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Re: undefined

#81

Post by jonny_eh »

axeny wrote: post #49
Skeletor wrote: post #22

This is Michael, CEO of drchrono. It's definitely a rude awakening to wake up to see a post on top of Hacker News from an angry customer. I've reached out to Dr. Dal to have a phone call today to see how we can resolve his issues. Me and my staff have attempted to have a phone call with him for the past several weeks to address his issues. Rather than try to dig into the issues he brought up publicly, we'll do our be…

This is how the first thread should have been resolved. Great answer and I really hope both sides benefit from the following conversations.

I'm assuming DrChrono is in PST. The previous thread may have been killed before the CEO even woke up.

Re: undefined

#82

Post by jacquesm »

pfraze wrote: post #74
magikarp wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What PG is saying is that HN can be used to criticize anyone except companies backed by YC. That's unacceptable.

Is it really? Can't say I'd do differently. I'd bet the company will be reached by PG about it, despite the thread closing, because it was a near PR hit. If we're interested in a constructive process, then it would have only hurt them to make it a public ordeal. EDIT: not allowed to reply to jacquesm, so putting it here: Good points. I just don't think the community is that threatened by PG's moderation in this case.…

Imo closing threads like that is a bigger PR hit, it makes both the start-up and HN (and by implication YC) look like they are ignoring feedback if it is public and negative. In a tech world where the norm seems to be that support is a luxury making some noise is sometimes the only way to get action (see countless threads regarding google on HN that did not get axed, implying a double standard) and in a conflict-of-interest situation letting these threads run their natural course would be to everybody's best interest.

Think of them as an opportunity to show that you do care about your customer, and that 'make something people want' is not just a hollow phrase, rather than to muzzle them and potentially adding insult to injury. If we're to believe what the OP wrote then PG's advice was especially bad given that he - by his own words, which I can't check but let's give the man the benefit of the doubt - had been trying to talk to the company for quite a while and turned to HN as a last-resort before suing them.

Re: undefined

#83

Post by xenophanes »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #77
xenophanes wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It being pure distilled drama would be a reason for it to be #2 on front page. You didn't even reply with a different opinion about what reason it's high on the front page. So he has an opinion that he's willing to write out and expose to critical evaluation. You don't. You're thinking & conversing wrong.

Take 2: "He explained why on that post, but if you're wondering when this page falls off the top of the front page, keep in mind the possibility that it was flagged off by users like me. " People are honestly interested on how this issue is going to be handled by Drchrono. People are more interested in how pg handles (or in this case, handled) the conflict of interest between supporting a YC company and supporting th…

That's better :) I haven't been paying much attention to this stuff but one issue I'd raise is that HN does seem to allow (encourage?) complaint threads about other companies like paypal, and also sometimes google, apple, facebook, and many others. Some of them are things where one might think "contact that company directly" is the answer, but there are reasons that isn't always best, such as the company being non-responsive.

Those discussions often do attract some level of drama, but I don't particularly care. HN has stuff I don't want to read including some drama and some non-drama, and my solution is to ignore it.

Re: undefined

#84

Post by magikarp »

forgottenpass wrote: post #70
magikarp wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What PG is saying is that HN can be used to criticize anyone except companies backed by YC. That's unacceptable.

In a social context, you make a very strong point. Brace for business-based rationalizations as on why it's perfectly fine (HN is a YC marketing arm, he runs the website and can do whatever he wants, etc, etc). If you're lucky, someone will start throwing around the word "entitled" to make you look like the bad guy just for expecting any standard of behavior from another that isn't exclusively profit focused.

> (HN is a YC marketing arm, he runs the website and can do whatever he wants, etc, etc).

HN is much more than a marketing arm — it's one of the most central forums for programmer discussions today. And this makes it YC's responsibility to treat it as such.

Re: undefined

#85

Post by minimaxir »

chollida1 wrote: post #62
minimaxir wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be noted that Medium article rarely make the front page nowadays due to penalties, so a personal blog post might work better.

> It should be noted that Medium article rarely make the front page nowadays due to penalties, so a personal blog post might work better. Meta question....What are these penalties you are referring to? My understanding was the only ban hacker news imposed on sites was a binary one. ie a domain was banned or treated as an equal to all other allowed domains.

