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I've thought about this a bit and see where both parties are coming from. For Kevin, due to the "trollish" behavior of Maciej during this competition, Kevin wa

I've thought about this a bit and see where both parties are coming from. For Kevin, due to the "trollish" behavior of Maciej during this competition, Kevin was (validly) very suspicious of Maciej's intention for participating in the program. Of course previous history of Maciej rallying against all YC stands for did not help assuage the fears :) For Maciej, the rules are the rules. he (fairly) believes you do not have to like someone to keep your end of an agreement. Here's my position. As this is an EXPERIMENT, YC should have taken the risk. Worst case, they would have had to kick him out of the program. But everyone will see they have been fair. Seen to be fair is a quite important. I have "clashed" with Maciej before [1] however, i see him as some one who only has a hard bark and will be quite cook in person or once you know him. Dont't be too worried Kevin. Of course, your house your rules. But still.. I hope YC can rescind and take Pinboard in (I know... I know..:). [1] http://oonwoye.com/2011/03/09/maciej-of-pinboard-in-nigerians-demand-an-apology/ http://oonwoye.com/2011/03/09/maciej-of-pinboard-in-nigerian...

maaaats 10y ago
Except that he multiple times, even in this thread, has shown that he only wanted the money and not be a part og YC. So it's really on him.
cperciva 10y ago
For Maciej, the rules are the rules. he (fairly) believes you do not have to like someone to keep your end of an agreement. Except that he's inventing rules ("whoever gets the most votes wins $20,000!") which were explicitly not there, while ignoring other rules ("Can I ask people to upvote my submission? No.").
- OoTheNigerian 10y ago
  Fair enough. But like someone said re: raising money from VC (was it PG?) don't listen to the reason, listen to the answer. Kevin is uncomfortable with Maciej and took his decision based on that. As it would not seem politically connect to give that as his reason, he began looking for "good reasons" to justify it. Is this conflict that can keep dividing us worth the 20k to YC? I would guess no. They could and should sort this out. Kevin should understand that these HN YCF coys "belong to the community". If Maciej goes in and try to mess it up the community will (as my people say) "treat his fuck up".
  - cperciva 10y ago
    Kevin is uncomfortable with Maciej and took his decision based on that. As it would not seem politically connect to give that as his reason, he began looking for "good reasons" to justify it. My interpretation of events is rather different: Maciej cheated and got caught, but Dan and/or Kevin were concerned about the reaction if the submission which received the most votes was excluded based on the vote-rigging alone; so they went out of their way to try to find a way to include him anyway.
    - yarou 10y ago
      Dude, it has nothing to do with him cheating. It has more to do with the fact that he called pg a "weenis" years ago, and openly criticizes YC and SV culture in general. The rejection was basically "sry, but you aren't quite the culture fit we're looking for". Which is fine, YCF can fund whomever they want, it's their money and their prerogative. But here's the rub. The way I see it, the biggest irony of the whole experiment is that it was probably meant to draw non-traditional founders, because of the pseudonymous nature of HN. But in the end, biases still prevailed. Which is why hiring/funding in SV is beyond broken, as this experiment has proven empirically. This thread is the embodiment of all the diversity problems that tech has, the root node if you will. When the decision comes down to arbitrary "gut feeling" vs. the best (candidate|founder), then you know there's a problem. If you can't see that, then...I'm not exactly sure what to tell you. Spend more time in the Valley?
    - tptacek 10y ago
      Even on tilt the way you are right now, you know this isn't true, and that this was a very slimy comment to have written. I'm surprised.
      - cperciva 10y ago
        on tilt the way you are right now I got increasingly irritated with his faux innocence as the evening progressed. I should probably have stopped around midnight. you know this isn't true My turn to be surprised. Which part isn't true? It seemed true to me when I wrote it at 2 AM, and it seems true to me when I'm reading it again now at 8 AM (curse these early morning meetings!).
- borski 10y ago
  Apologies - as stated elsewhere, "Can I ask people to upvote my submission? No." was never a written rule. Perhaps it was intended to be implied by virtue of this being HN and voting rings being frowned upon, but this is decidedly not the same situation as any other HN submission. The /specific/ rule here should have been made clearer.
  - cperciva 10y ago
    It's an explicit rule of HN, and from the start this was explained as "let's see which startups HN would pick". Things can always be clearer, but I really don't think there was much ambiguity here.
    - borski 10y ago
      Respectfully, I still have to disagree here. Of course it's an explicit rule of HN - that has always been clear. However, the reasoning for that is that we want the HN community to decide on what's interesting and gets on the front page. Yes, that's simplified, but true at a high level. But this was not just another HN submission. This had nothing to do with 'keeping the front page interesting'. This had to do with allowing HN to "democratically" elect companies they thought were best to fund. A candidate company asking its supporters to...support them does not only seem obvious, but very different from HN trying to keep the front page clean. If you disagree that they are different forms of using HN and not the same spirit of submission, I'm not sure we'll be able to agree here, which is also totally fine, of course. :)
      - dang 10y ago
        > However, the reasoning for that is that we want the HN community to decide on what's interesting and gets on the front page. Exactly the same reasoning applied to deciding what's interesting and gets funded. I'm surprised this is even a question. If we had changed that rule, HN users would have skinned us alive. Saying that "interviewing and evaluating will be done in regular HN threads" meant that the regular HN thread rules applied. We did change one of those—from "be civil" to "be nice", which by the way people did a pretty good job of—and I explained that change at length in the original post. If you read through the comments in that original thread you'll see that a lot of them had to do with people's concerns about gaming of the voting system, which is one of the most common things that comes up here, and my answers were all about reassuring them that we'd watch for it and disqualify applications if we found it.

