I think something must be done about the banning system. Most of the people I've seen getting banned weren't posting especially high-quality posts, so I can understand the ban itself - but why ban them
silently? I regularly see posts, sometimes obviously long and thoughtful ones, deleted instantly because a user was considered banned - and the user has no idea! Can't the ban be limited in time, or something be shown to the user? I think it's awful to make people waste their time on comments like this.
To show the problem concretely, in the past months, as I read HN I've been pasting in a text file the usernames of banned users that I saw posting in threads here and there. Here are a few examples:
http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tomjen2
http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=slavingia
http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=access_denied
http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=fatdog789
http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=robak
http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=phil_collins
http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=howcool
http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=numbchuckskills
http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=bugmenot
http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=anonjon
http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=robak
Just look at the last one. How much time has this person unknowingly spent on posts which all got instantly deleted?
To show the problem concretely, in the past months, as I read HN I've been pasting in a text file the usernames of banned users that I saw posting in threads here and there. Here are a few examples:
http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tomjen2
http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=slavingia
http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=access_denied
http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=fatdog789
http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=robak
http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=phil_collins
http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=howcool
http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=numbchuckskills
http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=bugmenot
http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=anonjon
http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=robak
Just look at the last one. How much time has this person unknowingly spent on posts which all got instantly deleted?