How can you tell if you are dead?
[deleted]
Ask PG: Please consider a resurrection vote for the undead amongst us
41–50 of 102 posts
Re: Ask PG: Please consider a resurrection vote for the undead amongst us
#42If resurrection is not approved I'd settle for the ability to reply to their comments.
The problem with that is the dead users will always be told they're dead, defeating the purpose. Unless... replies to dead users' comments are hidden from the dead user.
Dead comments cannot receive replies.
Re: Ask PG: Please consider a resurrection vote for the undead amongst us
#43If resurrection is not approved I'd settle for the ability to reply to their comments.
The problem with that is the dead users will always be told they're dead, defeating the purpose. Unless... replies to dead users' comments are hidden from the dead user.
Just having a 'showdead' option defeats the purpose already.
Re: Ask PG: Please consider a resurrection vote for the undead amongst us
#44Re: Ask PG: Please consider a resurrection vote for the undead amongst us
#45I used to keep a spreadsheet of dead accounts I saw, but I haven't looked at it in over a year. I had a column for whether they deserved to be banned - I'd check their history and try to figure out at which point they had been banned, attempting to discern the original reason. I was a bit disconcerted with how often it was a quite innocent comment, and how valuable many of contributions were in general.
I had intended to release this spreadsheet to the HN community, but it really was not at all comprehensive, and I forgot about it over time. Perhaps if members here would volunteer to maintain a list of such cases.. We don't need PG to implement anything then, every week he could just be sent a list of users that ought to be unbanned.
Re: Ask PG: Please consider a resurrection vote for the undead amongst us
#46I was hellbanned some months ago for using the words "fucking idiot" to describe some fucking idiot who comes to HN almost exclusively to grind the axe of feminism. This was around the time of the dongle joke heard around the world, and many people were hellbanned. She took issue with a rather archaic but totally innocent turn of phrase in an article about cold war tech (of all things!) and decided to derail the thread. So I called her a fucking idiot and now people can't read my posts.
In my case I knew I was hellbanned almost immediately because generally when I contributed to a discussion here I got responses and received upvotes. It didn't take long to figure out what had happened. I know, and knew, that I can appeal via email but I didn't for two reasons: 1. accusations of misogyny (which my banning effectively was) are a death sentence with no chance of appeal anyway, around here, and 2. I decided that HN was missing out nearly as much or more than I was by my hellbanning. I have lurked, though I do visit here less than before, and I have not registered another account. There's been a few threads I would have liked to participate in, especially recently with the USG spying, but for the most part I don't miss it.
Please do not reconsider my banning. I shall wear it as a badge of honor.
Edit: And for those who don't know, there is another thing mods can do to accounts here, which will make HN very slow to respond when logged in to that account. I got that too. Almost forgot until I logged in to post this :-)
Re: Ask PG: Please consider a resurrection vote for the undead amongst us
#47My old account: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Devilboy
Not sure what happened.
Re: Ask PG: Please consider a resurrection vote for the undead amongst us
#48I'm in that situation. Somewhere along the line I said something that annoyed a mod and now I can't even create a new account - it's instantly marked 'dead' automatically. Must be either a cookie or perhaps my IP is banned.
Your i_am_dead account does not seem to be dead though.
Re: Ask PG: Please consider a resurrection vote for the undead amongst us
#49I learned that I'd been ghostbanned for over a year when someone finally contacted me off-site and let me know. I figured out which comment it was, emailed info@ with an explanation (that it was actually complimentary and relevant to the thread in question), and asked to be restored. They did so within a couple of hours.
Re: Ask PG: Please consider a resurrection vote for the undead amongst us
#50I feel like I am in one of those ghost films where the ghosts don't know they're dead.