from Hacker News

Ask HN: How does the account rank penalty work here?

by Nacdor on 4/19/21, 7:17 PM with 2 comments

I have noticed that many accounts (like mine) have an automatic ranking penalty applied when commenting. Rather than being placed at the top of the list with other new comments for a short period of time, they're automatically pushed to the bottom. It's similar to a shadowban but the comments are still visible to everyone.

What is the name for this and is it documented anywhere? I've seen several posts that discuss "undocumented" features of HN but so far none of them have mentioned this.

  • by LinuxBender on 4/19/21, 7:41 PM

    The FAQ answers questions about Karma posts. [1] It is entirely possible that other posts have been upvoted prior to your post. As for undocumented features, there is this post [2] on github and is not written by the moderators. It includes some anecdotal information that may not be 100% accurate.

    [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

    [2] - https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented

  • by PaulHoule on 4/19/21, 8:20 PM

    I think some people are looking for any reason to feel insulted or excluded today -- it is something the right wing troll and the left wing troll agree passionately about.