9 hours ago, cubr said:

I am never against any kind of moderation and I admit I made the wrong thing, my sole point is that this kind of punishment is ruthless and inhumane and I wanted to share my experience so that less people will be likely to be turned into idiots like I was.

I'm not clear on exactly how it's ruthless and inhumane.

24 minutes ago, Oberon_Command said:

I'm not clear on exactly how it's ruthless and inhumane.

Because he spent so much time making threads and comments he thought was visible to everyone only to find out he was just communicating with only himself and .... himself alone.  That makes you feel stupid doesn't it? Because  he should have been made aware of the ban.  Yeah... not the best way to deal with your community

44 minutes ago, TheChubu said:

Geezus dude just make a new account and move on. That's how Reddit works and it's one of the things they do to keep one of the biggest internet communities in the planet going. End of the story.

You end up with multiple email accounts to keep track of. Not the end of the world... not the biggest problem you 'd ever have, but an irritant you can do without.

10 minutes ago, grumpyOldDude said:

Because he spent so much time making threads and comments he thought was visible to everyone only to find out he was just communicating with only himself and .... himself alone.  That makes you feel stupid doesn't it? Because  he should have been made aware of the ban.  Yeah... not the best way to deal with your community

My point is that I would hardly call it ruthless and inhumane.

Besides, it seems entirely practical to me. As OP himself pointed out, the downside to notifying someone that they've been banned immediately is that they'll likely immediately go and create another account. That would increase account churn and make it next to impossible to police spam accounts, whereas this way the spammer continues spamming into the void without anyone (including the spammer) noticing that anything is amiss.

If making people who break the rules feel a little stupid is the price of having a spam and toxicity-free environment, I'd be perfectly willing to pay that price, myself. If you did something stupid that broke the rules, should you not feel stupid? Should we protect people from feeling stupid when they make a mistake?

If users are getting shadowbanned for something they didn't know was against the rules, that's an argument for more clearly articulating the rules, not ceasing shadowbanning.

19 minutes ago, Oberon_Command said:

My point is that I would hardly call it ruthless and inhumane.

Besides, it seems entirely practical to me. As OP himself pointed out, the downside to notifying someone that they've been banned immediately is that they'll likely immediately go and create another account. That would increase account churn and make it next to impossible to police spam accounts, whereas this way the spammer continues spamming into the void without anyone (including the spammer) noticing that anything is amiss.

If making people who break the rules feel a little stupid is the price of having a spam and toxicity-free environment, I'd be perfectly willing to pay that price, myself. If you did something stupid that broke the rules, should you not feel stupid? Should we protect people from feeling stupid when they make a mistake?

If users are getting shadowbanned for something they didn't know was against the rules, that's an argument for more clearly articulating the rules, not ceasing shadowbanning.

I partially agree, this is were categories come in

Persistent spamming accounts  - agreed

persistent trolling accounts  - agreed

persistent rules violation - agreed

Account created for the sole purpose of spamming, even when identified from first post - agreed

A user breaking the rules due to one (or a couple of) error of judgement  -  disagree 

From the OP's reply to Hodgman's post, it seems like he is in the last category.  Shadow-banning such a user is heavy handed. Maybe one or two warnings first before shadow banning would be appropriate. Reddit won't break because of that

Btw, keep in mind that I was (most likely - guys from the Unity forum suggested this) banned automatically by a bot. Yep. Not a moderator, just a bot algorithm - that's what happened multiple times to another guy on the Unity forum.

Basically I would obviously just create a new account and get over it, as I said before, I just wanted to spread the word so that other people don't end up where I ended up. I think this moderating tool is dumb and I think that there are way more humane tools to stop spammers and bots - simple bans and better e-mail checks. reddit does NO e-mail check at all, it does not even ask you to go to your inbox and click the link - you can just create an account using someone else's email - no problem. Moderation is necessary, but there should be a limit as to what is allowed. After what I've learned, I doubt I would ever trust reddit again. I might use reddit with my personal goals in mind, but to use it as a news outlet - no frickin way, those morons delete waaay too much stuff waaay too fast, and as some user said, most of the stuff that gets upvoted is usually a dumb funny phrase or situation.

Different sites have different moderation-policies, pick the one you like most.

Reddit and all other sites that have similar over-moderation problems like it are really not worth posting on , at least not with any expectations. I have been shadowbanned from other sites and it is bothersome to have such a trick played on you, luckily I had been reading about shadowbanning before it happened to me so I was able to recognize it very quickly. Unfortunately a lot of people are fine with it, and that is probably because they have never had such a thing happen to them yet, so they still have faith in the moderation to delete any kind of post that doesn't blend in. Really there is no point in interacting with reddit for any actual discussions, because of how awful the model of posting they have there is.

Interesting.

If our GameDev.net spam signals trigger then you won't be able to post anything and will be told as much. Seems like a more user friendly way to handle it.

Shadow bans do have their uses, particularly with regards to bots.

Bots that get shadowbanned never notice.  They will spam or do whatever they were doing, but nobody else has to interact with them. The bot thinks it is succeeding at whatever it is doing, and will quietly keep on doing that while everybody else ignores the bot.  The site admins are happy because the bot damage is contained. The bot maker is happy because they think their bot is hitting the world with their spam. The bot is happy because it never gets error messages as it spews across the Internet.  Everybody is happy.

Malicious users leave destruction in their wake, so shadow bans are potentially dangerous. Giving them a shadow ban when it works as intended can help them feel like they are doing their destructive thing, but nobody notices or cares. They do their malice, they think they succeeded because they see their damage; they move on to another activity yet the site is unaffected by their apparent attack. But sometimes a shadow ban on a malicious user can backfire spectacularly since they want revenge, so they'll continue to attack and do malicious things.  Done well, an automatic shadow ban on these malicious people will get bored and move on. Done badly and it just becomes more ammunition for attacks.

Shadow  bans are a problem when regular folk trip over the alarms, but that is fairly rare.  Good systems allow sysadmins to remove the issue and return the person to a normal state.  That's an unfortunate side effect since some innocent people will be shut out of the site.  But fortunately web sites that use it are not life-critical, people don't die because their account is shadow banned. Some won't notice because they're once-and-done visitors. Others may wonder why people are ignoring them, then move on. Many will contact the admins and ask what is wrong, and it will be quickly corrected.  

Good systems will also have humans review the bans to make sure they were proper. Seems that didn't happen in this case, but it should happen to prevent real people from getting swept away.