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Just to be clear, I'm not asking for people on Twitter to vote for my stories, ever. My purpose in tweeting them has always been to notify my Twitter followers

Just to be clear, I'm not asking for people on Twitter to vote for my stories, ever. My purpose in tweeting them has always been to notify my Twitter followers of my new content. I only noticed the effect on HN a couple days ago. I understand why you'd want to "protect against this phenomenon", because I agree that it's probably negative in the long run, but I think something needs to be done about the new page, because a lot of good stories are being missed. People talked about this here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1720742 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1720742 All that said, I'd like to hear more about your feeling on this; I'd be disappointed if you felt I was intentionally spamming HN or gaming the system to the detriment of the community. EDIT: Oh, and one more thing: my tweets always link to the original content on my blog, not to the post on HN (or even worse, never to the submit URL on HN).

hugh3 16y ago
Just to be clear, I'm not asking for people to vote for my stories, ever. Why then, when I looked at your site, did it pop up a little pseudo-window saying "Hello HN reader, if you like this I would really appreciate an upvote"?
- ryanwaggoner 16y ago
  I'm not sure...when I click on the link above to go to my site, I see the popup asking me if I want to subscribe to the RSS feed: http://img.skitch.com/20100929-xq3tsubtd9dkgj9uxbjdechmik.png http://img.skitch.com/20100929-xq3tsubtd9dkgj9uxbjdechmik.pn... I installed WP Greet Box, which displays different messages to different people depending on their referrer, but I didn't think it was working for HN. Maybe it's because we're on different browsers (I'm on Safari 5)? Also, this message would only appear if you were coming from the story on HN, not from a link on Twitter, so I'm not sure it's relevant here anyway. EDIT: Yep, I see the message now in Firefox and Chrome. Should I disable? I'm not sure I see the problem with reminding people who came to the post from HN to vote for the story if they think it's worthwhile, but what do others think?
  - hugh3 16y ago
    EDIT: Yep, I see the message now in Firefox and Chrome. Should I disable? I'm not sure I see the problem with reminding people who came to the post from HN to vote for the story if they think it's worthwhile, but what do others think? I thought it was a pretty obnoxious message, and that it should be disabled. Honestly, I find the whole tone of this discussion pretty obnoxious. The thing that can destroy HN is when the front page stops being filled with the stories which people find most interesting and starts being filled with borderline-interesting stories from the best self-promoters.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - ryanwaggoner 16y ago
      With regard to the "if you like this story, please upvote" thing, I understand your point, which is why I asked for feedback. But as to the original topic of this blog post, I think we're on different pages. I don't see anything wrong with the fact that I tweet my blog posts to my followers and some of them happened to find it interesting and submit to HN. Should I stop using Twitter and RSS as promotional tools because it might somehow be unfair to the person who doesn't use them but writes better content? This seems akin to arguing that startups shouldn't worry about marketing and sales and self-promotion and should instead just make something awesome and then people will flock to them. I really (truly) wish the world worked that way, but it simply does not.
      - hugh3 16y ago
        Honestly I think the whole idea of trying to get your own blog posts onto HN is contrary to the spirit of HN. It seems... somewhat gauche, like asking for a birthday present. If someone wants to give you an upvote or a birthday present they'll give you an upvote or a birthday present, but actively campaigning for one is socially unacceptable (unless you're under the age of, say, twelve, in which case the birthday-present case is okay). Even submitting your own blog posts for consideration is something that I don't really consider to be kosher, and I'd never do it myself.

hugh3 16y ago

Just to be clear, I'm not asking for people to vote for my stories, ever. Why then, when I looked at your site, did it pop up a little pseudo-window saying "Hello HN reader, if you like this I would really appreciate an upvote"?

ryanwaggoner 16y ago
I'm not sure...when I click on the link above to go to my site, I see the popup asking me if I want to subscribe to the RSS feed: http://img.skitch.com/20100929-xq3tsubtd9dkgj9uxbjdechmik.png http://img.skitch.com/20100929-xq3tsubtd9dkgj9uxbjdechmik.pn... I installed WP Greet Box, which displays different messages to different people depending on their referrer, but I didn't think it was working for HN. Maybe it's because we're on different browsers (I'm on Safari 5)? Also, this message would only appear if you were coming from the story on HN, not from a link on Twitter, so I'm not sure it's relevant here anyway. EDIT: Yep, I see the message now in Firefox and Chrome. Should I disable? I'm not sure I see the problem with reminding people who came to the post from HN to vote for the story if they think it's worthwhile, but what do others think?
- hugh3 16y ago
  EDIT: Yep, I see the message now in Firefox and Chrome. Should I disable? I'm not sure I see the problem with reminding people who came to the post from HN to vote for the story if they think it's worthwhile, but what do others think? I thought it was a pretty obnoxious message, and that it should be disabled. Honestly, I find the whole tone of this discussion pretty obnoxious. The thing that can destroy HN is when the front page stops being filled with the stories which people find most interesting and starts being filled with borderline-interesting stories from the best self-promoters.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - ryanwaggoner 16y ago
    With regard to the "if you like this story, please upvote" thing, I understand your point, which is why I asked for feedback. But as to the original topic of this blog post, I think we're on different pages. I don't see anything wrong with the fact that I tweet my blog posts to my followers and some of them happened to find it interesting and submit to HN. Should I stop using Twitter and RSS as promotional tools because it might somehow be unfair to the person who doesn't use them but writes better content? This seems akin to arguing that startups shouldn't worry about marketing and sales and self-promotion and should instead just make something awesome and then people will flock to them. I really (truly) wish the world worked that way, but it simply does not.
    - hugh3 16y ago
      Honestly I think the whole idea of trying to get your own blog posts onto HN is contrary to the spirit of HN. It seems... somewhat gauche, like asking for a birthday present. If someone wants to give you an upvote or a birthday present they'll give you an upvote or a birthday present, but actively campaigning for one is socially unacceptable (unless you're under the age of, say, twelve, in which case the birthday-present case is okay). Even submitting your own blog posts for consideration is something that I don't really consider to be kosher, and I'd never do it myself.