{"by":"shawn","dead":true,"id":18808876,"parent":18807729,"text":"Howdy! I'm the local undead pirate. Yarr. Thank ye for enablin' showdead!

While it's true in this case that the comment was unsubstantive, I wanted to respond to a subtle but important distinction:

dang might be the decider, but his decision was informed by flags, which speaks to the nature of the discourse desired here.

The situation is as follows: If a mod clicks 'flag', that comment is immediately marked [flagged]. In other words, the most common case when you see a [flagged] comment is that it was a mod acting alone, with no input from the community.

Now, there is one key distinction. If a comment is [flagged] and also [dead], then yes, the community probably killed it with multiple flags. However, the following situation is very common: A comment is marked [flagged], but is still live for a time.

When a comment is in this state, pay attention to how the community sentiment shifts. Note that I am not arguing whether a comment is good or bad -- merely pointing out that if a comment is marked, then there is no hope of positive discussion to follow. Yet often, people will leave replies, as we are doing here.

The inevitable outcome of this situation is that 50 out of 50 times, when a moderator acting alone flags a comment, they will end up seeming correct in their decision. Worse, it will seem like the community supports this decision, even though that these decisions were made with no input from the community!

In fact, it is nearly impossible to influence the decision making process here in any meaningful way, no matter how long you've been with the community or how much you've contributed.

As you can see from my present situation, there are a lot of benefits in not angering the mods. If you attract their ire -- and not necessarily a justified ire, but if they are merely overworked or have other things going on in their life -- they turn out to make decisions which are swift, harsh, ruthless, and final.

I speak now as someone who has been here since day 1 of Startup News: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2007-02-20&birth=pali...

I do not believe that my early contributions had a significant effect on the outcome of the site or YC. If I weren't there, HN would still be here. But, community spirit is crucial in a community site. I worked hard to try to inspire and entertain within my means: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=65327 (which seemed to at least encourage this person to resubmit to YC https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=65493). So although I have no illusion of being key in any sense, I worked hard to assist YC through whatever means.

Why? Well, I grew up in the middle of nowhere in the US. When Startup News shipped, it felt like "Finally! This is what life is supposed to be like." The early days were, frankly, magical. Everyone was so supportive and encouraging, even of wild ideas. You couldn't help but feel like determination and intelligence alone were enough to carry you forward, if you were committed.

The fact that Startup News was able to exist at all was such an impressive hack that I fell in love from day one. The people, the topics, everything was fascinating. I ended up attending Startup School in 2007 and had the good fortune to help Jessica untangle some nametags for a half hour (long story). It isn't an overstatement to say that this site changed my life.

And my story is not unique. A decade later, it seems hard to believe -- but these were common experiences! If you were to poll the community, you'd find a shocking number of people whose situation in life has been dramatically affected (for better or worse) by fate and fortune on this site.

Which brings us to bans.

When you are banned, you are blacklisted. If you have multiple accounts, those are banned too. If you make new accounts, those are immediately banned, even on Christmas.

It is trivially easy to circumvent this ban. I have been writing under aliases pretty much the entire time I've been banned. A VPN will do the trick.

No, the ban isn't the issue. The issue is that you personally are blacklisted from the site. You are not allowed to maintain an identity here. You are not allowed to contribute projects here. You cannot even speak to others, no matter how substantively or constructively you phrase your words. Your work, your effort, your life -- none of it matters. You are not even allowed to say more than two things every three hours, making any kind of longform discussion impossible. Even my wife found her comment [dead] and shoved to the bottom of the page. When software controls your life, what should one do?

This prison cell has been carefully designed for just such an outcome. The sole remedy to this situation is to go through the mods. And that brings us to Daniel, as he is the final decision maker.

Have you ever read The Tyranny of Structureless? https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm In it, the author lays out a unified theory of insider vs outsider interactions. And that is the heart of the issue here: If you are an outsider, you are nobody and nothing. If you are an insider, or you have the favor of an insider, you are suddenly treated with patience and kindness.

In the same way that my story earlier was not unique, my story now is not unique. It is depressing to observe this sort of abuse of power being carried out on a weekly basis. The problem is that 95% of Dan's decisions are correct, which gives the impression that you must be mistaken to disagree with the other 5%. But that's little comfort to those who find themselves excluded on a whim. https://jcs.org/notaweblog/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker...

And it is whimsical. Over the course of my four month permaban, I have tried -- hard -- to put myself in his shoes and really see things from his perspective. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was harming the site. Maybe one should not express one's opinions publicly.

But HN is not Startup News. And I remember how electrifying the old days were. You could really get to know people here, and people would generally assume good faith. There were even jokes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=627

Now, the question. What can be done about the situation?

https://imgur.com/gov5NGs

https://www.laarc.io/

I propose we retrace pg's steps and rekindle HN's early spirit: https://www.laarc.io/item?id=230

Hundreds of people are waiting to listen. Come say hello. https://imgur.com/a/QYsGngO

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18076631","time":1546455290,"type":"comment"}