On other forums, when you've been banned, you get an email or message telling you why and you no longer have access to that account. You also probably will have gotten a few warnings from moderators before that point.
When the barrier to entry is 0 this is an ineffective strategy. From my experiences moderating a fairly large geographic area forum negative influences on the community do and will just recreate a new account immediately and resume when you do that. At least this way you delay that from happening for a while and force them to expel effort on nothing.
Maybe, but determined trolls will adapt to just about any environment - here, for instance, people just create sockpuppet accounts (HN doesn't track account IPs I guess)
When it applies to the most egregious of problem users then it works as intended, but there have been cases where people have been, apparently, posting while banned for some slight, and providing reasonable content. That suggests to me that some banned users might be amenable to a warning or might well change their behavior if they were made aware that their actions were intolerable.
Also, it makes no sense to me to continue using up the site's resources stringing people along who, by definition, the staff doesn't want there. Although I admit I have no idea how much of a problem that is with HN itself, since it doesn't use a database.
Tracking IPs doesn't help that much. Even non-technical trolls discover proxies quickly.
Because you cannot stop them so at this point it is less about saving resources and more about harm reduction. It's unfortunate some people who probably would change get caught up in it but it's really a small price to pay(their not having their comments public but still being able to use the site normally) for the greater enjoyment.
You're understanding of trolls is flawed. A troll will generally make sure their messages show up (using incognito mode, tor, etc). Think about it, the people who don't check to see if they're shadow-banned are the ones that don't expect to be banned. Trolls very much expect to be banned. It's their modus operandi.
The only people you're effectively hurting are the ones who think they are making useful contributions but make the unfortunate mistake of hurting the moderator's feelings.
Trolls generally don't expect to be shadow banned they expect to be banned. Until they figure that shadow banning exists it's a very effective method and once you realize you make them check if they've been shadow banned regularly so it effectively doubles their work. Quite often their willingness to invest time into trolling drops off with lack of response so often they will leave before they understand that shadow banning is a thing.
>Trolls generally don't expect to be shadow banned they expect to be banned.
I disagree with this assertion. Shadow-banning on HN is quite well known, and any troll worthy of the term understands the landscape of their endeavors.
>banned regularly so it effectively doubles their work
How is opening a link once a day or so in incognito mode to check for their comment effectively doubling their work?
>Quite often their willingness to invest time into trolling drops off with lack of response so often they will leave before they understand that shadow banning is a thing.
Again, I think we both have very different ideas on the transience of a trolling campaign. I assure you, once someone is determined to troll a specific community, its a much longer commitment than you are estimating.
Edit: Impressive. Down-voted for stating my disagreements with counter-points.
I voted you back up because what you're saying is interesting. But please, everybody: enough with the complaints when you're downvoted. It happens to all of us and there isn't a thing you can say about it that isn't old and boring and makes you look bad. It's the worst HN trope there is, so just move on.
If the downvote was unfair, someone often comes along and fixes it; and if it was fair, then you should reflect on what you said. Either way, the impulse to complain should be held in check.
I honestly can't see how/why people care so much. Maybe I'm not doing HN right, but I usually don't have a lot of time to read a thread and make a cogent comment and stuck around for discussion. This is unfortunate; I think discussions are better than just one-off comments. But add to this the vanity of checking if my comments have been downvoted? Man, I've got better things to do.
From my personal experience having dealt with trolls on other popular forums and implementing shadow bans myself previously my experience runs counter to your beliefs.
You don't have to catch every troll with shadow bans. You make the experience for the new ones unenjoyable by removing their feedback and they are more likely to move on before they become committed enough to start cycling accounts.
If someone is determined to troll a community than no form of protection other than brute force moderation will work but compared to the number of trolls out there the number that rise to that level of abuse are very small.
I don't know of another forum where reasonably long standing members are banned silently, without even the courtesy of telling them. It's kinda a douche move.
Silent banning is more like censorship than banning - you're silencing someone because you don't agree with them, without telling them they're being silenced.
It's also a matter of where the line is drawn. Most forums ban obvious spam - viagra, porn, etc. But HN (IMHO) bans people for being overly critical, for not agreeing with the groupthink, or perhaps not having enough tact or politeness.
Silent banning has 0 effect on spam and trolls - they'll verify their spam/troll comment has appeared, and if it hasn't, just create a new account. The people it hurts are simply people who happen to offend a moderator.
You can be pretty confident not to post spam, but how do you know if your comment may offend some moderator? - These days most things offend someone. That IMHO makes for a 'walking on eggshells' type of forum, rather than an open place to discuss.
