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Ah, this is my bad. Sorry. I thought I saw a Show HN the other day that linked to a blog post. And I also did it because the ‘How’ got removed from the title wh

Ah, this is my bad. Sorry. I thought I saw a Show HN the other day that linked to a blog post. And I also did it because the ‘How’ got removed from the title when I tried it originally, which I guess is house style. Is this why the post has been taken down from front page? If so, is that fair given it was an honest mistake?

dang 6y ago
It got more upvotes because of the errant Show HN than it would have otherwise. More significantly though, this doesn't feel very on topic for HN—more like a joke riff on a cliché category of article. Am I missing something?
- louisbarclay 6y ago
  > It got more upvotes because of the errant Show HN than it would have otherwise. I'll trust you on that and reiterate my apologies. I have never thought that Show HNs get more votes by default (look at the Show HNs in my history, you'll see they got absolutely nowhere), and was not trying to game the system. > More significantly though, this doesn't feel very on topic for HN I thought that this was mostly determined by whether or not the HN community upvotes a link. I personally do think there's a role for (perhaps infrequent) satire about certain quite cringe-inducing types of articles you get here. I saw a similar piece the other day - can't recall the link though.
  - dang 6y ago
    Managing ontopicness is more complicated than just upvotes. It's a complex interaction between community input (upvotes and flags), software, and human moderation. Upvotes alone would produce a front page consisting of sensationalism and the same few hot stories repeated over and over. Upvotes are great, because the entire point of HN is to be interesting to the community. But moderators and software are needed too. If the site were determined only by upvotes, ironically it would soon cease to be interesting to the community. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22upvotes%20alone%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... By the way, this isn't primarily because moderators are smarter or more competent than community members. It's because we're in a position to give HN our full attention and think about the global optimum. Users are giving much less attention to the site (at least I hope they are) and reacting quickly to the specific things they run across. I wrote about that here if anyone is interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22863209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22863209.
    - sosodev 6y ago
      Is the front page of HN really anti-sensationalist? If so why do articles like “Elon Musk moves to Texas” get to stay? They add very little to the discourse and primarily serve as flamewar topics which are actually against the rules of HN while this seemingly is not.
      - dang 6y ago
        It's all relative, of course, and could be so much worse.
- Nullabillity 6y ago
  I'd take this over the endless indiehackers garbage where people write this kind of post sincerely, any day.
- arendtio 6y ago
  While it definitely is not a 'Show HN', I think it is pretty much on topic. The last sentence even references a real story: > And if you'd like to read a true, but much more boring story about getting MRR, go here. Not everybody might like that type of humor, but I found it amusing ;-)
- sosodev 6y ago
  This is disappointing. Satire of niche tech culture certainly seems like it could fit in around here. Also, I really doubt the “Show HN” addition to title significantly skewed the upvotes.

dang 6y ago

It got more upvotes because of the errant Show HN than it would have otherwise. More significantly though, this doesn't feel very on topic for HN—more like a joke riff on a cliché category of article. Am I missing something?

louisbarclay 6y ago
> It got more upvotes because of the errant Show HN than it would have otherwise. I'll trust you on that and reiterate my apologies. I have never thought that Show HNs get more votes by default (look at the Show HNs in my history, you'll see they got absolutely nowhere), and was not trying to game the system. > More significantly though, this doesn't feel very on topic for HN I thought that this was mostly determined by whether or not the HN community upvotes a link. I personally do think there's a role for (perhaps infrequent) satire about certain quite cringe-inducing types of articles you get here. I saw a similar piece the other day - can't recall the link though.
- dang 6y ago
  Managing ontopicness is more complicated than just upvotes. It's a complex interaction between community input (upvotes and flags), software, and human moderation. Upvotes alone would produce a front page consisting of sensationalism and the same few hot stories repeated over and over. Upvotes are great, because the entire point of HN is to be interesting to the community. But moderators and software are needed too. If the site were determined only by upvotes, ironically it would soon cease to be interesting to the community. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22upvotes%20alone%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... By the way, this isn't primarily because moderators are smarter or more competent than community members. It's because we're in a position to give HN our full attention and think about the global optimum. Users are giving much less attention to the site (at least I hope they are) and reacting quickly to the specific things they run across. I wrote about that here if anyone is interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22863209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22863209.
  - sosodev 6y ago
    Is the front page of HN really anti-sensationalist? If so why do articles like “Elon Musk moves to Texas” get to stay? They add very little to the discourse and primarily serve as flamewar topics which are actually against the rules of HN while this seemingly is not.
    - dang 6y ago
      It's all relative, of course, and could be so much worse.
Nullabillity 6y ago
I'd take this over the endless indiehackers garbage where people write this kind of post sincerely, any day.
arendtio 6y ago
While it definitely is not a 'Show HN', I think it is pretty much on topic. The last sentence even references a real story: > And if you'd like to read a true, but much more boring story about getting MRR, go here. Not everybody might like that type of humor, but I found it amusing ;-)
sosodev 6y ago
This is disappointing. Satire of niche tech culture certainly seems like it could fit in around here. Also, I really doubt the “Show HN” addition to title significantly skewed the upvotes.