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I call shenanigans. The way this experiment was presented, the Hacker News community would be allowed to select two YC Fellowship recipients. According to the

I call shenanigans. The way this experiment was presented, the Hacker News community would be allowed to select two YC Fellowship recipients. According to the announcement, "all the interviewing and evaluating will be done in regular HN threads." But that's not what happened here. I won the voting by a yuuuge margin, and then the vote was nullified in a vape-filled room after it became clear that Hacker News might have its own agenda, separate from YC. Accusations of soliciting votes by tweeting the HN threads would carry weight with me if there had been any published guidelines about what kind of publicity was allowed. But rules about "vote brigading" on HN are intentionally kept secret. People have repeatedly accused me of trolling, but I don't think it's me who just trolled you all. I want my twenty grand.

beambot 11y ago
Your reply to Kevin in the cited conversation (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11441978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11441978) was 3 sentences long, where you graciously accepted praise for being compared to Berkshire Hathaway -- arguably one of the big corporate success stories of our generation. Are you willing to share the details of your subsequent good-faith conversation....? I voted for pinboard... and I'm curious why Kevin decided that it wasn't in the spirit of the program.
cperciva 11y ago
According to the announcement, "all the interviewing and evaluating will be done in regular HN threads." According to the same announcement, "We can talk about this in the comments, but to answer one question I know will come up: Upvotes are an important factor but they're too brittle to rely on exclusively; doing so would encourage the wrong kind of trying to game the system." They said from the start that votes alone would not decide the results.
- tptacek 11y ago
  The overwhelming sentiment in the HN comments was that Pinboard deserved a slot.
  - argonaut 11y ago
    I have the top comment on the runoff thread, and I was against Pinboard (due to doubts about whether Pinboard would do YCF in good faith - similar to what dang is saying here). So while I did notice a lot of people were in favor, it can hardly be called overwhelming.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      What's the score on that comment?
    - hkmurakami 11y ago
      I voted for Pinboard but did not downvote your post (it would be wrong for me to have done so). While the upvotes are an indication of support for your position, it wouldn't have accurately captured the number of people who disagreed with you (and thus supported Pinboard), since disagreement is not grounds for downvoting.
      - argonaut 11y ago
        According to Paul Graham, it's acceptable to downvote for disagreement. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
        nickpsecurity 11y ago
        It's true but I'm in same boat as parent: I only downvote on spam, hate comments, etc. Downvoting can make comments disappear and sort of censor aspects of a discussion. Even bad claims are often misconceptions worth addressing with comments and evidence instead of downvoting for other readers' benefit. So, I almost never downvote. I'm sure there's others given I know specific people's position on comments I made that they could've downvoted. So, parent's claim stands but we can't know how much. Maybe worth considering modifying downvote concept to deal with this somehow in another forum as an experiment.
        11y ago
tptacek 11y ago
Both Dan and Maciej are personal friends of mine, and it's uncomfortable to see them at odds. But Maciej is right.
- feral 11y ago
  I think, in the spirit of the community, you should provide some argument for why you think that, rather than just state your judgement. From a fairly outsider perspective, Maciej/idlewords seems to dislike SV & VC culture (for lots of reasonable reasons) and YC by extension, and is trying to joke/troll here as a form of protest or publicity; OK. On the other side, the YC/HN guys are actually trying to do something innovative, with YC fellows which is more accessible than vanilla YC (can do remotely), and now with a community choice, which is a step in a more innovative/accessible direction again. Surely this is a step in the right direction? If not, could someone explain why? If they are trying to make good faith steps in the right direction, and someone is trolling them (by which I mean for humor/protest, not bad intentions), isn't it fair enough to exclude that application?
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Did Kevin Hale have special phone conversations with the other three founders to ensure that they would be able to work together with YC? Meanwhile, look at the the post Kevin Hale just wrote. It says, "We ran a poll for the top applications and the voting was so close that we decided to fund one extra startup. Here are the winners." But that's not true at all. The fact that Pinboard took more than 3x the number of votes as the 2nd place vote-getter is mentioned nowhere in Hale's message.
    - davidw 11y ago
      It was pretty clearly an experiment, and it looked pretty obvious to me that they were reserving the rights to tweak and nudge and basically run it as they saw fit. It's not like it was a cereal box competition or the lottery or something where you just win some money and that's that.
borski 11y ago
