The_Lion is (at least) the fourth incarnation of an LW user who has been around for some time. Why the fourth incarnation? Because the other three got banned for abusing the karma system. There is also some reason to suspect that The_Lion has also been using sockpuppet accounts to vote up his own comments (but so far as I know all there is here is suspicion, whereas the karma-abuse—downvoting hundreds of old comments from users who have annoyed him, usually by differing from him politically—has been verified).
A hellban is something moderators can do on some forums, where a user’s posts or comments are visible to them but invisible to everyone else. Hellbans are most often applied to (actual or suspected) spammers and other generators of very low-quality stuff. The idea is that if you just make them unable to post, they’ll just make another account, but if you quietly make what they post invisible to everyone else, they may not notice.
It appears that someone hellbanned The_Lion, probably more on account of his comments about black people than of his other activities (there is reason to think he’s been engaging in the same sort of karma-abuse as The_Lion as he did as Eugine_Nier, Azathoth123 and VoiceOfRa, but hellbanning won’t do much to stop that).
This was never going to work well for someone active and paying attention, and especially not for someone with a lot of sockpuppets. (Of course that’s easy to say in hindsight.) The hellban has apparently been undone now.
Between the imposition and the lifting of the hellban, the user behind The_Lion noticed the hellban, made a new account, used it to post new copies of all his comments, and posted this complaint.
Easy to say in foresight, too, if you spend a tiny bit of time thinking about it.
Hellbans were designed explicitly for spammers who do not care about up/downvotes, responses, etc. They are very obviously not going to work for someone who receives responses to his posts all the time and especially for someone with sockpuppets.
A hell ban is a colloquial term for a ban that prevents the user from knowing that they’re banned; their comments appear as normal to themselves, but are invisible to everyone else.
It’s designed so that the person so afflicted doesn’t notice they’ve been banned. It has a striking limitation, however; it doesn’t work on people who have alternate accounts who regularly, ahem, go look at their main accounts comments, since they’ll see that their comments aren’t there.
I got a reply to a post by TheLion2 with an edit saying a hell ban had been reversed
I don’t recall seeing TheLion around
Never heard of hell bans
Click on TheLions user and see this post and click on it
What is even going on here? The comments don’t seem to clarify.
The_Lion is (at least) the fourth incarnation of an LW user who has been around for some time. Why the fourth incarnation? Because the other three got banned for abusing the karma system. There is also some reason to suspect that The_Lion has also been using sockpuppet accounts to vote up his own comments (but so far as I know all there is here is suspicion, whereas the karma-abuse—downvoting hundreds of old comments from users who have annoyed him, usually by differing from him politically—has been verified).
A hellban is something moderators can do on some forums, where a user’s posts or comments are visible to them but invisible to everyone else. Hellbans are most often applied to (actual or suspected) spammers and other generators of very low-quality stuff. The idea is that if you just make them unable to post, they’ll just make another account, but if you quietly make what they post invisible to everyone else, they may not notice.
It appears that someone hellbanned The_Lion, probably more on account of his comments about black people than of his other activities (there is reason to think he’s been engaging in the same sort of karma-abuse as The_Lion as he did as Eugine_Nier, Azathoth123 and VoiceOfRa, but hellbanning won’t do much to stop that).
This was never going to work well for someone active and paying attention, and especially not for someone with a lot of sockpuppets. (Of course that’s easy to say in hindsight.) The hellban has apparently been undone now.
Between the imposition and the lifting of the hellban, the user behind The_Lion noticed the hellban, made a new account, used it to post new copies of all his comments, and posted this complaint.
Does that help?
Easy to say in foresight, too, if you spend a tiny bit of time thinking about it.
Hellbans were designed explicitly for spammers who do not care about up/downvotes, responses, etc. They are very obviously not going to work for someone who receives responses to his posts all the time and especially for someone with sockpuppets.
Yes, thanks gjm!
What a keen bean
A hell ban is a colloquial term for a ban that prevents the user from knowing that they’re banned; their comments appear as normal to themselves, but are invisible to everyone else.
It’s designed so that the person so afflicted doesn’t notice they’ve been banned. It has a striking limitation, however; it doesn’t work on people who have alternate accounts who regularly, ahem, go look at their main accounts comments, since they’ll see that their comments aren’t there.
It doesn’t even work on people who occasionally look at the forums while not logged in.