Penalities mean that the link requires significantly more upvotes than usual to hit the front page, and if it does hit the front page, it won't stay there for long.

A good description of the math behind penalties (and a list of some penalized domains) is here: http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...

Re: undefined

#86

Post by gknoy »

chollida1 wrote: post #62
minimaxir wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be noted that Medium article rarely make the front page nowadays due to penalties, so a personal blog post might work better.

> It should be noted that Medium article rarely make the front page nowadays due to penalties, so a personal blog post might work better. Meta question....What are these penalties you are referring to? My understanding was the only ban hacker news imposed on sites was a binary one. ie a domain was banned or treated as an equal to all other allowed domains.

A few months ago, I read a blog post by Ken Sherrif [0] which explains (and shows graphs) that some submissions have their scores automatically penalized based on domain:

> Some submissions get automatically penalized based on the title, and others get penalized based on the domain. It appears that any article with NSA in the title gets an automatic penalty of .4. I looked for other words causing automatic penalties, such as awesome, bitcoin, and bubble but they do not seem to get penalized.

> I observed that many websites appear to automatically get a penalty of .25 to .8: arstechnica.com, businessinsider.com, easypost.com, github.com, imgur.com, medium.com, quora.com, qz.com, reddit.com, rt.com, stackexchange.com, theguardian.com, theregister.com, theverge.com, torrentfreak.com, youtube.com. I'm sure the actual list is longer. (This is separate from "banned" sites, which were listed at one point.

Page ranking also decays with time, and I think also once you reach a discussion threshold. (I haven't re-read the entire article as thoroughly just now.) I highly recommend reading the article, as it's VERY interesting and well presented.

[0] http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...

Re: undefined

#87

Post by jacquesm »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #77
xenophanes wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It being pure distilled drama would be a reason for it to be #2 on front page. You didn't even reply with a different opinion about what reason it's high on the front page. So he has an opinion that he's willing to write out and expose to critical evaluation. You don't. You're thinking & conversing wrong.

Take 2: "He explained why on that post, but if you're wondering when this page falls off the top of the front page, keep in mind the possibility that it was flagged off by users like me. " People are honestly interested on how this issue is going to be handled by Drchrono. People are more interested in how pg handles (or in this case, handled) the conflict of interest between supporting a YC company and supporting th…

> the ability to have open discourse on what is a public forum.

I think that's the mistake right there. HN is not a public forum.

Re: undefined

#88

Post by kunai »

throwaway_yy2Di wrote: post #12

This was classless of pg. (Tangent: I found out that if you submit a story linking into the killed thread, your submission gets auto-killed. This one apparently survived because the text URI was not parsed as such).

My submissions were auto killed a while ago. Don't know what caused it.

Eh, what do I care.

Re: undefined

#89

Post by tptacek »

jacquesm wrote: post #87
toomuchtodo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take 2: "He explained why on that post, but if you're wondering when this page falls off the top of the front page, keep in mind the possibility that it was flagged off by users like me. " People are honestly interested on how this issue is going to be handled by Drchrono. People are more interested in how pg handles (or in this case, handled) the conflict of interest between supporting a YC company and supporting th…

> the ability to have open discourse on what is a public forum. I think that's the mistake right there. HN is not a public forum.

For what it's worth: I agree. We're guests here.

Re: undefined

#90

Post by ItendToDisagree »

magikarp wrote: post #84
forgottenpass wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a social context, you make a very strong point. Brace for business-based rationalizations as on why it's perfectly fine (HN is a YC marketing arm, he runs the website and can do whatever he wants, etc, etc). If you're lucky, someone will start throwing around the word "entitled" to make you look like the bad guy just for expecting any standard of behavior from another that isn't exclusively profit focused.

> (HN is a YC marketing arm, he runs the website and can do whatever he wants, etc, etc). HN is much more than a marketing arm — it's one of the most central forums for programmer discussions today. And this makes it YC's responsibility to treat it as such.

Not to nitpick (I agree with you), but according to PG:

HN is a news site, not a forum...

I personally really just see it as a Forum about news that is primarily inhabited by a specific portion of the Tech Industry.

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