The relationship between this community and losethos seems very strange to me. Perhaps because this is the first community i've been involved in where hellbanning was a feature. Any other site would have banned him outright for his own good but the hellban encourages him to continue posting. The result is almost as if he's treated like a mascot, or some brilliant but obstinate child being actively ignored at the adults table.

We know he's there, he surely knows he's hellbanned, and he knows we know he's there. He's both the best and worst argument about hellbanning as an effective form of moderation.

HN as a community exhibits a lot of sociopathic traits (which makes this whole thread a little bit funny, but not funny-haha).

If you'd like to read a community actually interacting with him rather than hellbanning him under the rug, check out this Metafilter thread: http://www.metafilter.com/119424/An-Operating-System-for-Son...

Long, but worth the read.

And here he is asking us for help and being ignored: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1782800

Actually just go through the his submission history and randomly click a few links: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=losethos

You can actually see his condition gradually getting worse over months and years. I wonder if he would have turned out differently had we embraced him - and helped him?

After the hellban several years ago all his submissions were automatically killed instantly after posting. So you can't blame the community for not responding, the system made it impossible to respond/upvote at all.

This is one of the reasons why hellbanning is such a bad idea, leaving the poster to believe that everybody is actively ignoring him instead of just not being able to see him/interact with him.

Making regular healthy people waste a lot of their time posting content and feeling totally ignored is bad enough, subjecting people with mental health issues to that is even more unethical.

Ah, damn, the fact that that post is dead is very sad. I know it's years old, but, losethos, do you still need advice? (I'll probably see your reply, as I have showdead on). We could probably get a thread going, if so.

Is that our responsibility, to save a man from mental illness? I don't feel it is.

Is it our responsibility to help people who have down syndrome from hurting themselves? Is it our responsibility to help people with physical handicap? Is it our responsibility to help people suffering from depression?

I'm offended by the thought and the idea that we should just ignore our ill. What if the person suffering from the mental illness was your brother or sister? Think about if it was you, and no-one reached out to you - how would you feel?

"Responsibility" is one of those words that makes it really hard for people to talk to each other.

If a person does not go out of their way to do the things you listed, I do not consider that a moral failing on their part. Especially if the cost to them is more than the benefit to the other person.

If you keep jumping on bullets, sooner or later you run out of flesh.

Then you'd ask a medical professional for help, not comments on a website.

You're way overgeneralizing. I mean you and I, users of Hacker News, to help one specific person. That's all.

It should be blatantly obvious that, were the situation different, I'd feel differently.

Not everything is a moral crusade, Internet warrior.

In the past he has made reference to doctors and his parents. The impression that I get is that he is getting more help right now than HN can give him.

+1. He can read these comments. I don't care what your mental state is, seeing it discussed on Hacker News is never going to help.

This. A billion times this.