Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 111 posts

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#41

Post by marze »

Startup concept:

Think about this tiny trend in light of the unemployment situation in the USA. I imagine that most if not all of these offers are from people who are employed. What about the 20M (or whatever it is) who are not?

If there was a site where they could volunteer to work for a startups, think of the army of available talent. And these don't need to be tech startups only. If it could be set up so those volunteering could be compensated later that might be good, but even without any promised compensation I bet people would do it.

Does anyone know if such sites exist, sites that easily let startups hook up with volunteers/remote interns?

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#42

Post by malbiniak »

swombat wrote: post #20
jacquesm wrote: post #12

I actually think it is fascinating to see this, and I don't think they're spam at all and suggesting they are really not nice at all. HN is many things to many people don't let your particular view of what HN should be dictate the status quo. > But if everyone posted "Offer HN" posts, even if they all did it just once and with a genuine desire to help, rather than a secret need to build their public profile and/or ge…

Hey, you're part of the Secret Cabalistic Society of HN Worship now, you're not allowed to disagree anymore! Get in line! More seriously - call me a cynic if you will, but when I see people offering help with the Twitter API or with SEO or tax advice or even help with RoR, well, I don't know, something smells fishy to me. That help is freely available on numerous forums to anyone who's looking for it, and it is a pre…

I think you're addressing a problem before it's arrived, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I agree that this isn't sustainable, and at some point, the offers are going to become less genuine and less valuable. However, after looking at the bloggergirl copy deck suggestions, I want to clearly state that she (and other offers) don't fall into this group. Great work.

I'd encourage users to ask for help. We're already doing it in the form of "review my ..." Good posts with time invested in describing the problem and asking for very specific help will bubble up from newest, and those that are looking to get out of doing work won't hit the front page.

On the contrary "Offer HN" posts are hard not to upvote...for now.

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#44

Post by mgrouchy »

zackattack wrote: post #5
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.

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.

I find it interesting that you are saying its lowering the value/utility of the community here, but in one of these "Offer HN" threads you requested help not too long ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1839595

I think all in all thats pretty disingenuous .

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#45

Post by DanielBMarkham »

I haven't read a lot of HN over the last two days, but I saw that we had one "Offer HN", and then a slew of them.

I think it's a great idea -- pay it forward! But I wonder if I would want to visit a board full of "Offer HN" posts. "Ask HN"? Sure. "Rate my startup"? Sure. But not so much "Offer HN"

Perhaps that means I'm selfish but geesh, this thing could go on forever.

It's the same problem as job offers/requests. It's such a common thing -- it could easily pollute the board.

Not happening yet, sure, and I'm enjoying watching them so far. But this could turn out to be a worse meme than Erlang Innards.

I don't know. I'll let you secret HN leader cabal-types figure it out. I just know that after about 20 "Offer HN" posts, I'm burnt out. And I don't feel that way about the other types of posts. Beats me why.

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#46

Post by ilium »

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"))

Gizmodo does something like this but with all content. Every post has tags and you can filter the stream by excluding certain tags (or only looking at certain tags). It's very nice. Maybe that could be done as a long term solution for all future problems like this.

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#47

Post by tzury »

tzury wrote: post #25
pg wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think that's the first time in the history of HN that arc praising comment is down voted

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#48

Post by pg »

bobds wrote: post #29
pg wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ok, works now.

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#49

Post by brockad »

bobds wrote: post #29
pg wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think this could be a shorter course to the problem described by loginx above

>>My only concern is really that in the short/medium term, this could lead to a large influx of freeloaders from other communities, who may have no interest in "paying it forward", but mostly in dropping by for a quick freebie, while not contributing anything.<<

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#50

Post by sabat »

But if everyone posted "Offer HN" posts

That's a false proposition, isn't it? Everyone is not going to offer his services. It's going to happen on occasion, and it's usually useful when it does happen.

If it ever did rise to the level of spam, then HN already has a mechanism for dealing with it. But it's nowhere near there.

Offering services (e.g. SEO) gives occasion for interesting discussions on topics as well. This is certainly useful for the community.

Post reply on HN