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I think whoever runs ignition.co or does marketing for it liked the traffic boost they got from someone posting this article randomly: https://news.ycombinator

I think whoever runs ignition.co or does marketing for it liked the traffic boost they got from someone posting this article randomly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10802816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10802816 Then created these accounts to drip feed more of their articles here: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=marmn https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=marmn https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=alma88 https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=alma88 I mean, just look at the titles. They don't fit with the general theme of the content which is usually posted on HN. This general focus of content on HN has indeed become more muddied and low quality as time has gone on and it approaches Reddit status, but I'm not ready to give it up yet. EDIT: Ahh, I'm wrong. There's another account which predates the "moss" submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=ngym https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=ngym So it's just spammers who have about 33% of their articles killed by the system, and I suppose the rest are being flagged off the front page.

brownbat 11y ago
He may be a spammer, but I take issue with: > They don't fit with the general theme of the content which is usually posted on HN. I'm glad HN isn't /r/programming, where there are strict controls on topics. There has always been an 80/20 mix of stories about tech or startups / interesting stories about the world, and I find that works pretty well to hold my interest. There's a universal nostalgic bias that everything used to be better, so I'm skeptical by default of any claim that something has declined in quality over time. It might be true, just needs some kind of data to be persuasive, rather than personal testimonies.
DanBC 11y ago
These people submit more than just ignition.co articles: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=arm https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=arm https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=amy8341 https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=amy8341 https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Kechol https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Kechol https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=jpatokal https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=jpatokal https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=nkurz https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=nkurz https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=MarlonPro https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=MarlonPro A couple of those people are long standing HN users, with over 1k karma. These people only submit ignition.co articles: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=tekitoeditor https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=tekitoeditor https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=alma88 https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=alma88 https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=nana7 https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=nana7 https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=marmn https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=marmn (they have a single link to a medium post alongside their ignition.co articles) https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=tdys https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=tdys There are plenty of people who only submit from a single domain, and there are some people who post very much more from those single domains than the handful of links these accounts post. But, again, if you think it's a problem you achieve more by emailing HN ratHer than posting to this thread. > I mean, just look at the titles. They don't fit with the general theme of the content which is usually posted on HN. This general focus of content on HN has indeed become more muddied and low quality as time has gone on and it approaches Reddit status, but I'm not ready to give it up yet. I asked some really specific questions and it's frustrating that you just give this non-specific hand-wavey answer. I think you're wrong about the muddied focus, I think you can find articles like this from the site's early days.
dang 11y ago
Thanks for being concerned about the quality of HN. Here's what I'm pretty sure was going on: It's common for boutique publications like this to randomly get posted to HN (often by excellent HN users with long track records). Someone at their office notices the traffic, and they create accounts to start promoting their site here. Obviously that's not a good fit for HN. I sometimes email them letting them know that they should stop because our users will consider it spamming—or alternatively, that they should join the community in earnest and post from a diverse set of sources, including their own. But that doesn't make the site itself spam. This class of publications often produces articles of general intellectual interest, which is why a user like nkurz would have submitted it in the first place. Such articles are welcome here—they're neither off-topic nor a recent development, and it's good for HN to be well-stocked with outlier stories. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11090064 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11090064 for another explanation re keeping HN weird.

brownbat 11y ago

He may be a spammer, but I take issue with: > They don't fit with the general theme of the content which is usually posted on HN. I'm glad HN isn't /r/programming, where there are strict controls on topics. There has always been an 80/20 mix of stories about tech or startups / interesting stories about the world, and I find that works pretty well to hold my interest. There's a universal nostalgic bias that everything used to be better, so I'm skeptical by default of any claim that something has declined in quality over time. It might be true, just needs some kind of data to be persuasive, rather than personal testimonies.

DanBC 11y ago

These people submit more than just ignition.co articles: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=arm https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=arm https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=amy8341 https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=amy8341 https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Kechol https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Kechol https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=jpatokal https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=jpatokal https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=nkurz https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=nkurz https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=MarlonPro https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=MarlonPro A couple of those people are long standing HN users, with over 1k karma. These people only submit ignition.co articles: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=tekitoeditor https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=tekitoeditor https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=alma88 https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=alma88 https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=nana7 https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=nana7 https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=marmn https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=marmn (they have a single link to a medium post alongside their ignition.co articles) https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=tdys https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=tdys There are plenty of people who only submit from a single domain, and there are some people who post very much more from those single domains than the handful of links these accounts post. But, again, if you think it's a problem you achieve more by emailing HN ratHer than posting to this thread. > I mean, just look at the titles. They don't fit with the general theme of the content which is usually posted on HN. This general focus of content on HN has indeed become more muddied and low quality as time has gone on and it approaches Reddit status, but I'm not ready to give it up yet. I asked some really specific questions and it's frustrating that you just give this non-specific hand-wavey answer. I think you're wrong about the muddied focus, I think you can find articles like this from the site's early days.

dang 11y ago

Thanks for being concerned about the quality of HN. Here's what I'm pretty sure was going on: It's common for boutique publications like this to randomly get posted to HN (often by excellent HN users with long track records). Someone at their office notices the traffic, and they create accounts to start promoting their site here. Obviously that's not a good fit for HN. I sometimes email them letting them know that they should stop because our users will consider it spamming—or alternatively, that they should join the community in earnest and post from a diverse set of sources, including their own. But that doesn't make the site itself spam. This class of publications often produces articles of general intellectual interest, which is why a user like nkurz would have submitted it in the first place. Such articles are welcome here—they're neither off-topic nor a recent development, and it's good for HN to be well-stocked with outlier stories. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11090064 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11090064 for another explanation re keeping HN weird.