4 ms·

He's not arguing for URL shorteners to be permitted. He's arguing that the prohibition should be made upfront.

jacquesm 16y ago
How much more up-front than seeing your link go 'dead' could it be? After all it's not like anybody reads the guidelines linked above anyway before submitting a link, especially not if they're old hands (and most likely not even if they're not). Maybe a message could be added to the submission process that said: "You've used a URL shortener, bang, you're dead", but that's pretty obviously the reason why. After all, all your other links will get through just fine.
- sabat 16y ago
  The URL shortener was just an example -- just one example. My point is not about bit.ly or anything like it. My point is: there are apparently a bunch of rules, and I don't have the sense that I understand them. Worse, I have the sense that asking about the rules is frowned upon. I find this a little chilling, and it seems to fly in the face of the quasi-libertarian spirit I generally find on HN.
  - jasonkester 16y ago
    That's by design. The worst thing you can do is tell spammers why you flagged their thing as spam. Right now, there are spammers repeatedly submitting shortened URLs to their WOW Gold sites and not checking to see if they're killed. That actually stops a good fraction of it, because frankly, they're not very smart people. If you told them exactly why their current tactic is not working, they'd immediately move on to the next one and the next one until they find one that works.
    - sabat 16y ago
      My point has nothing to do with spammers or URL shorteners -- that was just an example. See above if you care to know my actual point. But this is probably related. I think the anti-spam measures are probably going too far. I'm not a spammer. No site I've ever attempted to submit has been been a spam site, an ad site, or anything else self-serving. Yet my most recent attempts to submit have been stomped on, accusing me of "wasting my time" by attempting to spam HN. Here's the most recent article I tried to post -- you judge whether I'm submitting spam sites: http://www.w3matter.com/journal/2010/8/29/startups-old-people-and-robert-scoble.html http://www.w3matter.com/journal/2010/8/29/startups-old-peopl...

How much more up-front than seeing your link go 'dead' could it be? After all it's not like anybody reads the guidelines linked above anyway before submitting a link, especially not if they're old hands (and most likely not even if they're not). Maybe a message could be added to the submission process that said: "You've used a URL shortener, bang, you're dead", but that's pretty obviously the reason why. After all, all your other links will get through just fine.

sabat 16y ago
The URL shortener was just an example -- just one example. My point is not about bit.ly or anything like it. My point is: there are apparently a bunch of rules, and I don't have the sense that I understand them. Worse, I have the sense that asking about the rules is frowned upon. I find this a little chilling, and it seems to fly in the face of the quasi-libertarian spirit I generally find on HN.
- jasonkester 16y ago
  That's by design. The worst thing you can do is tell spammers why you flagged their thing as spam. Right now, there are spammers repeatedly submitting shortened URLs to their WOW Gold sites and not checking to see if they're killed. That actually stops a good fraction of it, because frankly, they're not very smart people. If you told them exactly why their current tactic is not working, they'd immediately move on to the next one and the next one until they find one that works.
  - sabat 16y ago
    My point has nothing to do with spammers or URL shorteners -- that was just an example. See above if you care to know my actual point. But this is probably related. I think the anti-spam measures are probably going too far. I'm not a spammer. No site I've ever attempted to submit has been been a spam site, an ad site, or anything else self-serving. Yet my most recent attempts to submit have been stomped on, accusing me of "wasting my time" by attempting to spam HN. Here's the most recent article I tried to post -- you judge whether I'm submitting spam sites: http://www.w3matter.com/journal/2010/8/29/startups-old-people-and-robert-scoble.html http://www.w3matter.com/journal/2010/8/29/startups-old-peopl...