I have a hacker friend, who tried posting stuff on hacker news, it would show to him as posted but would not appear for others to see.(He would send me a link with item it, which i wont be able to open) After some time it would have [dead] marked befor it. Also his username appears in green.<p>So why do we see the following three things:
1.he posted a message and shared link with me http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3782888 he was able to see it, but i was not.<p>2. Why/How does [dead] appear before a post?<p>3. Why do few of the users have their usernames in green?<p>I like my friend are new over here, hence the question.<p>Thanks!
1. He was hellbanned. It's an anti troll mechanism, which used to be quite effective, but now has a lot of false positives, esp since it can be triggered by an unpopular comment by a user with a low karma score.<p>2.[Dead] appears before a post if the item has been flagged by a lot of people or has been killed by moderators. Also occurs when a hellbanned user posts anything.<p>3. Usernames in green is to indicate that the user is new - or atleast that's what I think it is for.
It means that you've been "hellbanned". It's in theory reserved for trolls and other zero-value posters, but often it catches new posters when their karma drops below zero (I think that triggers an automatic hellban, but I'm not sure).<p>I don't agree with it personally - it seems to catch a lot more people than just the trolls.