it is actually against reddit rules to auto ban users like that but it is part of the increasing number of rarely enforced rules on reddit
Aside from saying unpopular things, a net negative karma will also do it, which is a reflection of the same outcome
Always check your post history from an incognito browser to see if others can see it
Plenty of explanations about why: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
I believe the real explanation of why identity is important to them is a bit of social psychology. The theory is that identifying with people makes them less mean to each other. So they probably want consistent identities so people will be more civil, which is one of their stated goals.
It's also the way HN has always worked. A collection of nameless posts would be a very different kind of forum. Anyone is welcome to start one, but not to turn this one into that one.
also the semi-noob phrase is showing the age of that document
So with due respect, Kafkaesque suggestions to contact the mods don’t help. What would help is getting rid of juvenile practices that are arguably ineffective, i. e., shadow bans.
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=we%27ve%20banned&sort=byDate&d...
Bollocks.
While other things conform to the prevalent opinion and masquarade as insightful high quality comments
there is a reason we can still see the now-laughable criticisms of dropbox
But was it really?
It certainly wasn't a high-quality comment, it was too negative and arguably mean.
But the "failure" of the comment was merely a failure in correctly evaluating the business value. Something most of us have done many times in our "forum careers". Just think about all those comments that amount to not much more than "if you don't use the command line, you're not worthy of using a computer".
On a technical level it was fine. And remember, Dropbox in this very first stage was a very different beast from today's Dropbox.