4 ms·

Why prefer a third-party article rather than the original announcement? Presumably for neutrality? My gut instinct is to prefer the original announcement becaus

Why prefer a third-party article rather than the original announcement? Presumably for neutrality? My gut instinct is to prefer the original announcement because it seems more of a primary source. How do you weight primariness vs neutrality? I respect your long experience moderating HN, so asking mostly with the intent enrich my own intuition. Not a rhetorical question.

dang 5y ago
It's because corporate press releases are so lame [1]. They don't give relevant background, they're saturated with dystopian smarm ("Since our founding in 2008, we’ve been motivated by the pursuit of our mission"), and they're ultimately all about spin. I don't mean to pick on particular cases—it's across the board. You'd think the smarter people at some of these companies would realize how well they'd stand out by not writing that way, but that's surprisingly rare. You're right to reference HN's 'original source' rule ("Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), because this is an exception to it. The reason we have exceptions is that there's a higher organizing principle on HN, namely that we're trying to optimize the site for curiosity [2]. Optimizing means that when there's a conflict between that rule and any other rule, the curiosity rule wins. Funnily enough the curiosity rule is an instance of itself because it often produces decisions that are counterintuitive, yet at the same time are surprisingly clear. This case is one of the clear ones—it's obvious that corporate press releases don't serve curiosity, and in fact they're largely intended to smooth away anything that people would be curious about. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=corporate%20press%20release%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
- basisword 5y ago
  Thanks for explaining this. When I noticed the URL change I was surprised but this makes sense. It would be great if we could pin the original source link as the top comment though. Frustratingly Variety doesn’t seem to link to it anywhere in their article and it’s nice to have the official release along with the commentary.
  - dang 5y ago
    If you want to post that link as a separate comment and email hn@ycombinator.com (so I don't forget!) I'd be happy to pin it to the top. Eventually we're going to build software for aggregating related URLs.
- johnnyanmac 5y ago
  >You'd think the smarter people at some of these companies would realize how well they'd stand out by not writing that way, but that's surprisingly rare. it's all about CYA. Better to be "smarm" than create any opening for a legal storm that ruins the entire acquisition, or tanks any public shares from the news. I'm still not too sure if the "curiosity" rule applies to this new link, however. Half the article is just quoting the source and another 40% just quoting the CEO's on how happy and great the oppurtunity is. Not much real analysis or introspection unless the audience had no idea what a Bandcamp is. That's unfortunately better than 80% of modern jounralism, but I digress.
  - dang 5y ago
    No doubt the third party articles aren't usually very good either. But it's all relative!

dang 5y ago

It's because corporate press releases are so lame [1]. They don't give relevant background, they're saturated with dystopian smarm ("Since our founding in 2008, we’ve been motivated by the pursuit of our mission"), and they're ultimately all about spin. I don't mean to pick on particular cases—it's across the board. You'd think the smarter people at some of these companies would realize how well they'd stand out by not writing that way, but that's surprisingly rare. You're right to reference HN's 'original source' rule ("Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), because this is an exception to it. The reason we have exceptions is that there's a higher organizing principle on HN, namely that we're trying to optimize the site for curiosity [2]. Optimizing means that when there's a conflict between that rule and any other rule, the curiosity rule wins. Funnily enough the curiosity rule is an instance of itself because it often produces decisions that are counterintuitive, yet at the same time are surprisingly clear. This case is one of the clear ones—it's obvious that corporate press releases don't serve curiosity, and in fact they're largely intended to smooth away anything that people would be curious about. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=corporate%20press%20release%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

basisword 5y ago
Thanks for explaining this. When I noticed the URL change I was surprised but this makes sense. It would be great if we could pin the original source link as the top comment though. Frustratingly Variety doesn’t seem to link to it anywhere in their article and it’s nice to have the official release along with the commentary.
- dang 5y ago
  If you want to post that link as a separate comment and email hn@ycombinator.com (so I don't forget!) I'd be happy to pin it to the top. Eventually we're going to build software for aggregating related URLs.
johnnyanmac 5y ago
>You'd think the smarter people at some of these companies would realize how well they'd stand out by not writing that way, but that's surprisingly rare. it's all about CYA. Better to be "smarm" than create any opening for a legal storm that ruins the entire acquisition, or tanks any public shares from the news. I'm still not too sure if the "curiosity" rule applies to this new link, however. Half the article is just quoting the source and another 40% just quoting the CEO's on how happy and great the oppurtunity is. Not much real analysis or introspection unless the audience had no idea what a Bandcamp is. That's unfortunately better than 80% of modern jounralism, but I digress.
- dang 5y ago
  No doubt the third party articles aren't usually very good either. But it's all relative!