I have no bone in this fight, since I did not apply nor would we apply for YCF (I think it's a great idea, but my company doesn't fit the criteria). And, if it matters, I do not use Pinboard and have never spoken a word to 'idlewords. I respect 'dang and 'kevin both, a ton. Have always had nothing but pleasant interactions with them, and the amount of care they put towards managing this community is seemingly boundless. With all of that said, 'idlewords is absolutely right here. The HN mods and/or YCF made a choice here not to fund Pinboard, regardless of whether HN wanted to or not. It's not really OK to say that it's an experiment where HN gets to make choices and then not support them, unless there were explicitly some bad blood or trolling occurring. Based on everything 'idlewords has posted, it would appear that he is not trolling. Sure, perhaps he has a bit of a 'let's watch the world burn' attitude, but it's not entirely clear to the rest of us that that isn't just a persona. If I had applied for the "Apply HN" experiment, there is no way in hell I wouldn't have tweeted or asked customers to upvote - of course you would! Sure, perhaps this doesn't reflect the true nature of HN's vote, since these may or may not be regular HN users, but unless you only count users that have some age or karma, you can't prevent that. Alternatively, you can make it a stated rule that this isn't a popularity contest and thus you should not ask for votes elsewhere. That was not made clear at all - it was implied, or at least I perceived, that this was intended to be 'an experiment in democracy,' for better or worse. I do think, if 'idlewords is truly interested in the fellowship and all of the requirements therein (Skype meetings or whatever else), that it would be good to stand by the original rules. With that said, these are investment decisions and aren't intended to be taken lightly, and obviously you guys have the final decision anyway (this was always true, no matter what HN said - you're the ones putting up the money and time). I just think it's more 'right' if you follow along with the original plan of the experiment. Hell, maybe 'idlewords ends up getting so much value out of YCF that he becomes even more serious about Pinboard and it's the next Pinterest (no pun intended). If nothing else, YC/HN may learn something from it.
abhi3 11y ago
>Accusations of soliciting votes by tweeting the HN threads would carry weight with me if there had been any published guidelines about what kind of publicity was allowed. Sure: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11442647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11442647 P.S. I voted for Pinboard.
- tptacek 11y ago
  That's the problem with with this. You know and I know that posting a Twitter message about your HN post is against the rules, but that's because we're HN nerds. Maciej isn't. I understand completely why the complete rulebook on how you can't and can't promote your posts isn't posted clearly on the site. Voting ring suppression is an arms race, and posting the current rules helps the vote-ringers. But a general statement about not soliciting support for applications could have been made clearer. And, more importantly, the vote ring really had nothing to do with this. Kevin Hale didn't want Maciej in the program. That's all there was to it.
  - abhi3 11y ago
    I agree with you on everything. But also with Kevin and Dang. Getting into YCF even with 100 more votes than the next 3 combined is not a right. If YC doesn't feel comfortable working with him and think that he'll negatively affect the batch and the alumni network, that's their call. (Just take this thread for example, what was supposed to be a post mortem of the contest and a place to give suggestions and feedback has turned into a complaint fest). I did somethings which the mods didn't approve of in their judgement and my application itself was disqualified (it was ranked at 5 by upvotes) but I don't feel entitled so I'm not complaining.
    - thedufer 11y ago
      > I don't feel entitled so I'm not complaining Is it because you don't feel entitled? Or because there's a vast chasm of difference between "5th place" and "1st place by several miles in each of two separate races"?
    - 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
danieltillett 11y ago
Have you not got more than $20,000 out of all the publicity? It is not better for you to have been “kicked out” than actually selected?
dang 11y ago
You're right to single out that sentence, or rather that word "all" in "All the interviewing and evaluating will be done in regular HN threads". We didn't stick to that, and I'm sorry. That's precisely what we changed, and yes we changed it at the last minute. I didn't think of this experiment as having fixed rules, but rather as something we'd figure out as we went along. I tried to make that clear up front: "Note that word experiment! We'll start small and figure it out as we go. But here are the initial conditions." I can see why that wasn't enough. It occurs to me only now that "figure it out as we go" and "changing the rules" are the same thing. So yes. We changed the rules, and I'm sorry.
- kome 11y ago
  > That's precisely what we changed, and yes we changed it at the last minute. no rule of law -> automatic bullshit.
  - dang 11y ago
    I don't agree with that at all, and taken literally it would make adaptation impossible, which can't be right. HN has never been a rule-driven, legalistic kind of place, and isn't going to get that way. But I've had to learn a lot about people who do feel this way and obviously have a lot to learn yet. My own temperament is very far from this; it's almost impossible for me not to read "we'll figure it out as we go" as a good, fine thing.
    - kome 11y ago
      If the "we'll figure it out as we go" is used just to reiterate the status quo, it's not a very sound or innovative approach. About that, I like the point zellyn makes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11633818 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11633818
    - borski 11y ago
      You're missing the point others are trying to make. I'm all for experimentation - by all means. I experiment literally every single day, often failing, but occasionally succeeding. The issue was that it wasn't clear there would be rule-changing or experimentation /during/ the experiment, rather than after the experiment.

