5 ms·

Offering Pinboard $20k but NOT a YCF slot seems like the most unambiguously correct thing to do. Sadly, I do not have $20k to give. (and then the correct thin

by rdl 11y ago

Offering Pinboard $20k but NOT a YCF slot seems like the most unambiguously correct thing to do. Sadly, I do not have $20k to give. (and then the correct thing for him to do is either politely turn it down, or donate it to a charity or something of mutual agreeableness)

cperciva 11y ago
I disagree. Offering him $20k would simply be rewarding him for being obnoxious. I refuse to accept that he honestly believed that YC was running a $20k contest to see who could solicit the most votes via twitter, but that's exactly what he's pretending that this was.
- toyg 11y ago
  As opposed to a $20k contest to see who could solicit the most votes via word-of-mouth in the Bay Area? Because that would have been totally fine, of course. > rewarding him for being obnoxious. What about rewarding honest HN community members who voted for him in good faith? Ignoring their wishes is a big slap in the face; we've been reminded that we're all just plebes and real power will always lie with Big (White) Men and their gut feelings.
  - cperciva 11y ago
    As opposed to a $20k contest to see who could solicit the most votes via word-of-mouth in the Bay Area? Because that would have been totally fine, of course. Of course not. But I haven't seen any evidence that anyone was doing that. honest HN community members who voted for him in good faith? How many such people exist? I don't think anyone knows. Unfortunately the vote spam which he solicited via twitter overwhelmed any other signal. Even if this was supposed to be entirely decided on the basis of votes -- which is explicitly not what was planned from the start -- when people cheat they normally get disqualified. You don't say "this Olympic athlete took steroids, but maybe he should keep his medal... after all, he might have won even without the drugs".
    - toyg 11y ago
      Dude, the guy got 300+ votes from HN regulars in the first round, before he'd even hit twitter. That's not steroids. It's like "this Olympic athlete won fair and square once, then we decided to change the competition to make it fairer to others, and he won even more, lapping everyone else, but the judge doesn't really like him so he won't get a medal."
    - thaumaturgy 11y ago
      > > honest HN community members who voted for him in good faith? > How many such people exist? raises hand Hi, my account is 3000 days old today, only a little less old than your own. I went back and checked and it turns out that I didn't vote for Pinboard, but that's largely because I hadn't been active on HN in quite a while and I didn't think it was necessary. I did voice support for Maciej in the comments there. I genuinely wanted to see him go through the program ("like a bowling ball through a python"), and not just for entertainment purposes. I think it would have been a valuable cross-pollination for everyone involved. I've generally felt that HN -- and to a greater degree, YC -- aren't particularly welcoming towards people like me. I got fed up enough that I wrote a news reader to mine HN for articles just so that I wouldn't be tempted to visit HN as often, and when that broke a while back, I never bothered to fix it. Literally the only reason I'm here now is because Maciej mentioned it on his Twitter account. I've always been an outsider here. Seeing YC accept another, more successful outsider would have been nice. This fiasco has all the scent of cliqueish hostility towards Maciej, you have been non-stop and relentlessly accusing him of being a troll (and you're smart enough to know better than to claim to know someone's psychology better than they do over the internet), and the results stink like a US election.
      - cperciva 11y ago
        raises hand To be clear, I'm not saying that such people do not exist. I'm saying that there's no effective way to estimate their number.
        tanderson92 11y ago
        Sure there is. The way has been outlined by `beeboop' and `killwhitey' in this thread, and subsequently by myself. The question have not been answered: if the concern is vote-brigading then the correct result can be determined by looking at accounts that are more than 30 days old. If the outcome is the same then the twitter-promoting explanation is simply a smokescreen.

by rdl 11y ago

cperciva 11y ago

I disagree. Offering him $20k would simply be rewarding him for being obnoxious. I refuse to accept that he honestly believed that YC was running a $20k contest to see who could solicit the most votes via twitter, but that's exactly what he's pretending that this was.

toyg 11y ago
As opposed to a $20k contest to see who could solicit the most votes via word-of-mouth in the Bay Area? Because that would have been totally fine, of course. > rewarding him for being obnoxious. What about rewarding honest HN community members who voted for him in good faith? Ignoring their wishes is a big slap in the face; we've been reminded that we're all just plebes and real power will always lie with Big (White) Men and their gut feelings.
- cperciva 11y ago
  As opposed to a $20k contest to see who could solicit the most votes via word-of-mouth in the Bay Area? Because that would have been totally fine, of course. Of course not. But I haven't seen any evidence that anyone was doing that. honest HN community members who voted for him in good faith? How many such people exist? I don't think anyone knows. Unfortunately the vote spam which he solicited via twitter overwhelmed any other signal. Even if this was supposed to be entirely decided on the basis of votes -- which is explicitly not what was planned from the start -- when people cheat they normally get disqualified. You don't say "this Olympic athlete took steroids, but maybe he should keep his medal... after all, he might have won even without the drugs".
  - toyg 11y ago
    Dude, the guy got 300+ votes from HN regulars in the first round, before he'd even hit twitter. That's not steroids. It's like "this Olympic athlete won fair and square once, then we decided to change the competition to make it fairer to others, and he won even more, lapping everyone else, but the judge doesn't really like him so he won't get a medal."
  - thaumaturgy 11y ago
    > > honest HN community members who voted for him in good faith? > How many such people exist? raises hand Hi, my account is 3000 days old today, only a little less old than your own. I went back and checked and it turns out that I didn't vote for Pinboard, but that's largely because I hadn't been active on HN in quite a while and I didn't think it was necessary. I did voice support for Maciej in the comments there. I genuinely wanted to see him go through the program ("like a bowling ball through a python"), and not just for entertainment purposes. I think it would have been a valuable cross-pollination for everyone involved. I've generally felt that HN -- and to a greater degree, YC -- aren't particularly welcoming towards people like me. I got fed up enough that I wrote a news reader to mine HN for articles just so that I wouldn't be tempted to visit HN as often, and when that broke a while back, I never bothered to fix it. Literally the only reason I'm here now is because Maciej mentioned it on his Twitter account. I've always been an outsider here. Seeing YC accept another, more successful outsider would have been nice. This fiasco has all the scent of cliqueish hostility towards Maciej, you have been non-stop and relentlessly accusing him of being a troll (and you're smart enough to know better than to claim to know someone's psychology better than they do over the internet), and the results stink like a US election.
    - cperciva 11y ago
      raises hand To be clear, I'm not saying that such people do not exist. I'm saying that there's no effective way to estimate their number.
      - tanderson92 11y ago
        Sure there is. The way has been outlined by `beeboop' and `killwhitey' in this thread, and subsequently by myself. The question have not been answered: if the concern is vote-brigading then the correct result can be determined by looking at accounts that are more than 30 days old. If the outcome is the same then the twitter-promoting explanation is simply a smokescreen.