Live data from Hacker News

Gitlab Handbook's HN Page

about.gitlab.com

161–170 of 200 posts

Re: Gitlab Handbook's HN Page

#161

Hey there, I’m a member of the GitLab Community Relations team. My team is responsible for this page. I shared the page today at a DevRel meetup where OP was presenting on Hacker News. I’m grateful he chose to share it with all of you. Thanks, Dan. If there are ways we can improve how we engage with the HN community, myself and our team would love your feedback.

> Avoid using corporate jargon like 'PeopleOps'. > DevRel Oh no, you broke the rules!

Off with his head! :-p

Re: Gitlab Handbook's HN Page

#162
post #9

> Never submit GitLab content to Hacker News. Submission gets more credibility if a non-GitLab Hacker News community member posts it, we should focus on making our posts interesting instead of on submitting it. I appreciate this policy, it makes it clear that HN is a place to engage with the community, rather than a free advertising channel. Looking at the CEO's profile, the last time he made a submission about Gitla…

Yeah, but the takeaway is that "coordinated responses" are the norm for even a relatively small tech company and we basically can't count on any genuine social media discussions about large companies. Disclaimer: I'm not saying you-know-who does or doesn't do any of this (though other pages on their wiki do describe some of what I talk about. You can read it for yourself.) At best what looks organic isn't remotely cl…

> Yeah, but the takeaway is that "coordinated responses" are the norm for even a relatively small tech company.

They have 1500 employees around the world, how is Gitlab a small company? :-))

Re: Gitlab Handbook's HN Page

#163
post #3

> We learned that the key to a post reaching the front page was the content itself. Well that's good news, at least

Well their observation is completely wrong. Timing is the most important factor which matters. I have seen thousands of extremely good non-political, neutral, tech related articles not getting a single upvote if it is submitted at times most of US/Western Europe is sleeping.

And clickbaiting works for sure: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15845419

I initially named the post "Mercurial being rewritten in Rust" and that's how it made it to the front page, if I recall correctly, close to the first spot, even.

As soon as mods renamed it, it dropped like a rock.

Re: Gitlab Handbook's HN Page

#164
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do notifications for services like HN get triggered? Easy, the API allows you to see all the latest X comments/submissions. Setup something to just text-match your name and hit whatever notification endpoint when matching. I think there are services for this that includes HN already too. > Or YouTube/Tiktok/Twitch? YouTube often offers captions for videos, otherwise it's not too hard to generate yourself. Apply…

This works great in theory and as one off research projects (source: I've done this). The tricky thing is, can you namedrop any such services that actually work and offer a SaaS model? I've heard dozens of pitches for such products, but they all end up being either 1) unable to grow due to legal reasons (transcripts are derivative works and thus even creating them, let alone publishing them, is restricted under copyr…

> can you namedrop any such services that actually work

It was a long time ago I worked with companies large enough to care about a possible TV mention, and the company we used no longer seem to be around.

But, after a quick search, it seems there are alternatives out there, ever tried any of these?

- https://mention.com/en/blog/monitor-broadcast-mentions-tv-ra...

- https://www.criticalmention.com/media-monitoring/broadcast-m...

- https://www.cision.com/monitoring-analytics/broadcast/

- https://www.meltwater.com/en/products/media-monitoring

Yes, you're gonna have to negotiate with them, it's part of doing sales/purchases for/from larger companies, for better or worse.

Re: Gitlab Handbook's HN Page

#165

What I feel is missing here is upvote/downvote etiquette, but I fear that's on purpose. Often times it feels like criticism of Gitlab gets downvoted easily in the comments of various Gitlab submissions, even if it's valid. Since it's now clear it's an official stance for Gitlab employees to lurk and comment on HN submissions, maybe including something like "Don't upvote/downvote comments based on if you agree persona…

The only people who can downvote on HN are people with 500+ karma so I’d imagine such an experienced HN-user already knows that.

Re: Gitlab Handbook's HN Page

#166
post #165

What I feel is missing here is upvote/downvote etiquette, but I fear that's on purpose. Often times it feels like criticism of Gitlab gets downvoted easily in the comments of various Gitlab submissions, even if it's valid. Since it's now clear it's an official stance for Gitlab employees to lurk and comment on HN submissions, maybe including something like "Don't upvote/downvote comments based on if you agree persona…

The only people who can downvote on HN are people with 500+ karma so I’d imagine such an experienced HN-user already knows that.

I wish karma represented how experienced someone is with HN. I know users (AFK) who only interact with HN submissions if it's about their company, and they've raked up 5000+ karma with just answering stuff in those threads. That doesn't mean these users know anything about HN etiquette outside of that.

Re: Gitlab Handbook's HN Page

#167
post #160
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starting to change though. Personalized analytics and tracking roll-out (including on-prem) was pulled back ~2 years ago[0], they're on another try[1] currently with a heavy-handed hiding approach. Including small additions to release notes[1], short lived and hard to find feedback threads[2] etc... Including deleting/hiding tickets that get posted on HN[3][4] and contain plans/info that users might take negatively/p…

It's going to be a slow process, but they'll become a regular company over time. There's a reason (many? most?) people are jerks. Being a jerk works. Companies, being groups of people, are also jerks.

yeah, it's going to happen and someone else will come and win everyone over by acting nicely.

It's a cycle and I can confidently say, working in a company that has used the same approach to win customers over, it's really hard to keep the honest culture going.

Re: Gitlab Handbook's HN Page

#169

What I feel is missing here is upvote/downvote etiquette, but I fear that's on purpose. Often times it feels like criticism of Gitlab gets downvoted easily in the comments of various Gitlab submissions, even if it's valid. Since it's now clear it's an official stance for Gitlab employees to lurk and comment on HN submissions, maybe including something like "Don't upvote/downvote comments based on if you agree persona…

Thanks for the suggestion. I created an MR to add a slightly edited version to the "Best Practices" section of the page: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/-/merge_request...

Re: Gitlab Handbook's HN Page

#170
post #3

> We learned that the key to a post reaching the front page was the content itself. Well that's good news, at least

Well their observation is completely wrong. Timing is the most important factor which matters. I have seen thousands of extremely good non-political, neutral, tech related articles not getting a single upvote if it is submitted at times most of US/Western Europe is sleeping.

Your point about timing is a good one (and was also something Dan mentioned in his presentation yesterday) so I created an MR to add it to the page: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/-/merge_request...
Post reply on HN