.

That's pretty obvious. But please try to understand it before assuming there is no problem.

PS. I just realized why you think they are not active! You don't have showdead turned on in your profile, so their dead posts are hidden to you.

tnorthcutt
That's pretty obvious. But please try to understand it before assuming there is no problem.

bdfh42 asked you to explain it as you see it. I think they are trying to understand it.

jack-r-abbit
heh... I didn't know there was such an option. Now I see dead people. Thnx
waffle_ss
I think the first two are fine being dead. They've been around a while and should know the HN posting guidelines. Just trolling through their comments, it's clear they didn't. If you really want them back, you could upvote a couple of their comments or tell them they are hellbanned I guess.

The last guy... eh, I can kind of see your point as it's a new account. His mistake was making a subjective comment before he had enough karma to withstand the downvotes. Should that be a fatal mistake according to HN's law of natural selection? I would argue yes, as I think one should prove their value to the community before making those types of comments, but I can see why some would find it distasteful.

brandon
A friend of mine had his account marked dead for some reason. He had no idea and his comments and submissions were effectively blackholed for weeks. He eventually stopped participating much in HN because of the lack of interaction.

Once I noticed, I emailed PG and he fixed it some hours later. Not a terribly scalable solution, but it got the job done.

Forrest7778
I agree 100% that you should receive a notification that your account is blackholed. After reading this and still being new to HN I am a tad terrified now that I might one day be blackholed and not even realize it.
dangrossman
The whole point of a hellban is that the person receiving it doesn't know. Telling a troll they're banned just feeds into their behavior; they'll do whatever's necessary to circumvent the ban just to fight the site administrator and other users. A hellban subtly encourages the troll to leave voluntarily by ensuring they're ignored.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/06/suspension-ban-or-h...

[dead] metel2
HN commenting is a bit of a tightrope. I suspect most people are unaware of how straying just a little off the path of acceptability (if I may employ a mixed metaphor) will get you slow-banned/fully hell-banned.

I think this contributes to the tendency for HN commenters to all ape a similar, rather stuffy and perhaps even pompous commenting style - middlebrow content with spray-on erudition.

I have endeavored to reproduce the house style in this comment.

Yours faithfully, Embittered Ban-Victim.

zerostar07
I 've had my 2 previous accounts hellbanned and i can only guess someone did not like my comments or something although they were by far not my worst comments:

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ristretto (karma 835)

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ignifero (karma 1761)

It's my understanding that it is a normal thing here. I mostly visit the community for the curated frontpage links. I also have showdead on, as i often find engaging but controversial opinions at the bottom. Typically the top spaces are occupied by either extremely long posts or some very politically correct opinions that offer nothing as debate fodder. Anyway, given that this is a corporate forum, i think i can live with that.

I would suggest at least letting us know when we are hellbanned, it is a pain to talk to a black hole.

cianclarke
For some reason, I'm unable to submit new content - has my account been incorrectly flagged in some way? Tried clearing browser cache, cookies, and trying across multiple browsers. I don't want to just sign up for a new account, seems like the wrong way to go about this?!
cianclarke
Hang on, it's just started working there again, after not for a few hours. How odd :-)