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As I've explained before, jobs aren't stories. Though jobs get displayed like stories and get inserted into the frontpage feed along with them, they're a diffe
by pg 16y ago
As I've explained before, jobs aren't stories. Though jobs get displayed like stories and get inserted into the frontpage feed along with them, they're a different type of object. The reason I didn't give them comments was that I thought of them as ads, not content.
- hasenj 16y agoWhat fundamental property of ads makes them different from content? Maybe ads are a type of content. http://www.baekdal.com/publishing/why-traditional-ads-work-and-digital-ads-dont http://www.baekdal.com/publishing/why-traditional-ads-work-a...
- xenophanes 16y agoWhat makes you think people don't want to comment on ads? People are happy to talk about ads IRL.
- _delirium 16y agoKuro5hin has long had comments on its ads, as if they were stories, though ad buyers can choose to disable that if they don't want them.
- diego 16y agoI would like to see comments on job postings. I don't consider them ads, to me they are interesting content. Even if they were ads, what's intrinsically wrong about enabling comments in ads? There's already a system in place for dealing with inappropriate comments and it works well.
- tptacek 16y agoIf HN allowed comments on YC job posts, people would use the comments to post job ads for their own companies ("we're doing something similar, &c &c, contact us at &c &c"). This would significantly dilute the value of the YC job ads. The inevitable discussion about how we could just have an etiquette of not doing that, or a guideline for not doing that, or a new kind of flag button for that, or or or, will just serve to illustrate how much simpler a solution just not allowing comments on those posts is. These posts aren't hurting you. My bet is most HN people actully think they're a benefit of HN --- early access to YC jobs! This is a fake controversy. Can we think about tolerating the YC job ads in terms of "least we can do for running HN"?
- gcheong 16y agoI think they are a benefit to HN, and I think that allowing comments would be even more beneficial as I stated in my comment below. You may be right, but the people wanting comments may also be right but we'll never know unless the experiment is actually run and I thought a large part of HN was experimentation.
- pg 16y agoThis most recent case suggests another problem with adding comments to jobs, at least for startups that hadn't launched yet: a few jerks would make a game of trying to out them. Which would mean such startups couldn't be as specific in job posts, lest they give away something that identified them.
- gojomo 16y agoI don't think whether comments are allowed will make a difference when there is suitable mystery/curiosity. The recent case also illustrates this: other posts in this forum or others will be spawned to try to reason an identity out. A posting anywhere with enough specific info to prompt applicant interest will prompt other observers to fill in the details. It's true for Google, Apple, Facebook etc. – so it will be true for self-identified YC startups who tout their impressive metrics as well.
- Zak 16y agoI don't think it's reasonable to conclude that people who endeavor to figure out and post the identities of startups who post jobs are jerks. You make a fair point about why they shouldn't do it, and I think you're right to discourage it. Curiosity, however seems like a more probable motivation than malice.
- danest 16y agoI posted the thread on asking what the startup was and I certainly didn't mean to be a jerk towards the new company. I was mostly curious because they got so much traction so fast and was willing to learn on how they achieved it. I apologize pg and YC W11 startup.
- gcheong 16y agoI think it would help to be able to comment on them because it would be an efficient way to address questions across the interested parties.