It works. I see that it works. It helps sustain a community. If you browse with showdead on, you don't run across a lot of dead content that doesn't deserve to be dead.
However I've personally been hellbanned by an automated script. (I think the problem was that I was posting fast enough to be mistaken for being a spammer.) But it turns out that there are people who browse with showdead on for kicks. One of them saw that I had been hellbanned, replied to me saying that I had, and told me to talk to pg about it. I sent pg an email, he confirmed that I had been hellbanned by accident, and he undid it.
Unintended mistakes happen. I am proof of it. If a mistake happens to you, it really helps if you are an established member of the community. But the automated scripts are improved over time, and I suspect that the error rate goes down over time. And I think that the mechanism on the whole does improve the site.
The threshold for hellbanning at HN is way too low. I browse with showdead on, and I regularly see a good post per topic of a hellbanned user. For example, the very last topic I was in had this guy:
As far as I can tell, he was hellbanned for 2 bad comments. Both are bad, yes, but he's regularly been posting well since. Having other users tell them to email PG or make a new account is not a sustainable solution for this.
We should have an "unflag" option for wrongly hellbanned users if they can be autobanned. The community of HN generally drives away trolls by its very nature. I rarely see banned troll posts, because they simply don't bother here. I do see banned posts by decent posters who simply made a mistake or two at the start.
The nature of hell-banning means you aren't able to mark exactly when you were hell-banned, therefore the algorithms never improve because there isn't a "this caused a false-positive, let's fix it" feedback loop. Unless I'm missing something.
All fixes to hellbans go through site administrators (eg pg), and therefore he is aware of the false positives. He has access to data on when and why it happens, and is therefore able to track those issues down.
If you don't post frequently you can pinpoint where you got the mark. Search posts by your user and see where the auto-dead begins. I did some trollish posts on my first account, but got a ban because of a front-paged duplicate instead.
Details on my profile. I felt cheated because I had no heavily downvoted comments.
I usually find interesting content on showdead. I believe the time it takes me to skim/read dead content is worth the effort (the sn ratio is still better than slashdot).
I still feel bad about losethos. Wish we could help him/her somehow.
It works. I see that it works. It helps sustain a community. If you browse with showdead on, you don't run across a lot of dead content that doesn't deserve to be dead.
However I've personally been hellbanned by an automated script. (I think the problem was that I was posting fast enough to be mistaken for being a spammer.) But it turns out that there are people who browse with showdead on for kicks. One of them saw that I had been hellbanned, replied to me saying that I had, and told me to talk to pg about it. I sent pg an email, he confirmed that I had been hellbanned by accident, and he undid it.
Unintended mistakes happen. I am proof of it. If a mistake happens to you, it really helps if you are an established member of the community. But the automated scripts are improved over time, and I suspect that the error rate goes down over time. And I think that the mechanism on the whole does improve the site.