Scold HN: I got hellbanned 3 times with no notice or explanation
If you don't want to be told that your perfect utopia of HN is imperfect. DONT READ ON.

My first username was bzupnick, I had 256 karma which is not exactly a new HN member at all.

Then one day I got an E-mail from an awesome HN member:

subject: "Looks like you've been hellbanned from HN"

Body: "Just wanted to let you know that your comments appear to be autokilled. I'm not sure why you got this, but if you want to avoid that happening again, I recommend making your comments as thoughtful (and un-rude) as possible. That will go a very long way. I think you've got a lot of good thoughts to contribute - sometimes HN admins are overzealous in banning. Good luck to you, and keep hacking always!"

I was very annoyed, to say the least, so I asked him what to do. He told me to contact PG and ask to get unbanned. I sent PG an email, with no response.

Fine, who cares that i had 256 karma, I wasn't in it for the ego, I was in it to contribute and learn. So I made a new username: binzup;

About, 2 weeks later, I got this email from another nice HN member;

Subject: "strange silent ban"

Body: "Hi binzup,

I noticed you were silently banned on Hacker News. I know you're new so you probably don't know anything about how this works but when someone is banned their comments go "dead" on arrival and can only be seen by other users that have "showdead" set to on. I can't for the life of me figure out why you were banned. Your first dead comment is something pretty innocuous:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2644391

If you care, e-mail Paul Graham (the site owner). He's a very busy guy, but he's very good about sorting these issues out. "

Again, I was pissed, contacted PG, no response, made username #3: bzupnick2:

I was using this one for, about a month. all my comments and stories got 0 upvotes. So by now I was suspicious. I told my brother to sign on and check if he can see my submissions. He couldn't. Hellban #3.

So now I'm up to #4, zups.

I understand that the reason HN isn't simply a sub-reddit is because you want to stay pure and not be corrupted by stupidity that any sub-reddit almost inevitably gets. Fine, I understand. But to hellban someone is torture.

I have plans to apply for YC, and I read that PG cares about how you are in HN, so with my first username, bzupnick, I tried really really hard to make good, smart, and thought out comments. After all this work was in vain because i got no upvotes, I got really really dissuaded from this community as a whole.

Is that what you want to do?

The LEAST I deserve is an email from the admin that banned me with an explanation so I can rectify my mistakes.

I understand that you want to keep HN perfect, but does that mean that once someone is bad, they can never fix themselves?? I don't think that's what HN is about, at least let me fix myself. Don't discourage me until i fall off of HN like some unwanted dead thing. Let me fix myself and give me the tools to do that.

PG, if your out there, can you please restore my bzupnick username, send me an email at bzupnick@gmail.com to tell me that I'm allowed back your site, and change the system of this brutal banning that you set up.

I know I'm not a great author, nor was this post as dramatic as I would have hoped but, I think i got my point across anyway.