It's wildly inappropriate to lob a blanket accusation of fraud against every single person who has ever complained about your moderation.

People have wildly divergent views as to what's appropriate, what's a little rude, and what's over the line. This means that even if you really truly believe that there was NEVER a mistake made during moderation, that some people will truly believe what they said.

Good moderation requires a ton of empathy and kindness.

It's probably a lesson to me that the one time I didn't hedge by saying "almost" or something like that, someone objects to my "blanket accusation". Actually, I originally wrote "almost never" (or something similar). But then I realized I couldn't actually remember a case where someone provided a specific link to back up his or her grand claim of why they were banned. So in a fit of impetuousness I lopped off the "almost". I did leave in "nearly always", though.

> Good moderation requires a ton of empathy and kindness.

I try, but don't always succeed. Thanks for the reminder. I appreciate it.

Keep in mind that people might not want to link the example to associate their current account with a banned account to avoid getting banned again.

I appreciate your willingness to see both sides and think of a good-faith interpretation here. That's the Principle of Charity which HN can use a lot more of. However, the users in question are typically quite accomplished at making throwaway accounts for specific purposes. Several have done so in this very thread.

There's no way, barring some freak outlier, that we banned anyone for criticizing YC or a YC-funded startup. If someone really did feel that way, nothing would be easier to clear up. The real issue, in the overwhelming majority of cases, is repeatedly flouting the HN guidelines.

For what it's worth.. I don't even read that much, and I've not been here for that long, but I often was impressed by how much you actually do engage and do seem to care, a lot, to do right by everyone, in public. To say you lack empathy and kindness as a moderator in general would be just silly. I say this as someone who strongly dislikes hellbanning and even grey text (I still think slashdot nailed it with voluntary, customizable filtering), so you know I mean it :P

I disagree! (with your pre-edit, reading "It's not that you expressed yourself poorly").

That's exactly what happened here. (And maybe Daniel can edit his comment.)

Daniel does a really good job, and is extremely responsive by email and on here. It is obvious where he wrote "Ever notice how people who make claims about why they got banned never provide links to the posts in question?" is borne of deep frustration. He would like to follow those links and improve the site, but can't. It's obvious that his comment is written out of frustration.

Let's be very clear: hellbanning is the worst and rudest thing that exists on any respectable Internet forum. Hellbanning literally wastes hours of the time of people who contribute great insight for free. The comments on this site are good and provided for free by people. Hellbanning turns this goodwill on its face, like a goodwill jar you can put bills into but which go into a furnace.

Daniel (and PG) knows very well that hellbanning is a nuclear weapon and the rudest thing that any Internet forum can possibly do, that is actually being done.

You have stories of people only learning they were hellbanned after literally taking the time to email someone a link to something thoughtful they had written. A lot of hellbanning has been (historically) in error.

It is one of the main reasons that I would never consciously leave a comment up if it reaches -3, even if I stand by it 100%, it's important, and the community happens to be wrong in its groupthink and I clearly have explained why. I would delete it instead.

Note that I have learned this behavior, and so have other contributors on this site.

It's one of the things that makes this site great.

So even though it is a nuclear option and the worst, rudest thing that any respectable forum does, in the sense that time is money literally stealing from users, and stealing donations at that and throwing them away, at the same time it is one of the things that allows this site to function as one of the best sites on the planet.

So you can bet that Daniel is extremely serious about following hellbanning claims and improving this process. It is difficult and he walks a very fine line.

He's doing a fantastic job at present in a very difficult undertaking. Kudos, Daniel, and keep up the good work. I can read your comment for what it is :)

"It is one of the main reasons that I would never consciously leave a comment up if it reaches -3, even if I stand by it 100%, it's important, and the community happens to be wrong in its groupthink and I clearly have explained why. I would delete it instead."

I am confused. Your preferred path is to avoid conflict such that you would rather delete than be disagreed with? If your opinion differs from groupthink, you would make it go away? I guess that is similar to not posting in the first place (because of groupthink you disagree with) , just retroactive.

