On: Suspension, Ban or Hellban?

[tptacek]

Why? So they can yell at us? Because we owe them?

How about, the ones who care enough to put contact info in their profiles, you can reach out to them and say "you may not have noticed but the HN admins seem to have banned you".

[ugh → tptacek]

We don’t owe them. Lying to people is just wrong.

I have contacted dead accounts in the past, a problem is that it’s hard to get contact info.

Hellbanning spambots I can understand. Hellbanning people?

[blasdel → tptacek]

I have sent dozens of those emails over the years. It's only a small fraction of the [dead] productive comments I find, but not that many people have contact info or googleable usernames.