To clarify, I don't mind the downvotes. What's going on here is that they tweaked the algorithm to specifically whisk my comments to the bottom, immediately, no matter what. Even if I had 12 upvotes, it would still appear at the bottom.

The complaint is that this is undocumented, unfair, and I have no recourse.

I've shown willingness to alter my behavior and conform to whatever they want out of me, and supposedly this is enough to reverse most decisions. They repeatedly say "We'll unban accounts if we think there's reason to believe they'll behave." I've gone through the email system and spent roughly three weeks complaining at them and asking whether this could be reversed, to no avail. They told me to stop spamming them, so I asked once more, shortly and politely. No response for a week.

So this isn't a ban – it's a ban on my ideas. No one is aware that my comments appear at the bottom because the system is set up that way, rather than because it's been fairly decided by the community that it should be there.

This, I feel, is a problem. It should at least be explicit, especially for longstanding members who are trying to participate in good faith. The reasons for doing this were less than clear, and it's hard to shake the feeling that they're simply picking on people.

I believe them when they say all they care about is the quality of HN, so I don't want to feel that they're just being bullies. But the outcome is much the same. I'm being stuffed in a locker because people other than me have decided it's the best place for me.

And yeah, that's pretty hilarious, so I don't really expect the situation to change. Especially not with hamfisted attempts at reversing it. But at least I can make some noise while I'm locked in there, partly for others' entertainment.

By the way, if you feel as I do that downvotes are broken on HN (in the sense that they don't really have much signaling power), you can run my Tampermonkey extension to hide them and hide your karma: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14456200

Now, I completely agree that my comment was low quality. But that's exactly what you'd expect to happen if you remove someone's incentive to write well. Why would I possibly invest time in detailing any of those things you mention when it would just be pinned to the bottom anyway? May as well say something that's true but unsupported and not waste the time.

Hopefully I can figure out a way to get this reversed, but shrug.

Part of the irony is that after I was slowbanned back in early December (deservedly so, that time), I actually emailed them asking "Hey, while you're at it, will you tweak my comments so they show up at the bottom too?" I think I was just curious what it would be like, or if quality could stand on its own merits. They refused at the time, saying that it would be a bad idea because a good comment should be up at the top regardless of anything else. And Scott was right about that. This sucks, and when you remove the upvote incentives the whole system breaks. I have no reason to write anything here anymore.

The unsettling thing is that this seems like their objective. It seems true to say that they pick out people that they don't want to be on HN, and then crank various knobs until HN is just unfriendly enough to get them to leave. Them, specifically. Yummyfajitas seems like an example of this. But I'd rather assume that this is just a silly corner case (ha).

Regarding Bitcoin, I think Satoshi spent a lot of time figuring out a simple system that was impervious to shutdown. The tradeoff is energy. It's the first time in history that the byzantine generals problem (with sybil resistance) has been solved. And we should be careful not to stray too far from that fantastic success – not without carefully understanding and proving there are no unexpected tradeoffs.

The key aspect of Bitcoin is that you don't have to be too smart to understand it. A reasonably intelligent person can sit down with bitcoin.pdf and come away understanding exactly why it works. It takes maybe an evening of thinking to fully grok why it can't break, and the implications.

That doesn't seem true with PoS. And that seems at least worth being skeptical of.