Probably better than my not posting in the first place :)

His point, one that I strongly agree with, is that the threat of being hellbanned for comments that get downvoted is enough to stifle discussion on HN. Honestly, how often do you see passionate debate in HN comments?

> Good moderation requires a ton of empathy and kindness.

Which is sadly lacking among many, if not most, moderators of online communities across the net. I'm not saying that's the case with dang; in fact, I wouldn't know. But it's a thankless job that is akin to working in a call center without pay. It takes a strong personality to keep one's head above the layer of filth floating atop the waters of discourse.

I do know, and Dan has an enormous amount of empathy and kindness. But it is a hard job, it takes a toll, and I think this thread demonstrates how much he's willing to re-visit what he's said. (Even though I'm quite sympathetic to what Thomas said upthread.)

I agree with this, but I think it's worth noting that the prompt here was someone making a specific claim. One doesn't need to believe they have made no mistakes to be certain they've never made a particular mistake, and there's significantly less room for differences in interpretation (though that's not to say there's none).

I was responding to this part of dang's post:

If users could look at the actual record, their perennial sob story of perfectly reasonable behavior struck down by bullying censors would evaporate. So they make new accounts and post statements designed to be unanswerable.

I interpreted that as dang attributing essentially every complaint to malice, and simultaneously dismissing all other explanations.

A misleading summary, since you're the one who introduced the idea of "malice" and "fraud". Dan's claim admits to HN users who believe they've been hellbanned for criticizing YC companies. Yours doesn't.

No, here's what you do:

1) you ban people who are rude and who you disagree with philosophically, while you do NOT ban the equally rude people who you agree with.

For evidence of the above, look at users like etherael (and his other names; not sure if he tors/vpns or if you can find them), who are raging assholes on a semi-routine basis, but who aren't banned because Libertarian BitCoin Lover matches your values. And let's face facts, you're less willing to ban people who agree with you, even if they're toxic assholes.

If you banned people who you agreed with for the same exact crimes as those you disagree with HN would be a better place.

As it stands, people who agree with you are allowed to be ruder and more toxic than people who disagree with you. This is used as a game by some of HN's worst users who brag on IRC about how it's fun to try to engage in flamewars where they don't get banned but the other individual does.

edit:

Not to mention other game that's played by a lot of folks, which is to be as big of a dick as is possible without actually using openly aggressive language. The goal there being to generate an emotional reaction while retaining some semblance of plausible deniability, because everybody knows that you won't ban them for "polite" taunting, even if it's toxic shit that can't go anywhere useful or interesting.

The people who hold the opposite ideology believe fervently that HN is biased the other way (liberal, politically correct, socialist, etc., are some of the terms they use). I realize it's a bit facile to say "both sides claim bias therefore we must be doing something right". But for what it's worth, no, we don't consider ideology when banning people, we consider incivility.

Dan is a libertarian bitcoin lover? I've spent several hours in person talking to him. I'm a statist liberal Democrat who believes bitcoin is a ponzi scheme. He did not set off my spidey sense. I think you might be attributing generalized fears and frustrations onto specific people you don't know.

Being in the same ideological quadrant, I can say that I tend to get as many or more upvotes on political comments as on apolitical/tech-focused comments. And I tend to follow responses to my more contentious comments closely, and I have only very occasionally noticed even a single downvote on said comments.

I think there's a lot of outspoken libertarian/anti-statist types around here, and that's fine, but I don't think it's even the plurality among political stances of HN readers. I suspect being invested in politics to the point that you'll regularly engage in political discussions online is very strongly correlated with holding atypical political views (I include myself in that set).

sorry, it's a pyramid scheme not a ponzi scheme but yeah agree with your sentiment.

although maybe it is a ponzi scheme for the miners now that I think about it.

The worst I ever do is respond rudely to people who have already attacked me, and even there I try to avoid doing so. As for using other names that's just flatly false, as is any gloating about baiting people into flamewars and laughing when they get banned. I haven't even used irc in over a year.

Basically I have no idea what you're talking about.