beambot 11y ago

Your reply to Kevin in the cited conversation (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11441978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11441978) was 3 sentences long, where you graciously accepted praise for being compared to Berkshire Hathaway -- arguably one of the big corporate success stories of our generation. Are you willing to share the details of your subsequent good-faith conversation....? I voted for pinboard... and I'm curious why Kevin decided that it wasn't in the spirit of the program.

cperciva 11y ago

According to the announcement, "all the interviewing and evaluating will be done in regular HN threads." According to the same announcement, "We can talk about this in the comments, but to answer one question I know will come up: Upvotes are an important factor but they're too brittle to rely on exclusively; doing so would encourage the wrong kind of trying to game the system." They said from the start that votes alone would not decide the results.

tptacek 11y ago
The overwhelming sentiment in the HN comments was that Pinboard deserved a slot.
- argonaut 11y ago
  I have the top comment on the runoff thread, and I was against Pinboard (due to doubts about whether Pinboard would do YCF in good faith - similar to what dang is saying here). So while I did notice a lot of people were in favor, it can hardly be called overwhelming.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    What's the score on that comment?
  - hkmurakami 11y ago
    I voted for Pinboard but did not downvote your post (it would be wrong for me to have done so). While the upvotes are an indication of support for your position, it wouldn't have accurately captured the number of people who disagreed with you (and thus supported Pinboard), since disagreement is not grounds for downvoting.
    - argonaut 11y ago
      According to Paul Graham, it's acceptable to downvote for disagreement. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
      - nickpsecurity 11y ago
        It's true but I'm in same boat as parent: I only downvote on spam, hate comments, etc. Downvoting can make comments disappear and sort of censor aspects of a discussion. Even bad claims are often misconceptions worth addressing with comments and evidence instead of downvoting for other readers' benefit. So, I almost never downvote. I'm sure there's others given I know specific people's position on comments I made that they could've downvoted. So, parent's claim stands but we can't know how much. Maybe worth considering modifying downvote concept to deal with this somehow in another forum as an experiment.
        11y ago

tptacek 11y ago

Both Dan and Maciej are personal friends of mine, and it's uncomfortable to see them at odds. But Maciej is right.

feral 11y ago
I think, in the spirit of the community, you should provide some argument for why you think that, rather than just state your judgement. From a fairly outsider perspective, Maciej/idlewords seems to dislike SV & VC culture (for lots of reasonable reasons) and YC by extension, and is trying to joke/troll here as a form of protest or publicity; OK. On the other side, the YC/HN guys are actually trying to do something innovative, with YC fellows which is more accessible than vanilla YC (can do remotely), and now with a community choice, which is a step in a more innovative/accessible direction again. Surely this is a step in the right direction? If not, could someone explain why? If they are trying to make good faith steps in the right direction, and someone is trolling them (by which I mean for humor/protest, not bad intentions), isn't it fair enough to exclude that application?
- tptacek 11y ago
  Did Kevin Hale have special phone conversations with the other three founders to ensure that they would be able to work together with YC? Meanwhile, look at the the post Kevin Hale just wrote. It says, "We ran a poll for the top applications and the voting was so close that we decided to fund one extra startup. Here are the winners." But that's not true at all. The fact that Pinboard took more than 3x the number of votes as the 2nd place vote-getter is mentioned nowhere in Hale's message.
  - davidw 11y ago
    It was pretty clearly an experiment, and it looked pretty obvious to me that they were reserving the rights to tweak and nudge and basically run it as they saw fit. It's not like it was a cereal box competition or the lottery or something where you just win some money and that's that.

