3 ms·
"Natural" submissions? What are "natural" submissions? Submissions that arose naturally out of the movements of the Great Magnet? Every article that ends up on
by swombat 17y ago
"Natural" submissions? What are "natural" submissions? Submissions that arose naturally out of the movements of the Great Magnet? Every article that ends up on here ends up here because someone (whether the author or not) has deliberately submitted it, and other people have deliberately upvoted it. This is true whether or not the person who submitted it was the author, and whether or not they were asked by the author if they would be willing to submit the article. Who are you to declare one set of articles "natural" and the other "unnatural"?
I think you need to get off your puritanical high horse about "keeping HN pure". You're doing more harm than good. So far, the main HN problem I see with "canvassing" or "voting rings" or whatever other cabalistic conspiration theory you think up, is the fact that you're polluting HN with these pointless finger-pointing exercises.
There's far more a problem of awesome posts getting zero upvotes than of crappy posts getting too many. Far too many times I stumble on something that is a great, great post, I submit it, and I find that it was submitted 2 days ago and got no upvotes. This sucks.
* TO CLARIFY:
If anyone runs a blog and thinks their last post is AWESOME and they reckon HN will love it, but for whatever reason they don't wish to post it under their own nickname, please DO send it to me. I will read it, and if I like it and I feel it is indeed an AWESOME post worth putting up on HN, I will post it.
PS: I will not post things that I don't think are in fact worth posting.
PPS: If you can't figure out my contact details by yourself, then you can't send me stuff.
- jacquesm 17y agoDaniel, You are simply mad with me because I pointed out your little group voting each others stuff up under the banner of being 'the defenders of HN', whereas that sort of behaviour is a part of the problem, not part of the solution. I'm sure you didn't like that but to pretend I'm making it up is really funny, here is a transcript of #startups: <swombat> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1103439 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1103439 <swombat> fuck jacquesm. <wheels> swombat: +1 for mention of the great magnet. <raz> who is that? <wheels> And clearing up that there is no cabal. <swombat> there is no cabal, just a more efficient mechanism for bringing cool articles to the attention of more than 1 person so that they have a snowflake's chance in hell of actually being read <wheels> raz: It's like the force, except that it wipes your hard drive. <tomh-> free upvote for your comment swombat <tomh-> that jaques guy has to know his place and stop being such an asshat <raz> ya, belt him!
- swombat 17y agoHardly. This "voting ring", as you call it, is responsible for many great articles getting notice. It is not responsible for any crap articles getting upvotes. Also, apologies for the "fuck jacquesm", but I do get annoyed by puritanism and other moral crusades.
- jacquesm 17y agoI understand - and even respect - what you are trying to do. But I think you're going about it in the exact opposite way, you are starting an 'arms race', which will eventually runaway with voting blocks controlling what gets posted on HN. That site is called 'Digg' I believe. The first group of guys that gets away with it will engender the second and the third, after all, if it's ok that you do it why would it not be ok for other groups to do it? I've seen first hand how effective it is what you are doing but I simply disagree with it, even if it is content that I like. To pretend that I'm 'making it up' is disingenuous, especially since you - of all people - are most aware that it is very real. No need to apologize, I'm not made of sugar, I just like to know what rules we're playing by. Essentially you're saying HN is fair game and you can gang together your votes in order to gain effective control of the site to maintain a certain character, and I would like us all to retain our individuality in order to do exactly the same. So we disagree - strongly - about the means but definitely not about the goal. You are trying to create a solution by staging a 'behind the scenes coup' I would like a solution that creates a level playing field for everybody.