I'm appalled of the growing number of dead posts that I see lately. Since normal accounts apparently can't answer them, how do you think they will regulate themselves?
The problem seems to be well understood. As long as there is 'no punishment that works' the dialog is closed so I see no point at this time to pursue this.
Ufortunatelly there are no walls high enough to protect this or any garden from snakes. To pretend otherwise is shallow thinking
I think the point of dead posts is that there is no punishment that works. These are posters that thrive on and are reinforced by conflicting interaction regardless of voting. When the posts are "dead" (and thus get no interaction) we have extinction of the reinforcement.
That is true, but in my experience HN mods have a really hard time recognizing the difference between malicious trolls/spammers who need to be kept in the dark vs. well-meaning commenters who could improve with a little correction. More often, anyone who comes to the attention of the mods is assumed to be a troll and gets silently throttled or hellbanned.
Unfortunately conflicts are absolutely necessary for solving deep problems and if conflict is banned outright then what remains is shallow or polite conversation.
Not all conflict does, but in this case, the OP was talking about people who are baiting argument for the sake of argument. They're not looking to solve some problem. They're just looking to be dicks.
I honestly don't know how to do it. But I will say that on HN at least, there seems to be a moderation team interested in finding that balance.
The only comments I've seen that get killed are so far off the rails or so hateful as to be completely unproductive.
From what I've seen online, the malevolent ones just seem to want to resort to personal attacks, or make terrible arguments full of basic logic flaws.
I get what you're saying, but I would say that the onus is on the individual arguing to prove they are not malicious. If I type something that can be construed as 'off-topic' or malicious, I always either preface it with an explanation to the word choice (i.e. don't read tone in text, because this is said with a flat emote). Otherwise, I expect my comment to get flagged and killed.
Like this one. This has nothing to do with the original story, so it may get killed. And that's something that I understand and am okay with.
I don't know myself exactly all the circumstances that may lead to a dead post, but I don't really need to know - all I know is that the posts are rather off-the-rails and outliers, or just plain bizarre.
As for correcting the user's behavior - I think we make the calculation that interactive correction is impossible or infeasible at this time and in this forum. This is a self-interested calculation, but I think I must agree that it's a healthy self-interest.
Eventually, if they will be more careful not to alienate other users and make more useful and helpful comments, others who have showdead=Yes (like myself) could vouch for them.
I may have done so once or twice (I don't recall actually doing so), so that circumstance would seem to be rare...
Unnecessarily uncivil and bizarre posts can be flagged and killed for normal viewers. If you want to see them, you can change the setting in your account (set showdead=Yes), but it's not really an improvement to the experience on the site, just a bit of transparency...
Also, shadowbanned accounts have their posts dead automatically. If you think the post contributes in a positive way, you can vouch for it (click through to the post page).
I'm appalled of the growing number of dead posts that I see lately. Since normal accounts apparently can't answer them, how do you think they will regulate themselves?