borski 11y ago

I have no bone in this fight, since I did not apply nor would we apply for YCF (I think it's a great idea, but my company doesn't fit the criteria). And, if it matters, I do not use Pinboard and have never spoken a word to 'idlewords. I respect 'dang and 'kevin both, a ton. Have always had nothing but pleasant interactions with them, and the amount of care they put towards managing this community is seemingly boundless. With all of that said, 'idlewords is absolutely right here. The HN mods and/or YCF made a choice here not to fund Pinboard, regardless of whether HN wanted to or not. It's not really OK to say that it's an experiment where HN gets to make choices and then not support them, unless there were explicitly some bad blood or trolling occurring. Based on everything 'idlewords has posted, it would appear that he is not trolling. Sure, perhaps he has a bit of a 'let's watch the world burn' attitude, but it's not entirely clear to the rest of us that that isn't just a persona. If I had applied for the "Apply HN" experiment, there is no way in hell I wouldn't have tweeted or asked customers to upvote - of course you would! Sure, perhaps this doesn't reflect the true nature of HN's vote, since these may or may not be regular HN users, but unless you only count users that have some age or karma, you can't prevent that. Alternatively, you can make it a stated rule that this isn't a popularity contest and thus you should not ask for votes elsewhere. That was not made clear at all - it was implied, or at least I perceived, that this was intended to be 'an experiment in democracy,' for better or worse. I do think, if 'idlewords is truly interested in the fellowship and all of the requirements therein (Skype meetings or whatever else), that it would be good to stand by the original rules. With that said, these are investment decisions and aren't intended to be taken lightly, and obviously you guys have the final decision anyway (this was always true, no matter what HN said - you're the ones putting up the money and time). I just think it's more 'right' if you follow along with the original plan of the experiment. Hell, maybe 'idlewords ends up getting so much value out of YCF that he becomes even more serious about Pinboard and it's the next Pinterest (no pun intended). If nothing else, YC/HN may learn something from it.

abhi3 11y ago

>Accusations of soliciting votes by tweeting the HN threads would carry weight with me if there had been any published guidelines about what kind of publicity was allowed. Sure: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11442647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11442647 P.S. I voted for Pinboard.

tptacek 11y ago
That's the problem with with this. You know and I know that posting a Twitter message about your HN post is against the rules, but that's because we're HN nerds. Maciej isn't. I understand completely why the complete rulebook on how you can't and can't promote your posts isn't posted clearly on the site. Voting ring suppression is an arms race, and posting the current rules helps the vote-ringers. But a general statement about not soliciting support for applications could have been made clearer. And, more importantly, the vote ring really had nothing to do with this. Kevin Hale didn't want Maciej in the program. That's all there was to it.
- abhi3 11y ago
  I agree with you on everything. But also with Kevin and Dang. Getting into YCF even with 100 more votes than the next 3 combined is not a right. If YC doesn't feel comfortable working with him and think that he'll negatively affect the batch and the alumni network, that's their call. (Just take this thread for example, what was supposed to be a post mortem of the contest and a place to give suggestions and feedback has turned into a complaint fest). I did somethings which the mods didn't approve of in their judgement and my application itself was disqualified (it was ranked at 5 by upvotes) but I don't feel entitled so I'm not complaining.
  - thedufer 11y ago
    > I don't feel entitled so I'm not complaining Is it because you don't feel entitled? Or because there's a vast chasm of difference between "5th place" and "1st place by several miles in each of two separate races"?
  - 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

danieltillett 11y ago

Have you not got more than $20,000 out of all the publicity? It is not better for you to have been “kicked out” than actually selected?

dang 11y ago

You're right to single out that sentence, or rather that word "all" in "All the interviewing and evaluating will be done in regular HN threads". We didn't stick to that, and I'm sorry. That's precisely what we changed, and yes we changed it at the last minute. I didn't think of this experiment as having fixed rules, but rather as something we'd figure out as we went along. I tried to make that clear up front: "Note that word experiment! We'll start small and figure it out as we go. But here are the initial conditions." I can see why that wasn't enough. It occurs to me only now that "figure it out as we go" and "changing the rules" are the same thing. So yes. We changed the rules, and I'm sorry.

kome 11y ago
> That's precisely what we changed, and yes we changed it at the last minute. no rule of law -> automatic bullshit.
- dang 11y ago
  I don't agree with that at all, and taken literally it would make adaptation impossible, which can't be right. HN has never been a rule-driven, legalistic kind of place, and isn't going to get that way. But I've had to learn a lot about people who do feel this way and obviously have a lot to learn yet. My own temperament is very far from this; it's almost impossible for me not to read "we'll figure it out as we go" as a good, fine thing.
  - kome 11y ago
    If the "we'll figure it out as we go" is used just to reiterate the status quo, it's not a very sound or innovative approach. About that, I like the point zellyn makes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11633818 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11633818
  - borski 11y ago
    You're missing the point others are trying to make. I'm all for experimentation - by all means. I experiment literally every single day, often failing, but occasionally succeeding. The issue was that it wasn't clear there would be rule-changing or experimentation /during/ the experiment, rather than after the experiment.