As you just said, it's to prevent the whack-a-mole game of impotently banning an endless stream of new accounts. Being a jerk is strongly correlated with not respecting bans — if they cared about your wishes in the first place, they wouldn't have acted so inconsiderate. If you ban a jerk, they make a new account and keep at it. If you hellban them, they tend to stay that way for a good long while.

I do think there should be a lesser level of punishment for people who aren't that incorrigible, but hellbanning jerks definitely has its place. It is the most effective countermeasure available.

> "Being a jerk is strongly correlated with not respecting bans"

Big citation needed on this. If anything, look at the namesake of this post - this is a guy who was banned for inflammatory views, but there is no indication that he was riling people up for the sake of it, and no indication that he would've become the incessant ban-dodger had he known he was banned.

I don't think the link between espousing inflammatory views and waging a troll-war on a community is really that obvious.

> "It is the most effective countermeasure available."

In the same way a nuclear missile is the most effective countermeasure available against annoying neighbors. Technically true, but complete and utter overkill. The problem here is that on HN so many people have been hellbanned, with such regularity, who show no inclination towards being a troll, that there is a site-wide consciousness for this sort of thing, making the hellban itself less effective. You need to reserve your strongest tools for the cases that truly demand it - popping off the internet forum equivalent of a nuclear missile at every turn simply makes it less effective when you do need it.

> there is no indication that he was riling people up for the sake of it, and no indication that he would've become the incessant ban-dodger had he known he was banned.

Point of order: he did discover he was banned, and he did dodge it.

(I have no problem with this, because he shouldn't have been banned, and because we long ago reached the point where it's perfectly reasonable for a user to trust their own judgement over that of a moderator.)

> Big citation needed on this.

Eh, honestly, just experience. I've served as moderator at a number of forums in my days and talked to moderators of other forums. If someone actually respected a permaban, it was a strong indicator that they weren't so bad after all, because the real jerks would just make a new account and continue. The defining quality of a jerk is that he doesn't care about other people's wishes, and that includes your wish that he go elsewhere.

> If anything, look at the namesake of this post - this is a guy who was banned for inflammatory views, but there is no indication that he was riling people up for the sake of it, and no indication that he would've become the incessant ban-dodger had he known he was banned.

And sure enough, I have already said many times now that I didn't think he was a good candiate for a hellban. Just because I think hellbans are a good tool doesn't mean I think everybody should be hellbanned. However, I will address one point that I think gets more to the heart of the issue:

> there is no indication that he was riling people up for the sake of it

It doesn't really matter if somebody is trolling or just an inconsiderate jerk. From the point of view of having a healthy community, I don't care why somebody is radioactively toxic — I just care that they stop doing it.

The reason Uriel was a bad hellban is that he wasn't incorrigibly toxic. But many people are just jerks, with 60% of their posts being pure nastiness, and they do need to go, and hellbans are the best way to accomplish it.