BANNED from cloudy nights - Forums

I woke up this morning to be greeted with a screen that just said “BANNED” in big bold letters when I tried to log into cloudy nights. I was an Apollo ranked member and had made a comment on a smartphone giga-thread about the quality of most smart phone astro images. I was not attacking any specific member or post but just expressing an opinion. About a day later a got a message from someone who I assumed was a mod telling me that my post had “raised some hackles” and was removed. My response was “that’s fine but I stand by my opinion” After that I heard nothing more about it until this morning. I’ve been on CN for at least 10 years and never had a post removed so I was a bit surprised at being banned with no further discussion.

I wonder what you folks think about this. Have any of you had a similar experience? Is CN an everyone gets a trophy site now or is it because it was a popular thread? I really am kinda puzzled.

Hi Tony,

Do not worry. I was banned more then 5 years ago also because of expressing my honest opinion about a vendor.

Something is very very wrong with CN forum…

Many people have been banned from Cloudy Nights including some well respected astrophotographers. While I have a CN account, I have not used it in years.

Thanks guys. I guess it’s a badge of honor in a warped sort of way. What really got me was there was no discussion, no warning, no explanation of what the violation of terms actually was.

Tony Gondola · Jan 18, 2026, 08:37 PM
Thanks guys. I guess it’s a badge of honor in a warped sort of way. What really got me was there was no discussion, no warning, no explanation of what the violation of terms actually was.

Exactly. 👍️

yeah the mods are a bit weird on CN, not been using it for a while

Tony Gondola · Jan 18, 2026 at 06:27 PM
…
I wonder what you folks think about this. Have any of you had a similar experience? Is CN an everyone gets a trophy site now or is it because it was a popular thread? I really am kinda puzzled.

I guess I would have to see the thread and the deleted post to have an opinion. I’m fine with Cloudy Nights forums in general.

Dean Jacobsen · Jan 18, 2026 at 09:58 PM
Tony Gondola · Jan 18, 2026 at 06:27 PM
…
I wonder what you folks think about this. Have any of you had a similar experience? Is CN an everyone gets a trophy site now or is it because it was a popular thread? I really am kinda puzzled.
I guess I would have to see the thread and the deleted post to have an opinion. I’m fine with Cloudy Nights forums in general.

Yes, I have the same sentiment. However, mods are human and can be certainly irrational.

I don’t of course, have the post anymore. I’m sure the thread is still up. In a nutshell I expressed the opinion that at lot of cell phone astrophotography is mediocre at best.

Tony Gondola · Jan 18, 2026, 11:08 PM
I don’t of course, have the post anymore. I’m sure the thread is still up. In a nutshell I expressed the opinion that at lot of cell phone astrophotography is mediocre at best.

Apparently one of those mods engage in cell phone ‘astrophotography’ xD

This is why I stick to astrobin and Facebook groups. Hell, you’ll get banned from reddit too if you look at someone wrong, lol.

In the fall we went to Japan to visit a Grandson and his family there.

When we returned, I found I’d been banned from Cloudy Nights. No reasoning.

There is a lot going wrong over there. I chose to simply walk away from them and their overzealous moderators. I found it was going downhill for a long time with a certain amount of royalty amongst them.

No loss. Some places seem to grow too big for their britches. Fagitabout it.

I have not seen a benefit to CN that I cannot get from Astrobin. There is a ton of very nice older posts by people like Jon Rista, Upton, John Hayes, etc. that I still refer to, but that can be found by google.

Kyle Cerniglia · Jan 19, 2026 at 12:07 AM
Tony Gondola · Jan 18, 2026, 11:08 PM
I don’t of course, have the post anymore. I’m sure the thread is still up. In a nutshell I expressed the opinion that at lot of cell phone astrophotography is mediocre at best.
Apparently one of those mods engage in cell phone ‘astrophotography’ xD
This is why I stick to astrobin and Facebook groups. Hell, you’ll get banned from reddit too if you look at someone wrong, lol.

I was banned from Facebook in the fall. No explanation as to why I was banned. To this day I have no idea what prompted the ban. I could have appealed, but to do so you have to give Facebook biometric data (face scans) to ‘verify’ your identity. Told them to take a hike and delete my account.

Last time I looked there was an “ignore user” function on CN.

Don’t know why the raised hackle didn’t just start ignoring you. The kids of today…😉

(Footnote: I’ve been registered on CN Forum for better part of 20yrs. Only visited maybe once or twice a year in recent times. Found I am not missing much.)

Tony Gondola · Jan 18, 2026 at 06:27 PM
I wonder what you folks think about this. Have any of you had a similar experience? Is CN an everyone gets a trophy site now or is it because it was a popular thread? I really am kinda puzzled.

I used CN a good bit when I first got back into astrophotography after a long pause. It was very helpful in helping me make the switch from film to digital. Now, it’s become somewhat redundant, so I don’t post there much. But I’ve had some post deleted for unknown reasons over there too. The mod’s response as to why didn’t make much sense either.

