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Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

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Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#121

Post by mquander »

lsc wrote: post #97
mquander wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider it spammish too (there's my feedback.) But my observation is that there are a ton of people who link their own blog posts all the time, and if the blog posts are of an OK quality, everyone here seems to be fine with it.

hm. What do you think of the other suggestion, a "submit this to hn/talk about it on hn" link that asked a user to do the submission for me? does that make it any more or less spammish, in your opinion?

I think that a "submit this to HN" link is less spammish, because if someone clicks it, the implication is that your blog post was actually genuinely interesting to someone. The issue I have with doing it yourself is that you're not competent to judge whether your own post is any good or not. Someone else is.

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#122

Post by joubert »

mapleoin wrote: post #22
sabat wrote: post #20

I don't see HN going downhill in terms of submissions or in discourse. Things are mostly the same as they were 2-3 years ago. I do worry -- perhaps unnecessarily -- about the killing of submissions for no obvious reason. Apparently using a URL shortener is verboten, although the HN guidelines don't mention this. But using one will get your story autokilled. Yesterday, I tried to submit what I thought was an interesti…

What do you need the URL shortener for? I find it very annoying to have to click in order to see who the author of the content is when I can just look at the domain name at the end of the HN submission.

If you browse a NYT article using their iPad app and want to submit it to HN, the NYT app will give you a like like this: http://nyti.ms/9Db1qc

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#123

Post by lsc »

ismarc wrote: post #109
lsc wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hm. What do you think of the other suggestion, a "submit this to hn/talk about it on hn" link that asked a user to do the submission for me? does that make it any more or less spammish, in your opinion?

While it may be a bit spammy, with the frequency you updat your blog, I personally wouldn't see it as such. However, you're tying yourself to HN for discussion (typically a good discussion), but I see it as "setting precedent" for others. You remember the web rings? It reminds me of that. Perhaps a single platform for managing discussions of articles/posts/blogs similar to news list sites, but specifically for discus…

>In short, I personally don't see an issue with YOU submitting each post, but I wouldn't post just to comment and would be disheartened if it became a standard way of providing discussion about your posts.

hm. well, in that case, maybe I shouldn't do it? I mean, really, what I want is to outsource the 'community management' stuff. As far as I can tell, hacker news has (for now) has the best community of any similar site I know of.

I could set up my own community site that other bloggers could use for comments... but that would defeat the point for me, as I wanted to outsource the community management bit.

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#124

Post by vijaydev »

ptomato wrote: post #8
sp332 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't always work though. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1632572 and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1630579 were posted one day apart, with identical URLs.

Actually the link checker only checks vs. links that are currently loaded into memory.

links loaded into memory - how does that work? Can you please explain?

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#125

Post by lsc »

anamax wrote: post #68
georgecmu wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst trend I see is comments getting downvoted based on opinions expressed within, not on how poorly they are expressed. No matter how thoughtful a comment, if it goes against the groupthink, you can expect it to hurt your karma.

> No matter how thoughtful a comment, if it goes against the groupthink, you can expect it to hurt your karma. So what? If you think that karma means something significant, you're doing it wrong. As to whether "thoughful" comments get significant downvotes, I don't see it. Instead, I see a bunch of earnest twaddle. Symptomatic of that is the belief that "thoughtful" is a worthwhile characteristic. It isn't. > The wor…

>So what? If you think that karma means something significant, you're doing it wrong.

I find it interesting that expressing this opinion is one of the surest ways I know to gain a negative score for your comment.

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#126

Post by swombat »

TGJ wrote: post #103
steveklabnik wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying thanks in and of itself isn't bad, but some additional substance would be nice. Compare these two comments: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1644924 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1644906 Which would you rather see more of? One highlights something specific, says 'this is really important to me,' and gives thanks... and the other says nothing, really.

I understand what you are saying and I see the merit of having more content to a thank you post, but if it is not there is that in and of itself a warrant for a down vote? Sure you want more and more is sometimes great, but there is still a lot of substance in a simply 'Thank you' to be had. While the comment definitely does not merit an up vote, neither does it warrant a down vote. I would almost hazard to say that…

Ultra-short "Thank you" posts are basically spam. They clutter the page visually without adding any content. I tend to downvote them when I see them. If you don't have anything more than "thank you" or "I agree" or "lol wtf +1" to say, just upvote instead of commenting. Those types comments add nothing to the discussion but take valuable visual space that could instead contain a thoughtful, well argued comment.

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#127

Post by Osiris »

edw519 wrote: post #45
swombat wrote: post #7

Yes, yes, HN is going to the dogs, it's not as good as it used to be, it's all because of the new users, and so on and so on. It's been like that since I joined two and a half years ago.

Right on, swombat. Last year, upon Iteration 27 of this same subject, I threw something like this together in jest: Quality of HN Comments Over Time | . . | . . q| . . . . u| . . . . . . a| . . . . . l| . . . . . i| . . . . . t| . . . you are here -->. . y| (that's all) |________________________________________________________ M J J A S O N D J F M A M J J A S O N D J F M A M J J A '09 '10 I must have been on to some…

This is completely off-topic, but how do you format your comment to force mono-spaced font?

I haven't been able to find an instructions on what formatting can be used in comments, like to quote a previous post, for example.

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#128

Post by Hates_ »

Osiris wrote: post #127
edw519 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right on, swombat. Last year, upon Iteration 27 of this same subject, I threw something like this together in jest: Quality of HN Comments Over Time | . . | . . q| . . . . u| . . . . . . a| . . . . . l| . . . . . i| . . . . . t| . . . you are here -->. . y| (that's all) |________________________________________________________ M J J A S O N D J F M A M J J A S O N D J F M A M J J A '09 '10 I must have been on to some…

This is completely off-topic, but how do you format your comment to force mono-spaced font? I haven't been able to find an instructions on what formatting can be used in comments, like to quote a previous post, for example.

http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#129

Post by ptomato »

vijaydev wrote: post #124
ptomato wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the link checker only checks vs. links that are currently loaded into memory.

links loaded into memory - how does that work? Can you please explain?

Anything that has been accessed within the past x amount of time and hasn't fallen out of cache yet. For more info, check http://github.com/nex3/arc/blob/master/news.arc around lines 1485, 1550, 233.

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#130

Post by 10ren »

I must have noticed this too, because I switched my hackernews bookmark to go directly to the newest submissions a few days ago, since I didn't like what was on top. Reading and upvoting from newest is the most effective way to change what is on the frontpage. http://news.ycombinator.com/newest

Lamenting the bad is less effective than embracing the good. As in life.

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