<story><title>Ask pg: why have hellbans become so widespread on HN?</title><text>Having &lt;i&gt;Showdead&lt;/i&gt; enabled in m HN profile, I see comments and submissions from banned users as well as those which are flagged by mods and HN users. Many users, unaware of being banned, continue to post to HN. Over the last 3 months I have noticed a significant uptick in the number of banned &amp;#x27;regular&amp;#x27; users (as opposed to spammers, SEO bots and so forth).&lt;p&gt;Almost every day I see worthwhile comments and submissions made in good faith that have been automatically flagged. Now, I know that on a site called &amp;#x27;Hacker News&amp;#x27; informing users that their username or their IP has been banned or restricted is asking for trouble, but on the other hand there&amp;#x27;s a lot of valuable content posted in good faith that is being hidden, and the amount seems to be increasing.&lt;p&gt;Can this policy be reviewed or clarified in some fashion?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>RKoutnik</author><text>He may have tightened up the restrictions on voting rings.  I know one YC user who was banned, and the only issue was that he&amp;#x27;d send out links to a couple of friends asking for upvotes.&lt;p&gt;I feel that there&amp;#x27;s Catch-22 here - so few people browse&amp;#x2F;upvote in `&amp;#x2F;new` that one&amp;#x27;s practically forced to get friends to upvote, but then runs the risk of automated banhammer.  More transparency would be great.  It&amp;#x27;s ironic that pg calls for openness in government but governs HN behind closed doors.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>redthrowaway</author><text>&amp;gt;It&amp;#x27;s ironic that pg calls for openness in government but governs HN behind closed doors.&lt;p&gt;It may be ironic, but it&amp;#x27;s not hypocritical.  Rules that apply to governments need not, and should not, apply to private citizens or corporations.  Government can&amp;#x27;t endorse a religion, but people are free to.  Similarly, it would be bizarre if CEOs were voted for by employees.&lt;p&gt;Government needs to be transparent in order to live up to the maxim that government should operate with the informed consent of the governed.  Private entities have no such moral compulsion.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask pg: why have hellbans become so widespread on HN?</title><text>Having &lt;i&gt;Showdead&lt;/i&gt; enabled in m HN profile, I see comments and submissions from banned users as well as those which are flagged by mods and HN users. Many users, unaware of being banned, continue to post to HN. Over the last 3 months I have noticed a significant uptick in the number of banned &amp;#x27;regular&amp;#x27; users (as opposed to spammers, SEO bots and so forth).&lt;p&gt;Almost every day I see worthwhile comments and submissions made in good faith that have been automatically flagged. Now, I know that on a site called &amp;#x27;Hacker News&amp;#x27; informing users that their username or their IP has been banned or restricted is asking for trouble, but on the other hand there&amp;#x27;s a lot of valuable content posted in good faith that is being hidden, and the amount seems to be increasing.&lt;p&gt;Can this policy be reviewed or clarified in some fashion?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>RKoutnik</author><text>He may have tightened up the restrictions on voting rings.  I know one YC user who was banned, and the only issue was that he&amp;#x27;d send out links to a couple of friends asking for upvotes.&lt;p&gt;I feel that there&amp;#x27;s Catch-22 here - so few people browse&amp;#x2F;upvote in `&amp;#x2F;new` that one&amp;#x27;s practically forced to get friends to upvote, but then runs the risk of automated banhammer.  More transparency would be great.  It&amp;#x27;s ironic that pg calls for openness in government but governs HN behind closed doors.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bhauer</author><text>I have made it a point to always visit the &amp;#x2F;new page when I stop by HN.  (I also have show-dead enabled, but I&amp;#x27;ve not really considered what it means that so many submissions are dead.  I had thought that was caused by accidentally submitting something that had been submitted earlier.)&lt;p&gt;Frankly, I find the &amp;#x2F;new page at &lt;i&gt;least&lt;/i&gt; half as interesting as the front page, which is to say, quite interesting indeed.  I recommend it to anyone looking for another bit of entertaining news on each visit.</text></comment>