zlacker

The one thing I don't like is when comments become "dead", which I understand happens after too many downvotes.

The reason I dislike this, is that besides obviously racist or otherwise inappropriate comments, there are regularly normal seeming comments that are dead. Now, there may be reasons for this I am just not privy to, but I feel it hinders discussion when some opinions that don't seem problematic are just silenced like this.

[Edit]: And rereading my own comment, I think I want to clarify that I am not talking about free speech issues or political discussions here, but I regularly encounter factual seeming or explanatory comments in technical discussions that are dead and it just baffles me.

>>Grumbl+(OP)
When you see a dead comment that you feel shouldn't be, vouch for it. With a couple of vouches it'll become live again and can be responded to.

Usually when I see a perfectly good, but dead, comment I check out the user's history. I usually see one of two situations here:

1. It's clear that they have a pattern of making nasty, off-topic, often vulgar comments. I'll still vouch for their good comments, but at least I can understand why they were dead to begin with.

2. If their history is of mostly normal comments except one bad joke at the start of their posting history that got them hell banned, then I'll vouch for them and let them know what's happened.

>>Grumbl+(OP)
Registering an account through a VPN is an automatic shadowban without warning. How is a new user supposed to know this?

Hacker News is a lot less hospitable in reality than it seems to an outsider. If you just register a lurker account and enable showdead and look around it's a veritable zombietown in here.

>>Jtsumm+t2
Thanks, that's actually a good point.

I knew there was an option to vouch for comments but just assumed I did not have enough Karma to do so. But another comment in this discussion mentioned the "hidden" flag button, which you only see if you click the comments timestamp.

And sure enough, the vouch button is just there. So the problem may just be that you have to know where to find it. Which I now do. And hopefully everyone who didn't and reads this now as well.

>>Grumbl+j4
I probably should have mentioned that. Yeah, you have to click on posts (so the link isn't just visible in the normal discussion) in order to vouch or flag them. I think that that's a reasonable thing, it requires a moment's thought to do (even a brief one) so it can't be someone's reflex like downvoting.

I do appreciate that you can undo most of these actions now. There was a time when downvoting (and upvoting) were instantaneous and permanent. It was very frustrating when scrolling on my phone and accidentally downvoting someone because I used the wrong kind of press in the wrong place.

>>Grumbl+j4
I suspect the intention was to create a small barrier to entry for the "heavier" features, to reduce petty usage. It only takes a little exploration to find (no offense, I didn't know about them for a while either).

>>Grumbl+(OP)
Comments do not become [dead] after too many downvotes - only flags. The worst that happens to downvoted comments is that they get faded. If you want to read one, you can click on its timestamp to go to its page, whereupon the text should be normal.

>>Jtsumm+t2
In case 2 you should email hn@ycombinator.com. We watch for those ourselves and unban such users. Inevitably we don't see them all, though, and emails from fellow users are super helpful in that case.

Moderation is guesswork, and even if we guess 99% accurately about which accounts to ban in the early stage—a necessary thing to do, because otherwise the site would be overrun with spammers and trolls—that still leaves quite a few false positives who later turn out to be neither spammers nor trolls.

>>Zinnia+U3
> Registering an account through a VPN is an automatic shadowban

That's not true.

New accounts are subject to extra software restrictions because of past abuses by trolls and spammers, though. I don't see any way around this.

>>dang+4d
I'll try to remember that in the future. I don't see #2 very often, which is a positive of this site. Usually it seems to be newer accounts or infrequent posters which makes sense.

>>dang+pd
Ok. I can only speculate unless you want to document.

I'll guess again! My VPN just happened to be IP banned which I had no way of knowing before registering.

I'm sure new people appreciate being labeled as abusive trolls and spammers just for registering and I’m sure new people don't stay either.

>>Zinnia+6h
A lot of "new people" who show up to complain about HN are not "new people" at all but ones who have been banned many times and are well aware of it. Typically they create a new account to come back in the front door before the back door has swung shut behind them. A favorite sport before doing that is to leave a message with the old account about how $snarkism HN is and how they're leaving and never coming back.

If you or anyone has suggestions for how to better write software to distinguish between genuinely new accounts and serial abusers, I'm sure we'd be very interested.

>>dang+Dq
Another baby that gets thrown away with the bathwater are new throwaway accounts used to post controversial stuff or to whistle-blow their companies. Unfortunately there's no programmatic way to tell them apart from new accounts made for trolling as you point out.