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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

#61

Post by gxti »

wccrawford wrote: post #21

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…

On the other hand, as of this writing this complaint post has 131 points. That seems to suggest that more people are against the offer posts than for them. Curiously, the only post on the frontpage now with more posts is "Things Paul Graham is Wrong About", another post with a flamebait title. Not surprisingly, flamebait attracts the upvotes!

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#62

Post by simplegeek »

I don't think we should be worried about these. As PG said, it's fascinating to see how Internet evolves. My only worry is that for some "Offer HN" posts I'm not yet prepared to ask for their help, however, I certainly see myself looking for these "services" in future and I'm not sure how it will pan out then ;)

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#63

Post by DeusExMachina »

scott_s wrote: post #43
p0ppe wrote: post #8

The community as a whole seems to appreciate them, based on the upvotes.

This post has a lot of upvotes, too.

The dynamics of post upvotes are quite different, they are not always sign of agreement.

I saw a lot of time people saying they disagree, but they upvote the post to make it more visible and involve more people in the discussion. I even do it myself from time to time.

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#64

Post by heed »

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…

>That's a pretty cynical worldview.

Cynical or skeptical? Or both? Does the fact that his worldview is either of these remove the possibility that it's true, at least in some cases? Does the risk of a drop in overall quality of HN as a result of promoting 'offers' outweigh it's potential benefit? Who knows, but I'm with swombat and can't help be a little skeptical. Personally I'd like to hear some ideas for how one might minimize disingenuous posts before plunging into this thing.

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#65

Post by pg »

paraschopra wrote: post #59
pg wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

For now they'll only last this server invocation, because I merely pasted the code into the repl. Let's see if we still need them in a week.

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#67

Post by kmfrk »

wccrawford wrote: post #21

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…

It's a new trend that might explode and take up the entire HN aggregate. If you don't like the kinds of threads, I'd voice my dissent to nip it in the bud, too.

I appreciate the expressed dissent, but I happen to disagree and find it to be a lovely phenomenon. I don't expect it to last forever, though.

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#68

Post by noglorp »

Altruism doesn't exist, and this is not a bad thing. To 'provide help', even anonymously, is to help yourself by bettering the environment in which you live ("Karma" sans magic).

I don't think anyone has posted any sort of story or comment to HN (or read HN for that matter) without some hope for personal betterment as a result.

As far as chilling trends in the future, I see HN as 'the new Slashdot', and I'd be more afraid of it following similar patterns over the long term.

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#69

Post by jacquesm »

heed wrote: post #64
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…

>That's a pretty cynical worldview. Cynical or skeptical? Or both? Does the fact that his worldview is either of these remove the possibility that it's true, at least in some cases? Does the risk of a drop in overall quality of HN as a result of promoting 'offers' outweigh it's potential benefit? Who knows, but I'm with swombat and can't help be a little skeptical. Personally I'd like to hear some ideas for how one m…

It's possible, but I think such criticism should be leveled at those specific cases where it is applicable, preferably clear cut cases.

To take a general stance like this against a whole class of submissions many of which were clearly done from an altruistic point of view is just not very friendly at all.

Re: Tell HN: Please stop offering your services

#70

Post by lukifer »

> Often, a good test of whether something is worth doing is "what if everyone did the same?"

I don't buy this logic; it implies, for instance, that no one in the world should be a professional programmer, because if everyone was, no other jobs would get done.

In this specific instance, I think the Offer HN submissions go against the "News" part of Hacker News, but a few here and there are not necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps allowing anyone to downvote self-referential posts would help stem the tide?

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