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Apologies for going meta here: Could I urge that posters follow the site convention of prefixing the title with with Ask HN, Tell HN, etc. for posts that don't

Apologies for going meta here: Could I urge that posters follow the site convention of prefixing the title with with Ask HN, Tell HN, etc. for posts that don't link to an external source? There are currently two such posts in the top 30. HN is primarily for discussing external articles, and I'd suggest that this post should have been submitted as such.

dewey 5y ago
I wish there was just a dropdown in the "Submit" view to pick well-known prefixes.
playpause 5y ago
I'm curious, what problem does it create for you, clicking a link you momentarily thought was to an external site before realising it's actually a discussion on this site? Honest question, you might have a good answer, I'm not trying to be rhetorical.
- dewey 5y ago
  Maybe not necessarily a "problem" but giving them the right prefix makes them show up in the https://news.ycombinator.com/show https://news.ycombinator.com/show and https://news.ycombinator.com/ask https://news.ycombinator.com/ask header links which are sometimes also implemented in HN apps as separate categories.
- andyjohnson0 5y ago
  > I'm curious, what problem does it create for you, clicking a link you momentarily thought was to an external site before realising it's actually a discussion on this site? Honest question, you might have a good answer, I'm not trying to be rhetorical. Good question. And my answer is probably that, as things stand, I'm not greatly inconvenienced by it. My original post was motivated mainly by "that's not how it's done here". By internet standards, I think that HN does pretty well as a self-organising community. And part of that is a general, loose adherence to norms. To maintain that community, I think that sometimes it is necessary for its members to point-out those norms in a friendly way - without trying to police anyone's behaviour. Thats really all I was trying to do. To me, an important part of HN's value is to direct me to external things. If the norms change so that a significant number of submissions are hosted directly on the site itself, then HN becomes a very different beast. Probably more inward looking, and maybe more like that other site that the guidelines tell us not to compare it to. I think that would be regrettable. More practically, "Tell HN" and "Ask HN" are hints that the post is addressing the HN community rather than the entire net. That could be useful in deciding whether to read it. And, as a sibling comment mentions, those prefixes result in posts being added to certain lists.
  - playpause 5y ago
    Totally agree and to be honest I slightly misunderstood your original comment. You’re definitely being helpful to politely encourage use of the prefix conventions where they are a good fit.
- nudpiedo 5y ago
  I would prefer to know it AOT as I find it much more insightful, and even more likely to click on the link.
magusd 5y ago
my bad :(
sundarurfriend 5y ago
I honestly find the prefixes to be unnecessarily noisy these days, and prefer it like this - the (lack of) domain name next to the title tells me enough about the post, and I much prefer to quickly get to the actual title of the post rather than a couple of low information words at the beginning. It was fine when it was one post in a hundred that was a "Verb HN", but these days these are much more common, and the prefixes make the front page more noisy and less signal-y than I prefer. If you aren't in the habit of taking a quick glance at the domain name before opening a link, I'd encourage you to start doing that, for more reasons than this.
TameAntelope 5y ago
Hm, I’m not sure where you got the idea that HN was primarily about discussing articles, because that is in no way true.
- andyjohnson0 5y ago
  Operative word is external not discussing.
  - TameAntelope 5y ago
    Neither is true, though! I know we’re getting super meta, but let dang police the site. Neither of us should be dealing with comments or submissions that “don’t fit HN”.

dewey 5y ago

I wish there was just a dropdown in the "Submit" view to pick well-known prefixes.

playpause 5y ago

I'm curious, what problem does it create for you, clicking a link you momentarily thought was to an external site before realising it's actually a discussion on this site? Honest question, you might have a good answer, I'm not trying to be rhetorical.

dewey 5y ago
Maybe not necessarily a "problem" but giving them the right prefix makes them show up in the https://news.ycombinator.com/show https://news.ycombinator.com/show and https://news.ycombinator.com/ask https://news.ycombinator.com/ask header links which are sometimes also implemented in HN apps as separate categories.
andyjohnson0 5y ago
> I'm curious, what problem does it create for you, clicking a link you momentarily thought was to an external site before realising it's actually a discussion on this site? Honest question, you might have a good answer, I'm not trying to be rhetorical. Good question. And my answer is probably that, as things stand, I'm not greatly inconvenienced by it. My original post was motivated mainly by "that's not how it's done here". By internet standards, I think that HN does pretty well as a self-organising community. And part of that is a general, loose adherence to norms. To maintain that community, I think that sometimes it is necessary for its members to point-out those norms in a friendly way - without trying to police anyone's behaviour. Thats really all I was trying to do. To me, an important part of HN's value is to direct me to external things. If the norms change so that a significant number of submissions are hosted directly on the site itself, then HN becomes a very different beast. Probably more inward looking, and maybe more like that other site that the guidelines tell us not to compare it to. I think that would be regrettable. More practically, "Tell HN" and "Ask HN" are hints that the post is addressing the HN community rather than the entire net. That could be useful in deciding whether to read it. And, as a sibling comment mentions, those prefixes result in posts being added to certain lists.
- playpause 5y ago
  Totally agree and to be honest I slightly misunderstood your original comment. You’re definitely being helpful to politely encourage use of the prefix conventions where they are a good fit.
nudpiedo 5y ago
I would prefer to know it AOT as I find it much more insightful, and even more likely to click on the link.

magusd 5y ago

my bad :(

sundarurfriend 5y ago

I honestly find the prefixes to be unnecessarily noisy these days, and prefer it like this - the (lack of) domain name next to the title tells me enough about the post, and I much prefer to quickly get to the actual title of the post rather than a couple of low information words at the beginning. It was fine when it was one post in a hundred that was a "Verb HN", but these days these are much more common, and the prefixes make the front page more noisy and less signal-y than I prefer. If you aren't in the habit of taking a quick glance at the domain name before opening a link, I'd encourage you to start doing that, for more reasons than this.

TameAntelope 5y ago

Hm, I’m not sure where you got the idea that HN was primarily about discussing articles, because that is in no way true.

andyjohnson0 5y ago
Operative word is external not discussing.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  Neither is true, though! I know we’re getting super meta, but let dang police the site. Neither of us should be dealing with comments or submissions that “don’t fit HN”.