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Ask HN - Is it ethical to delete a submitted link that got no votes?
Hi everyone.
Say I submit a link to HN, and after a while, it finally drops off the "new" page. In that time, its still 1 point and no comments.
However, the delete button is still there. Maybe there's a better chance for whatever-it-is if I submit it at a different time of day, but the only way I could do that is to delete the old one while I still have the chance.
I will admit to having done this in the past. But is it ethical? I can see how doing it every hour for days and days until someone pays attention dammit would not be ethical, but is there a level where resubmitting could be considered reasonable.
(I promise I won't do it on this one.)
- olalonde 17y agoIf you do it and get up voted the second time than it is ethical. Otherwise, it is unethical. Seriously though, there should be a system where you lose points for every submit that doesn't get any up vote. If you really believe your story is interesting, you should be allowed to risk losing points as long as you want... until you run out of points.
- imgabe 17y agoThat seems like it would discourage novel content. People would be less willing to risk points on something they're not sure will be voted up.
- olalonde 17y agoAt the same time, if you think your novel content is not likely to get up voted, why would you post it ? Ideally, I would like to see a StackOverflow-like karma system on HN. For instance, let's say you get X points for every up vote, it wouldn't be that scary to lose X/2 points for submitting a story that doesn't get up voted but yet, you would think about it twice.