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How did this link rocket to the front page so quickly and get a bunch of points, but the comments are mostly pointing out aspects/criticisms of this product tha

How did this link rocket to the front page so quickly and get a bunch of points, but the comments are mostly pointing out aspects/criticisms of this product that show it is not in alignment with the HN community? Astroturfing?

Can_Not 9y ago
I think half of the "irc > slack" crowd are trolling or willfully ignorant, either one as a form of technical elitism/hipsterism. Slack is a nice UI, has a nice app on nearly all modern mobile platforms, has drag-n-drop uploads, 10,000 message history for free. Even if none of it is perfect, it has all by default. I have been informed that you can do a bunch of really complicated stuff to mostly match these features in IRC while also taking the responsibility of maintaining it. I've even been told the lack of receiving messages when returning from offline is itself a feature (for business use, "lost messages" this makes it dead on arrival). But when I show my less technical boss or startup co-founder "deploy new slack team quickly in 2 minutes" vs "IRC can be selfhosted, but maybe can be brought up to slack's feature parity in some indeterminate amount of labor hours", I think the choice is obvious.
haburka 9y ago
Nah it's much more likely that the people complaining are the vocal minority. I think this is awesome! But I wouldn't comment about it. However HN is filled with people that are amazing at finding issues with things and who love to share those issues.
throwasehasdwi 9y ago
It was posted at the best time day for a US audience (5 am CDT) and the marketing for it is pretty solid. But yes I think so, it had around 10 upvotes in a minute or so. Minor astroturfing (having real people you know with real HN accounts) rocket you to the front page is pretty easy and hard to detect. It only takes around 5 votes as long as you get them quickly and they're judged to be high quality votes. However if you don't keep getting votes (your post is totally horrible) you will drop off FP fast.
brudgers 9y ago
I can see why people find the submission intellectually interesting. In part because Slack is relevant. In part because Javascript frameworks and plain old Javascript are relevant. And in large part because just making something is relevant. Being intellectually interesting is the core tenant of Hacker News. A lighter weight open source alternative to Slack is relevant. Even though it probably makes tradeoffs that people will complain about.

Can_Not 9y ago

I think half of the "irc > slack" crowd are trolling or willfully ignorant, either one as a form of technical elitism/hipsterism. Slack is a nice UI, has a nice app on nearly all modern mobile platforms, has drag-n-drop uploads, 10,000 message history for free. Even if none of it is perfect, it has all by default. I have been informed that you can do a bunch of really complicated stuff to mostly match these features in IRC while also taking the responsibility of maintaining it. I've even been told the lack of receiving messages when returning from offline is itself a feature (for business use, "lost messages" this makes it dead on arrival). But when I show my less technical boss or startup co-founder "deploy new slack team quickly in 2 minutes" vs "IRC can be selfhosted, but maybe can be brought up to slack's feature parity in some indeterminate amount of labor hours", I think the choice is obvious.

haburka 9y ago

Nah it's much more likely that the people complaining are the vocal minority. I think this is awesome! But I wouldn't comment about it. However HN is filled with people that are amazing at finding issues with things and who love to share those issues.

throwasehasdwi 9y ago

It was posted at the best time day for a US audience (5 am CDT) and the marketing for it is pretty solid. But yes I think so, it had around 10 upvotes in a minute or so. Minor astroturfing (having real people you know with real HN accounts) rocket you to the front page is pretty easy and hard to detect. It only takes around 5 votes as long as you get them quickly and they're judged to be high quality votes. However if you don't keep getting votes (your post is totally horrible) you will drop off FP fast.

brudgers 9y ago

I can see why people find the submission intellectually interesting. In part because Slack is relevant. In part because Javascript frameworks and plain old Javascript are relevant. And in large part because just making something is relevant. Being intellectually interesting is the core tenant of Hacker News. A lighter weight open source alternative to Slack is relevant. Even though it probably makes tradeoffs that people will complain about.