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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

#51

Post by [deleted] »

charlief wrote: post #37
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…

I can't agree with you more. Maybe there is a compromise somewhere. In http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1839394 I suggested that the offering person summarize advice and findings and puts it back in the thread. Effectively, the thread becomes a reverse Ask HN and can be incredibly useful. The information persists, and it is available to future HN users. You're getting tips/advice/reviews specifically applicable or…

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#53

Post by motters »

I don't think there's any interesting phenomena going on here, and to me the "Offer HN" posts look quintessentially like spam. I don't read HN in order to see a lot of folks touting for business - no matter how talented or fast on the keyboard they may be. I know business is thin on the ground right now, but please post that stuff elsewhere.

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#55

Post by cabalamat »

> But please don't post any more "Offer HN". Despite the generous impulse behind them, they are basically just spam that's pushing out other more interesting stuff, at the moment.

I disagree. I think they are interesting stuff. In any case, HN has a voting system so what goes on the front page will be whatever the community finds interesting.

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#56

Post by charlief »

jacquesm wrote: post #40
charlief wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't agree with you more. Maybe there is a compromise somewhere. In http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1839394 I suggested that the offering person summarize advice and findings and puts it back in the thread. Effectively, the thread becomes a reverse Ask HN and can be incredibly useful. The information persists, and it is available to future HN users. You're getting tips/advice/reviews specifically applicable or…

I summarized all of them in a blog post, and I'll keep it up to date. If someone wants to 'retract' their offer due to being swamped or for some other reason let me know and I'll unlink the link. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1839747

I am not talking about supporting the admin or listing those services, I am talking about opening the content of individual consulting sessions. Summarize the content of the advice of one or all the sessions, and put it back in the thread to make it worth something to people that didn't participate. It will be worth a ton because it is advice tailored specifically to your demographic, a user of Hacker News.

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#57

Post by _b8r0 »

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.

Something I suggested elsewhere in an Offer HN-related thread that appears to have died a death was the idea of creating an offer section next to the jobs section at the top, where people can offer their services.

It would be good then if a condition of accepting a service is that you should (not that it'd be enforced, it'd just be good etiquette) post your own offer.

That seems to allow the front page to get back to lumps of ice, Angelgate and other important stuff, encourage the philanthropic behaviour and gives people a place to put it.

I appreciate this could be perceived as a step towards a 'multi-section reddit-style thingummajig' but I think this is a reasonable exception. Certainly offers with sufficient gravity could make the front page by setting a threshold.

It sounds like a bit of work, but what do you think?

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#58

Post by duck »

What is great about HN is that the community can decide on how useful they are and it will run its course. If there is other content that is "worth" more to users, it will rise to the top. I am going to add a section to the Hacker Newsletter for these since they appear useful at the moment.

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#59

Post by paraschopra »

pg wrote: post #48
bobds wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It will be great if you could add them here too: http://news.ycombinator.com/lists

On a similar note, I wonder if there are other filters which are not listed there?

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#60

Post by chc »

aristidb wrote: post #7

Often, "what if everyone did the same" is a very bad test. For example because not everybody will do the same. I'm not sure whether that's the case here.

Indeed. It could argue against almost anything, because the real problem indicated is a lack of balance, not an inherent harmfulness of the thing in question. For example: "If everyone became a DBA, society would come crashing down, so I should not become a DBA."

DBAs are good and helpful — they just aren't the be-all end-all of human existence. I don't think anybody should be held up to that standard.

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