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Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#21

Post by wccrawford »

Why do you get to decide what this site does? Who are you to tell people to go post that stuff on another site?

If it's pushing out 'more interesting stuff', it's because people have upvoted it because THEY find it worthwhile.

I'll admit, I find them mildly annoying, but much less annoying than the total crap that occasionally gets posted, like videos of dancing bears and such.

I watch the rss feed and I see -all- of that crap. And I ignore the stuff I don't care about, and upvote the stuff I do.

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#23

Post by winternett »

If it was undesireable, there would be no option to use it. If people offer their help, its up to the people that take them up on it to determine whether its a bait for service sales tactics. Asking people to stop volunteering their help for free is not a good idea in general. It mean's you're probably reading HN too much, and possibly on a screen that's too small. Just get used to clicking on the "More" button, it works! :P

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#24

Post by fragmede »

pg wrote: post #14
zackattack wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's interesting to you since HN is your baby and it's fun to watch people use your creation in unexpected ways, but for us, it's lowering the value/utility.

Repl to the rescue: http://news.ycombinator.com/offerless (defop offerless req (offerlesspage (get-user req))) (newscache offerlesspage user 90 (listpage user (msec) ranked-stories* [and (>= (realscore _) front-threshold*) (cansee user _) (no (begins _!title "Offer ")) _] nil nil "offerless"))

Nice. Is this something you'd like to simply run its course? Given the nature of it, it would seem the better thing to do would be to split Ask and Offer into distinct pages, and offer both up on the header.

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#25

Post by tzury »

pg wrote: post #14
zackattack wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's interesting to you since HN is your baby and it's fun to watch people use your creation in unexpected ways, but for us, it's lowering the value/utility.

Repl to the rescue: http://news.ycombinator.com/offerless (defop offerless req (offerlesspage (get-user req))) (newscache offerlesspage user 90 (listpage user (msec) ranked-stories* [and (>= (realscore _) front-threshold*) (cansee user _) (no (begins _!title "Offer ")) _] nil nil "offerless"))

OH!

That's software arc.hitecture

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#26

Post by wccrawford »

swombat wrote: post #9
pg wrote: post #3

Don't worry, these things always run their course. At least this is driven by generosity. Plus you have to admit it's sort of interesting to watch new forms of internet behavior evolve.

For sure. Do they run their course because posts like this one encourage them to run their course, or would they fade away by themselves anyway? :-) My worry is, this one is a good idea in the wrong place. This is basically a strong variation on reddit's AMA, which has taken a solid hold there and isn't going anywhere. Since HN doesn't support sub-forums, there is a risk that we could be "stuck with" this for a while…

They die on their own. The only thing posts like this do are discourage helpful people. It causes them to see the community as hostile, and they take their helpfulness elsewhere.

These people aren't -just- posting these offers. They also contribute to the site in other ways. Their loss -is- a loss to the community.

Gently nudging them into something more helpful is great, but flat telling them to go away is very bad.

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#29

Post by bobds »

pg wrote: post #14
zackattack wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's interesting to you since HN is your baby and it's fun to watch people use your creation in unexpected ways, but for us, it's lowering the value/utility.

Repl to the rescue: http://news.ycombinator.com/offerless (defop offerless req (offerlesspage (get-user req))) (newscache offerlesspage user 90 (listpage user (msec) ranked-stories* [and (>= (realscore _) front-threshold*) (cansee user _) (no (begins _!title "Offer ")) _] nil nil "offerless"))

Could we also have http://news.ycombinator.com/offers ? It would be nice if we could see all the Offer HN threads in one page.

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#30

Post by mattmaroon »

parenthesis wrote: post #15
mattmaroon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a fair assumption since there are no downvotes. If 20% of people really like something, and 80% hate it, it could still very easily own the front page.

The hypothetical 80% who hate it are free to vote up the items they'd rather see (higher) on the front page instead.

What if they only like 1 in 10?

Regardless you're focusing too much on the numbers I threw out there solely for example. The point is that without down votes its entirely possible for a number of similar items to hit the front page even though a majority of people dislike them, thus invalidating the idea that a number of similar items on the front page means a majority of people find them useful.

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