The site has always been curated, from day one. What's changed is not that there are new secret policies, but that the moderators are now sharing them with you; HN is more transparent today than it has ever been.

If you want a pure user-generated user-moderated experience, that's fine and totally reasonable. Go to Reddit. That's what they're about. HN is not Reddit.

Which is the point, it's never been explicit IMO that shadowbanning and URL black lists are part of the site. Finding out that's the case is unnerving, what other manipulations are going on under the hood that normal users aren't aware of. That's why I say IMO, to be forthright, one should make these things publicly known - there should be a page giving the list of moderators, what powers they have, what URLs are banned, what procedures (like shadowbanning) are used, ...

The FAQ says there are editors, and indeed it tells us now that there are 30 of them. It says they can edit, ban users; but it doesn't say that they block entire sites or anything of that sort. It doesn't mention hellbanning/shadowbanning and such.

The little inklings of the secret undercurrents strongly suggest that there would be, for example, manipulation of story rankings and such. I'm not saying that happens but with such an opaque system it seems most likely. The feeling starts rising then that one is in a "Disney for adults" where you're being manipulated to the extreme but you're not really conscious of it.

"Little inklings of secret undercurrents" strikes me as pretty silly (though delightfully written!) since I've done nothing for the last month but plaster the site with transparency and feedback. I have a list of dozens of things we can do to make HN better, and haven't been able to get to any of them since becoming public as moderator—I've been doing nothing but answering questions, explaining things, and worrying about answering questions and explaining things.

If, after massive effort, some people still accuse us of every insidious practice in the book, I'm doubtful that the lesson to draw is "try harder". It might be, if (a) there were a hope of convincing everybody, (b) it weren't very costly, and (c) it didn't prevent us from doing other important things. But (b) and (c) are definitely not true, and it's looking sadly like (a) isn't either.

As I just wrote above: I'm more than happy with the methods of shadowbanning / hellbanning and of URL blacklists.

Noting these more prominently in the HN FAQ, or simply noting that this is a managed site, wouldn't be a bad thing IMO. The black hats have already figured it out, the driven-snow innocents will have their bubbles gently burst, and those of us who've been around the block a few times will just nod sagely.

NB: not to say that some hellbans / shadowbans don't seem to be perhaps misapplied. One thing I've encountered on many systems is that while blocks and bans are features, they don't leave a trace (or much of one) as to when the block/ban was instituted, or why. Google+'s "block" feature (and management of it) are among the worst I've encountered. Reddit's moderation log isn't a complete solution but at least provides a complete registry of what admin actions have been undertaken, by whom, and when.

I'm also a big fan of time-outs, both automated and manually applied. Minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years/forever.

Yes, since you joined you've been vocal and overt in your editing practices so far as I've noticed, and that's appreciated.

I'm reacting - I thought this site centred around values where merit rose above appearance. The implementation of a block list for certain domains seems to move sharply against that. Perhaps I missed the memo where it was mentioned that certain sites are banned from submission to HN. If a domain is getting spammed to the submission page then I can understand it being blocked but interesting stories/commentaries can centre around rubbish and abusive domains; I thought we [HN] rode above all that, that's all.

Blocking low quality domains is a good thing to some extent, it's just not being aware that's how the site runs that makes it surprising/unnerving. Steering the site to maintain focus requires controlling the submissions accepted, of course; just I thought this was being done using flagging and upvotes [alone] in the open. Ergo, my reaction. Maybe like finding your straight-laced lawyer has nipple-rings.

All the stuff you're talking about has been the case not only for years, but since the beginning of HN. I'll venture, also, that what you'd actually get if HN worked the way you imagined it did is a much, much lower-quality site. Indeed, HN would never have been HN. You're free not to believe that, of course.

There certainly are some drawbacks to transparency!

The shadowbans and blacklists are sort of an open secret (though this wasn't always the case). I'd prefer a bit more transparency on this.

Truth is, though, that it's virtually impossible to run any user-contribution-based forum without such controls. Turns out that most people aren't assholes, but there's just enough that things go pear-shaped without controls.

It's something I've long pondered, turns out, reading up on Geoffrey West and his scaling effects that both positive and negative scale effects follow pretty much the same growth laws, they just have different constants. For cities, both economic activity and crime will rise with size, at about the same rate. Which means that though there's a greater economic benefit to larger cities, you'll also have to increase police spending.

Similarly for social networks / online forums.

My point is that Buzzfeed, still, commits the crimes for which I first indicted it (if only in my own mind). Which for numerous and profound reasons I see as a Very Bad Thing.

Tossing the occasional sacrificial treat to those who prefer real meat, while continuing to attach their weaponized clickbait to their site's pages, does nothing to redeem them.

I'm aware that dang is a mod here, though I'd share my PoV. He's welcome to consider it or not. But I flagged this item and will continue to do so for other Buzzfeed, or similarly weaponized-clickbait-laden sites.

As for banning sites -- HN has apparently been doing that without significant notice to date. If you've got an issue with that, take it up with dang.

I feel that a mix of user-selection and site editorial voice is one of the few ways that a site or channel can maintain its focus -- see the degredation of numerous reddits (e.g., /r/dataisbeautiful is rather much more "data is interesting". I've not seen a truly innovative graphical presentation of data there for quite a while, and numerous craptacular infographic presentations (prohibited by subreddit guidelines) where the primary focus seems to be that the underlying data, or more usually, the subject of the underlying data, is intruiging. While that's fine and good, it's not the focus of the subreddit.

Others I can think of do markedly worse.

A good curation system will balance what's happening in the outside world, reader interests, and editorial voice. There's no surefire method, there's an art to it. I actually really like several of the posts dang's submitted (which I'll note go through the same moderation queue everything else does), even the ones which don't hit the front page.