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(l)uriel has passed away

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Re: (l)uriel has passed away

#81

Post by [deleted] »

aaronbasssett wrote: post #79
forgotusername wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It most certainly wasn't meant as a jab, more genuine sorrow for the industry's growing maturity. The disconnected, experimental environment where even a modem was a luxury, that gave rise to the kind of exotic personalities common of the 80s (and 90s - dare I even include myself) has steadily been replaced by a well understood lifestyle common to millions. I wouldn't have thought it controversial to say that as a re…

"exotic personalities common of the 80s". He would have been a baby/toddler in the 80s. You do know he was only 30?

[deleted]

Re: (l)uriel has passed away

#82

Post by chc »

ekianjo wrote: post #59
davidw wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paul Graham. Isn't it common knowledge that this is his site? I mean, I suppose that legally, it's Y Combinator's, but PG wrote it and has always run it.

I doubt he has the time to read every flagged message. That's why I was asking about what is the hellbanning process, if several people are involved.

You can be hellbanned manually by a moderator (PG is the only moderator whose name is publicly known AFAIK, but there are others) or automatically by the system for going severely negative in karma.

Re: (l)uriel has passed away

#83

Post by chc »

tripzilch wrote: post #41
wisty wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hellbanning is necessary to keep the trolls out. The problem is, HN's hellbans are really clunky, especially given how pg practically invented spam filters. You'd think there'd be some kind of bayesian predictor on whether a poster is a troll, and modding them troll would simply increase the probability that their posts would be DOAd.

> Hellbanning is necessary to keep the trolls out. No it is NOT. You do understand what hellbanning is, right? It means hiding their posts from everyone but them . That's right, if you were hellbanned, you wouldn't know. Read this: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/06/suspension-ban-or-h... Hellbanning, as opposed to regular banning, a warning system or suspensions, is counterproductive, a giant waste of people's…

>> Hellbanning is necessary to keep the trolls out.

> No it is NOT.

> You do understand what hellbanning is, right? It means hiding their posts from everyone but them. That's right, if you were hellbanned, you wouldn't know.

That is why it's the only effective measure against trolls. If you ban a troll the old-fashioned way, they can just make a new account. Hellbanning prevents or at least greatly delays this in most cases, making it a more effective countermeasure than pretty much anything else we can practically implement.

Re: (l)uriel has passed away

#84

Post by chc »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #74
potatolicious wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Griefer is just a troll - or perhaps a more extreme troll, one that will go substantially out of their way to evade a ban and continue being an asshole. A hellban has its utility, but it cannot be the only method for censuring abusive users. It needs to only be applied in cases where the user is likely to try and continue to antagonize the community by dodging a regular ban, and sparingly. The problem with hellbannin…

Indeed... a few minutes after you turn on showdead you'll see that hellbanning is not used primarily for troll control. Trolls are people who post goatse links or overtly inflammatory opinions that they clearly don't even hold. Instead, hellbanning on HN is used on people who disagree with someone who has the power to do something about it. It's used to dismiss people who stray outside the hive and fail to toe the pa…

Amy Hoy and Thomas Ptacek strongly disagree with both the majority here and Paul Graham himself all the time, yet they aren't hellbanned. It's not just "straying outside the hive" or "failing to toe the party line" — much of the time, it's expressing offensive opinions (e.g. "women are inferior"), trying to shove your opinion down people's throats to the detriment of the site overall (e.g. losethos' weird Christian ramblings), or just being very rude about your unpopular opinion (e.g. "Apple is going to fail but you don't see it because you are Tim Cook's gay lover"). You might wish for people to be able to belligerently proclaim any offensive opinion they might hold, but this isn't your site or mine, and PG is within his rights doing what he thinks is necessary to keep the conversation quality at a high level.

This is not to say that the system is perfect. Many people get banned wrongly, and I think uriel was one of those. I do think a warning system would be better in many cases. But it seems to me that most hellbans are handed out to people who are indeed simply jerks.

Re: (l)uriel has passed away

#85

Post by dwc »

astine wrote: post #53
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #2

For anyone else who needs more context: http://www.advogato.org/person/uriel/ and http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=uriel edit: His more recent account was http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=luriel I dug up those links because I was completely unfamiliar with uriel before seeing this post, and know nothing more about this story than that. From reading his comments, he seemed like a really smart guy. It's really a…

It's worth mentioning that Uriel was one of the major contributors to http://suckless.org/ software. Things like wmii, dwm, dmenu, and other minimalist bits of software for Linux were partly his doing. He will be missed.

> software for Linux

Er, no. Happens to run on Linux, as well as other Unix-likes. Ordinarily this would be a nitpick, but not in the context of Uriel.

