The misunderstanding was because of a rare collision: we banned that commenter a few seconds before carbocation posted his reply.
We almost never kill comments when they have replies. (And strictly speaking we didn't do that here either.) But that comment was so egregious that I'm not inclined to unkill it. Anyone who wants to can read it by turning 'showdead' on in their profile.
On a positive note, the recent changes that we and, more importantly, the community have made to HN threads have had the interesting side effect of making banning less common. It's mostly restricted now to throwaway trolls, spammers, and users with a clearly negative track record on the site.
We almost never kill comments when they have replies. (And strictly speaking we didn't do that here either.) But that comment was so egregious that I'm not inclined to unkill it. Anyone who wants to can read it by turning 'showdead' on in their profile.
On a positive note, the recent changes that we and, more importantly, the community have made to HN threads have had the interesting side effect of making banning less common. It's mostly restricted now to throwaway trolls, spammers, and users with a clearly negative track record on the site.