maaaats 10y ago

Except that he multiple times, even in this thread, has shown that he only wanted the money and not be a part og YC. So it's really on him.

cperciva 10y ago

For Maciej, the rules are the rules. he (fairly) believes you do not have to like someone to keep your end of an agreement. Except that he's inventing rules ("whoever gets the most votes wins $20,000!") which were explicitly not there, while ignoring other rules ("Can I ask people to upvote my submission? No.").

OoTheNigerian 10y ago
Fair enough. But like someone said re: raising money from VC (was it PG?) don't listen to the reason, listen to the answer. Kevin is uncomfortable with Maciej and took his decision based on that. As it would not seem politically connect to give that as his reason, he began looking for "good reasons" to justify it. Is this conflict that can keep dividing us worth the 20k to YC? I would guess no. They could and should sort this out. Kevin should understand that these HN YCF coys "belong to the community". If Maciej goes in and try to mess it up the community will (as my people say) "treat his fuck up".
- cperciva 10y ago
  Kevin is uncomfortable with Maciej and took his decision based on that. As it would not seem politically connect to give that as his reason, he began looking for "good reasons" to justify it. My interpretation of events is rather different: Maciej cheated and got caught, but Dan and/or Kevin were concerned about the reaction if the submission which received the most votes was excluded based on the vote-rigging alone; so they went out of their way to try to find a way to include him anyway.
  - yarou 10y ago
    Dude, it has nothing to do with him cheating. It has more to do with the fact that he called pg a "weenis" years ago, and openly criticizes YC and SV culture in general. The rejection was basically "sry, but you aren't quite the culture fit we're looking for". Which is fine, YCF can fund whomever they want, it's their money and their prerogative. But here's the rub. The way I see it, the biggest irony of the whole experiment is that it was probably meant to draw non-traditional founders, because of the pseudonymous nature of HN. But in the end, biases still prevailed. Which is why hiring/funding in SV is beyond broken, as this experiment has proven empirically. This thread is the embodiment of all the diversity problems that tech has, the root node if you will. When the decision comes down to arbitrary "gut feeling" vs. the best (candidate|founder), then you know there's a problem. If you can't see that, then...I'm not exactly sure what to tell you. Spend more time in the Valley?
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Even on tilt the way you are right now, you know this isn't true, and that this was a very slimy comment to have written. I'm surprised.
    - cperciva 10y ago
      on tilt the way you are right now I got increasingly irritated with his faux innocence as the evening progressed. I should probably have stopped around midnight. you know this isn't true My turn to be surprised. Which part isn't true? It seemed true to me when I wrote it at 2 AM, and it seems true to me when I'm reading it again now at 8 AM (curse these early morning meetings!).
borski 10y ago
Apologies - as stated elsewhere, "Can I ask people to upvote my submission? No." was never a written rule. Perhaps it was intended to be implied by virtue of this being HN and voting rings being frowned upon, but this is decidedly not the same situation as any other HN submission. The /specific/ rule here should have been made clearer.
- cperciva 10y ago
  It's an explicit rule of HN, and from the start this was explained as "let's see which startups HN would pick". Things can always be clearer, but I really don't think there was much ambiguity here.
  - borski 10y ago
    Respectfully, I still have to disagree here. Of course it's an explicit rule of HN - that has always been clear. However, the reasoning for that is that we want the HN community to decide on what's interesting and gets on the front page. Yes, that's simplified, but true at a high level. But this was not just another HN submission. This had nothing to do with 'keeping the front page interesting'. This had to do with allowing HN to "democratically" elect companies they thought were best to fund. A candidate company asking its supporters to...support them does not only seem obvious, but very different from HN trying to keep the front page clean. If you disagree that they are different forms of using HN and not the same spirit of submission, I'm not sure we'll be able to agree here, which is also totally fine, of course. :)
    - dang 10y ago
      > However, the reasoning for that is that we want the HN community to decide on what's interesting and gets on the front page. Exactly the same reasoning applied to deciding what's interesting and gets funded. I'm surprised this is even a question. If we had changed that rule, HN users would have skinned us alive. Saying that "interviewing and evaluating will be done in regular HN threads" meant that the regular HN thread rules applied. We did change one of those—from "be civil" to "be nice", which by the way people did a pretty good job of—and I explained that change at length in the original post. If you read through the comments in that original thread you'll see that a lot of them had to do with people's concerns about gaming of the voting system, which is one of the most common things that comes up here, and my answers were all about reassuring them that we'd watch for it and disqualify applications if we found it.