Re: (l)uriel has passed away

#87

Post by potatolicious »

chc wrote: post #84
CamperBob2 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed... a few minutes after you turn on showdead you'll see that hellbanning is not used primarily for troll control. Trolls are people who post goatse links or overtly inflammatory opinions that they clearly don't even hold. Instead, hellbanning on HN is used on people who disagree with someone who has the power to do something about it. It's used to dismiss people who stray outside the hive and fail to toe the pa…

Amy Hoy and Thomas Ptacek strongly disagree with both the majority here and Paul Graham himself all the time, yet they aren't hellbanned. It's not just "straying outside the hive" or "failing to toe the party line" — much of the time, it's expressing offensive opinions (e.g. "women are inferior"), trying to shove your opinion down people's throats to the detriment of the site overall (e.g. losethos' weird Christian r…

Right, which brings to question why hellban jerks instead of just regular-banning them.

Hellbans are designed to be undetected by the banned party, to prevent them from reating a cat and mouse situation where site operators constantly fight to keep the banned off the site (new accounts, new IPs, etc).

Very few of the people who are being banned from the site appear to be trolls - if they're just jerks, do they not deserve to be told that they are no longer welcome

Instead we've simply silenced these people without the courtesy of even telling them, and for what?

Re: (l)uriel has passed away

#88

Post by 0wza »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #74
potatolicious wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Griefer is just a troll - or perhaps a more extreme troll, one that will go substantially out of their way to evade a ban and continue being an asshole. A hellban has its utility, but it cannot be the only method for censuring abusive users. It needs to only be applied in cases where the user is likely to try and continue to antagonize the community by dodging a regular ban, and sparingly. The problem with hellbannin…

Indeed... a few minutes after you turn on showdead you'll see that hellbanning is not used primarily for troll control. Trolls are people who post goatse links or overtly inflammatory opinions that they clearly don't even hold. Instead, hellbanning on HN is used on people who disagree with someone who has the power to do something about it. It's used to dismiss people who stray outside the hive and fail to toe the pa…

If people like luriel are consistently being hellbanned for speaking their mind on some non-programming topic, I still want to read what they're saying about programming.

Everyone has some controversial viewpoints on _some_ topic. But that's not the point. I really don't care what programmers think about politics, religion, sexism or topics not related to computing. This guy had a refined taste for programming. Aesthetics. Plan 9, cat -v, suckless, Go. Not perfection, but sooooo much better than so much else.

The idea of hellbanning people who can actually think outside the box is troubling. Send them to some isolated, limited audience forum ("hell"?) if you wish. Just tell us where it is if we want to read it. Because I certainly do.

Re: (l)uriel has passed away

#89

Post by 0wza »

eternalban wrote: post #50
tripzilch wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hellbanning is necessary to keep the trolls out. No it is NOT. You do understand what hellbanning is, right? It means hiding their posts from everyone but them . That's right, if you were hellbanned, you wouldn't know. Read this: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/06/suspension-ban-or-h... Hellbanning, as opposed to regular banning, a warning system or suspensions, is counterproductive, a giant waste of people's…

> It's just stupid. Borderline unethical. It is an explicit and willfully applied passive-aggressive mechanism of dubious utility in response to 'perceived' attempts at trolling a forum. Keep in mind the mechanism is designed to have a negative psychological impact on the subject and comes with a later date "haha" surprise date. I find it vile. (Fully agree re. the waste of time, too.)

The parent's term "passive-aggressive" is spot on.

StackExchange is even worse.

If you only knew their banning practices. They have extremely thin skin. The anti-thesis of "Postal's Law".

When they ban, it's not a warning, it's permanent. One mistake and you are banned for infinity.

"Trolls" (a very subjective term) will never learn to behave as you want them to if you don't steer them toward better behavior. Banning them in knee-jerk like fashion does not steer them toward being better netizens or being more agreeable to your views.

If the thinking is "my forum, my rules" then when the rules become silly (and they often do), we need more forums, run by more reasonable people. This is nothing new. "Postal's Law" is one of those insightful ideas that has greater applicability than was intended (e.g., more than just the structure of packets) and it will continue to seem ahead of it's time, as censorship keeps rearing its ugly head.

Re: (l)uriel has passed away

#90

Post by chc »

potatolicious wrote: post #87
chc wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amy Hoy and Thomas Ptacek strongly disagree with both the majority here and Paul Graham himself all the time, yet they aren't hellbanned. It's not just "straying outside the hive" or "failing to toe the party line" — much of the time, it's expressing offensive opinions (e.g. "women are inferior"), trying to shove your opinion down people's throats to the detriment of the site overall (e.g. losethos' weird Christian r…

Right, which brings to question why hellban jerks instead of just regular-banning them. Hellbans are designed to be undetected by the banned party, to prevent them from reating a cat and mouse situation where site operators constantly fight to keep the banned off the site (new accounts, new IPs, etc). Very few of the people who are being banned from the site appear to be trolls - if they're just jerks, do they not de…

As you just said, it's to prevent the whack-a-mole game of impotently banning an endless stream of new accounts. Being a jerk is strongly correlated with not respecting bans — if they cared about your wishes in the first place, they wouldn't have acted so inconsiderate. If you ban a jerk, they make a new account and keep at it. If you hellban them, they tend to stay that way for a good long while.

I do think there should be a lesser level of punishment for people who aren't that incorrigible, but hellbanning jerks definitely has its place. It is the most effective countermeasure available.

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