HN Explorer

Ask HN: Do you think it's good practice to hell ban for not commenting?

4 points by ch49 ↗ HN
My previous account got hell-banned because I rarely made a comment. That's the only reason I can think of. I rarely made any submission either, so spamming can't be the reason.

Is it a good practice to ban people because they won't comment? HN has high standards for comments, I rarely feel that I am knowledgeable enough to add something valuable to a discussion; it came to me as a surprise to see anything I submit is [dead] already.

8 comments

[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 30.9 ms ] thread
erkose
Can you define what you mean by "hell banned". My primary account, with close to 10k karma, has some kind of 3-5 second delay associated with it, so I switched to this one which has no delay.
angersock
Congratulations! You've been slowbanned.
Alupis
so called "hell banned" is when everything you do is dead on arrival. comments, submits, etc. If you don't have "show dead" turned on, it may take you a while to realize this.

if you think you got "hell banned" for a wrong reason, I'd recommend emailing the guys (email is on contact page). They'll either blow you off, or open a dialog.

erkose
OK, I wasn't hell banned.
Alupis
the delay ("slow banned") is usually due to some sort of bad behavior. It can be arbitrary, or system-administered, for a number of reasons. In my experience, enough "good behavior" will get it removed after some period of time.

Again, you can always open a dialog with the guys. Depending on the reason behind the moderation, they may or may not respond... it's up to them.

Also, I find it hard to believe the OP was "hell banned" for not posting/commenting. If he truly had no "bad behavior", then I'd think either his account is linked to a bunch of other accounts from the same actual user, or he was mistakenly linked... at least that is my thoughts.

ch49
I have only one active HN account. I wonder if only submitting my own blog posts might be considered wrong behaviour. I write on my blog once in 2-3 months, and submit it to HN. HN and reddit are my only source of good reads, so I rarely find something useful to submit; and I submit links when I find them.

Not commenting/submitting regularly is the only reason I can think of that can be considered bad on my part.

Here's my other account for which HN has gone read-only: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=channikhabra

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
patmcc
Are you sure there's nothing objectionable in your (rare) comments or submissions? It seems unlikely a moderator would bother to hellban you for not commenting often; why would they go to the trouble?