As far as to why you may have been banned…. I just read a number of postings in that thread to get the general flow of it, and didn’t see any posts criticizing cell phone images. So I’m guessing the mods deleted yours because they didn’t think your comment fit in (just a guess), and was maybe a bit inflammatory. The reason you were banned though is because you stood your ground against the mod.

Censorship is on the rise all over the planet. It’s a bad thing wherever it happens.

The mods at CN are too sensitive.

Dont see the point of banning anyone. Just delete the post, send a note and move on.

Censorship about cell phone astrophotography. Who would have thought?

I have noticed that any criticism of vendors gets comments removed or locked. Just look at a topic about a guy who ordered an in-stock bino scope from APM and had been given the run around for a year. When people start referring to steps to take to recover his money, they locked the thread. I think most of the mods are vendors. To get actual reviews of equipment or vendors, it’s better to use AI like Google Gemini or ChatGPT for this. It’s also better to post these criticisms on Reddit, public FB, social media, etc. and let the AI program crawl the internet to get results. As a result, Cloudy Nights is not a place to go for reviews.

Don't miss CN at all. Haven't been on in several years. This is absolutely the best Site.

I used to go there, but pretty rare now.

The main reason I like CN is that there are a lot of new imagers there so I try to help when I can. Only so many “did you dark/bias calibrate your flat?” questions one can answer I suppose 😀

I’ve not tip-toed around calling out products I’ve received that were sub-par, so I suppose I’m lucky I’m still around there.

Rick Krejci · Jan 19, 2026 at 02:21 PM
The main reason I like CN is that there are a lot of new imagers there so I try to help when I can. Only so many “did you dark/bias calibrate your flat?” questions one can answer I suppose 😀
I’ve not tip-toed around calling out products I’ve received that were sub-par, so I suppose I’m lucky I’m still around there.

Vendors nowadays won’t hesitate to block anything negative. I won’t name the store but once I posted a negative review on one their own products I was very disappointed with. They never published it. Now I know that anything on any online store that only has positive reviews is BS.

But I digress. My point is a forum that has vendors for moderators (if true) is clearly there to make money, not to help people.

Vroomfondel · Jan 19, 2026, 08:24 AM
Last time I looked there was an “ignore user” function on CN.
Don’t know why the raised hackle didn’t just start ignoring you. The kids of today…😉
(Footnote: I’ve been registered on CN Forum for better part of 20yrs. Only visited maybe once or twice a year in recent times. Found I am not missing much.)

I think the only thing I’ll miss are the classifieds. I bought and sold on there rather a lot.

Don · Jan 19, 2026, 11:56 AM
Tony Gondola · Jan 18, 2026 at 06:27 PM
I wonder what you folks think about this. Have any of you had a similar experience? Is CN an everyone gets a trophy site now or is it because it was a popular thread? I really am kinda puzzled.
I used CN a good bit when I first got back into astrophotography after a long pause. It was very helpful in helping me make the switch from film to digital. Now, it’s become somewhat redundant, so I don’t post there much. But I’ve had some post deleted for unknown reasons over there too. The mod’s response as to why didn’t make much sense either.
As far as to why you may have been banned…. I just read a number of postings in that thread to get the general flow of it, and didn’t see any posts criticizing cell phone images. So I’m guessing the mods deleted yours because they didn’t think your comment fit in (just a guess), and was maybe a bit inflammatory. The reason you were banned though is because you stood your ground against the mod.
Censorship is on the rise all over the planet. It’s a bad thing wherever it happens.

You’re right, if I had backed down I probably wouldn’t have been banned but that’s just not me.

Rick Krejci · Jan 19, 2026, 02:21 PM
The main reason I like CN is that there are a lot of new imagers there so I try to help when I can. Only so many “did you dark/bias calibrate your flat?” questions one can answer I suppose 😀
I’ve not tip-toed around calling out products I’ve received that were sub-par, so I suppose I’m lucky I’m still around there.

That was really my prime purpose as well. I’d always dive into the beginners forum and see who I could help.

Eric Gagne:
Vendors nowadays won’t hesitate to block anything negative. I won’t name the store but once I posted a negative review on one their own products I was very disappointed with. They never published it. Now I know that anything on any online store that only has positive reviews is BS.

What you state here is certainly not exclusive to astrophotography.

Any and all vendors across the board "curate" their reviews, meaning they will not openly publish every review that gets written. They know that 100% positive feedback is not believable, so they will carefully select a small number of negative reviews to publish, simply to make the whole thing believable. As others have said, third party review sites (like Google) are better, though also not perfect. I personally posted a negative review for something I bought online, and was accidentally cc'd on an email from the vendor's website host to the vendor asking if he wanted to publish my review. So be very careful about what you believe that's on a manufacturer website.

As for CN, it is owned and operated by a retailer. That creates an inherent conflict. it is not in the interest of any retailer to allow anything negative to them, or negative to those that sponsor them. Always follow the money.