Poll: Should this site be visible to Yahoo, MSN crawlers?

Post by superkarn » Thu, Apr 17, 2008, 1:42 PM UTC

yters wrote: post #83

superkarn wrote: post #36

I voted to remain visible. I assume that resource is not a problem for YC. This fact, coupled with YC not having a search feature, leads me to believe that it's better for YC community that this site is indexed by more than just one search engine. One big reason, as pointed out by Tichy, is that not all of us use Google as our primary search engine. By cutting off Yahoo, MSN, etc, but not Google, you would essentiall…

What's the slippery slope?

Post by kirubakaran » Thu, Apr 17, 2008, 3:21 PM UTC

jasonyan wrote: post #87

jsrn wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thanks, I didn't know that! Perhaps they should say so on the page...

Done :)

Post by yters » Thu, Apr 17, 2008, 9:20 PM UTC

ntoshev wrote: post #89

yters wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the slippery slope?

At least two dimensions: - tying the site to specific products. pg may decide firefox browser is the best predictor for being a hacker and ban all other browsers. Would you like that? - introducing bias to the community. the search engine may be a correct predictor for being a hacker, but what about the false negtives: do we want to exclude the hackers working on MSN search engine from this community, for example? I…

Post by yters » Fri, Apr 18, 2008, 2:50 PM UTC

ntoshev wrote: post #96

yters wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be a problem if the decision is technology centered. But, it isn't. Technology is only incidental to making HN membership more challenging, and making a certain technology the de facto standard is anti-thetical to challenge. See why Fisher thinks chess is dead.

pg wants to make Google search technology de facto standard for news.yc.