Tell HN: Please continue offering your services (goods, rooms etc)

I've read and taken in swombats post to 'stop offering your services', and I think that he may have a point in the general sense, that some may abuse this format to gain a business advantage.

That said, I think it is much too early to make the call to stop doing this, let's fix problems if and when they appear.

The way to deal with that is to take any Offer HN at face value unless there is proof that it is not what it seems to be, and to indcate that if and when it appears.

From what I've seen so far all - or at the very least most - of the offers that have been made are both genuine and heartfelt, and at some personal expense in terms of time, effort or even goods to the person offering.

So please do keep them coming those 'Offer HN' postings and let's hope they will put HN on the map as a place where people do more than just talk.

For what it's worth, I've upvoted this too. I certainly didn't mean to kill the trend completely (which is what seems to have happened :-/). There is some obvious value to it.

I wouldn't want to see the Offer HN thing become a lasting trend at the current levels... that said, the odd "Offer HN" doesn't bother me, and I certainly wouldn't want to think that all offers stopped completely just because my post got upvoted.

That said, to elaborate on the point jacquesm singled out, many/most services-businesses (from tax consultancies to seo consultants and web developers) use free consultations as a way to generate leads. My suggestion to people who want to offer something to HN is, don't do it just to generate leads, and try to make it clear to the readers that it's not something you're doing to generate business for yourself. It'd be a shame to see some percentage of this site become basically a lead-generation site for the brazen few willing to take advantage of it like that.

PS: I'm not suggesting that any specific "offer HN" post was like that, despite mentioning examples above.

I created the HN Offer: Tax Help for Startup Entrepreneur thread and I wanted to reflect on how I went about it.

Maybe it would've been better if I didn't show my website. I wanted to show that I've been doing this for a while as a career and hoped that it would help lend credibility. I hope that it didn't come off as a gimmick.

I'm keeping my offer open and standing. I was thinking about posting an offer hn tax help for startup entreprenuiers thread once a month just to show that I would consistently help people and that I wasn't looking to be a scammer.

But maybe that was a bad idea. Let me know and I'll act accordingly. I was just hoping to interact with the hn crowd and maybe meet some cool people and discuss interesting tax subjects hopefully. I can say that I definitely got a lot out of it myself. I learned about a new tax strategy i didn't know about from RDL in ROBS 401ks. I'll be looking into that myself and sharing what I find with everyone else since it could be an awesome way for people invest in their own companies.

Let me know your thoughts and ill definitely take them into advisement.

I can see some potential for awesome things to come out of all this. Where people meet and start exchanging ideas and simple services bonds are being forged and where bonds are being forged the seeds are planted for a higher level of collaboration in the future. So even if all of these are totally altruistic I do not doubt that there indeed will be some real world pay-off, if not for the individual than definitely in the aggregate.

I'll be watching this whole development with great interest, it is one of the most exciting things I've seen on HN in a long time.

What about an "offers" link in the top nav to group these together, like "jobs" and "ask"?

It strikes me also that this could be a valuable part of the community here. I think the HN has an ethos of startups helping each other out (albeit with a good dose of skepticism).