What is Ibn Hbban's methodology in the critique and vindication of narrators? And is his methodology relied upon?

The questioner : In the name of Allah. What is Ibn Hbban's methodology in the critique and vindication of narrators? And is his critique and vindication relied upon?

The Shaykh : Ibn Hbban (may Allah have mercy on him) is undoubtedly one of the great preservers of hadith and one of the scholars of the critique and vindication of narrators. However, he exhibits some strictness and leniency, as appears to researchers in his critique and vindication of narrators. His leniency in vindicating narrators is too well-known to mention, for his principle is to declare a narrator trustworthy even if he is unknown to the majority of hadith scholars. This is because he based his vindication on a jurisprudential principle rather than a hadith principle; that is, every narrator who is a Muslim is considered upright. Therefore, we see him declaring trustworthy those he explicitly states he does not know, and he sometimes exaggerates in clarifying their obscurity by saying, "I do not know him, nor do I know his father." So how does he then declare them upright? Because they are Muslim.
However, hadith scholars define the authentic hadith as: "What is narrated by an upright, precise narrator." If the uprightness of a narrator is established merely by a single person narrating from him, how is his precision and retention established? This is something that cannot be reached, for the precision of a narrator is only clarified if he is a frequent narrator, and his hadiths are compared with the hadiths of the trustworthy ones, agreeing with them and not contradicting them. Only then is his precision and retention established, and in this state, it can be said that he is trustworthy. Thus, the uprightness of a narrator is established by the narration of a group of trustworthy people from him, and nothing appears in what these trustworthy people narrated from him in their narrations regarding precision, such as a lack of precision or poor retention.
If it is a condition of the authentic hadith—without disagreement among hadith scholars—that the narrator be upright and precise, then what Ibn Hbban did in declaring a narrator trustworthy merely because a single narrator narrated from him, and this is something that leads him to admit that this narrator is unknown, even if this single person narrated from him. Therefore, if he is unknown in identity, he is unknown in precision and retention. For this reason, he is considered lenient in declaring narrators trustworthy.
As for his strictness in declaring narrators weak, it corresponds to his leniency in declaring them trustworthy. For in many instances, some of the preservers, such as al-Dhahabi, al-'Asqalani, and others, see that he sometimes is strict in declaring weak—not, for example, the trustworthy ones, though he has some of that—but he is strict in declaring a truthful narrator weak merely because he used to make mistakes in his narrations, so he accuses him of narrating fabricated hadiths from the trustworthy or the established.
For this reason, a student of knowledge should take Ibn Hbban's declaration of narrators as trustworthy or weak with caution and reserve, and not rush to rely on it until he sees the position of the scholars who came before him or those who came after him: did they follow him or agree with him in that, or not?
So Ibn Hbban is sometimes lenient in declaring narrators trustworthy, and sometimes strict in declaring them weak.
This is what can be mentioned on this occasion.
Please proceed.