Hacker Jews

Best Thread of HJ:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3477488

I was hellbanned for a while without realizing on a different account. I was incredibly upset when I realized: a bunch of posts asking or answering meaningful on-topic questions had been blackholed, wasting a lot of my time, and (in my view) lowering the value of this site to everyone.

I never did figure out why I'd been hellbanned; my (polite and apologetic) emails were never answered. I'd never been impolite, trolled, or called people names, and although I was a fairly new user, I'd built up karma quickly in that short period. (Around 100 karma in 30 days; not too bad I thought.) I'd hardly ever been downvoted, and even now, looking back, I have absolutely no idea what I might have done to warrant a hellban.

Hellbanning "normal" users is just cruel. If your spambot/troll problems are so bad that you need to resort to hellbanning, it should be used rarely and sparingly. But on HN, apparently, it's not. If you browse with show dead on, I'd say 9 times out of 10 the hellbaned people you'll see should never have been hellbanned. And, take it from me, it really really sucks to realize that someone you don't even know has taken a couple seconds out of their busy day to screw with you and waste hours and hours of your time, without any possibility of recompense, or even a dialogue.

I browse with showdead on, and it seems to me that most people I see that are hellbanned got there seemingly innocently. Mostly it's that they said something mildly controversial in one of their first posts. Once they go negative karma on the account they can never get back. I'd say people like that outnumber spammers and wackos 4 or 5 to 1. Plenty of them have been posting straight into the wastebin for months or years. Seems like a broken mechanic.

>>31
We're stuck with the names we're born with, but we choose our screen names and email addresses. It's a chance to show that we're cool, creative, individual. Many wannabes choose unwisely, without realizing it. It seems cool to go with a screen name that indicates a "gangsta" attitude, for instance, but if a potential game biz employer gets an email from "jailburd@hotmail.org" he's not going to feel particularly inclined to reply. Someone who is so passionate about games that his friends call him crazy might try to showcase this special characteristic by choosing the moniker "insanedude" - that's very cute, but when he goes jobhunting in earnest, this screen name will not be helping him. Remember -- when you contact someone in the game biz, you're entering the world of business. Comport yourself accordingly.
Some kinds of words to avoid in screen names in the world of business:
Words that hint at the use of any kind of drugs.
Words that allude to bodily functions.
Words that smack of criminal activity of any kind.
Words that indicate mental defect, or any kind of sickness.
Words that hint that you'd rather do something else besides work on games.
Screen names that are tricky to type (using a zero instead of an upper-case "o" or a one instead of a lower-case "L," for instance).
Words that hint at sexual activity.
Pretty much any screen name that would make a teenaged guy laugh ought to be reconsidered before using it to communicate with business professionals. It's fine to be creative, but be smart.
And lastly, make sure you sign business communications with your real name. Even if posting on bulletin boards or newsgroups, what's the harm in letting people know your name? I understand using a human-readable anti-spam device when typing in your email address, but isn't your humanity more important than your anonymity?