Why are my hackernews posts not visible to anyone?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3937863

by gauravsc • 14 years ago

4 8 14 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

My hacker news posts are not visible to anyone except me, when I am logged In. Infact, when I log out, they are not visible to me too, Why, What sort of algorithm does hacker news use to display posts and filter them?

Zarkonnen• 14 years ago

They all show up as [dead] for me, which means they've been essentially deleted. As to why, er, I have no idea. You displeased some algorithm in HN's guts.

gauravsc3• 14 years ago

Exactly, I wish to know the algorithm that HN follows, it must be something really interesting.

kinleyd• 14 years ago

Read the guidelines for posting, that should give you some clues. Then search HN.

ColinWright3• 14 years ago

Firstly, what is the username you're claiming is invisible? I can certainly see this post.

But apart from that, you have, for some reason, been "hell-banned". Without seeing your posts and/or comments from around the time it happened I can't offer any suggestions or advice as to why it happened. Do note that sometimes it happens by accident. It happened to me the other day, and in a reply to an email I sent asking about it, PG said I'd been "fat-fingered" by accident.

With regards the algorithms, I have no inside knowledge, just deductions based on what I've seen and some experiments I've run. However, if you consistently get flagged, or get downvoted vigorously, I suspect there is an automatic hell-ban, possibly preceded by a "slow-ban" (wherein everything slows down and responds like molasses for a while). If PG was being completely honest (and I'm not suggesting he wasn't, but as a mathematician I tend to try to cover all bases) then some (and perhaps all) hell-bans are actually performed by the moderators, possible in response to flags thrown up by automated detection systems.

As an aside: Do you understand the effects of flags, downvotes, and their differences?

So if you want to know more, perform searches for "hell-ban", "flag", "downvote", "dead", and combinations thereof. You'll find plenty of discussion, and considerable complaints. For one, I think that PG has done remarkably well in keeping HN civil (although clearly not perfect) in the face of popularity, and the occasional false-positive and draconian measure might well be the price paid.

gauravsc3• 14 years ago

Yes, this post is visible but all my other posts(which are URL links) definitely are not visible. This "hell ban" phenomenon is something I am unsure of how I got, I didn't make any such comments in the past.

ColinWright3• 14 years ago

I thought since you were complaining that everything was dead then it must have been a different username, and that you had created a new one to be able to post. It wasn't clear, but I guess you just didn't know.

I've never seen this sort of thing happen. Were they "dead on arrival"? When you posted the links, did you then check to make sure there was a reply comment box? Did you log out and see if they were there? Did they die after some time?

There are web sites that are banned, and links to them are simply never alive. I don't know the list off-hand - you can find them with a search. However it's certainly true that techcrunch isn't one of them, so that doesn't explain everything.

I've been on this site for a significant time, and I can't explain all your links being dead, comment-less and point-less. You might send an email to PG and ask, but be I would suggest that you be clear, complete, concise, and patient. The shorter your email the more likely he can reply immediately.

I also suggest you run an experiment and submit a link to a page somewhere, see if it has a comment box, log out, see if it's still there, log back in, delete it, then include the result of that in your email.

Why are my hackernews posts not visible to anyone?

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