9 ms·

We don't ban sites of competitors of companies we fund. Even if we wanted to do something like that, how could we ever get away with it? I'm guessing you're r

by pg 15y ago

We don't ban sites of competitors of companies we fund. Even if we wanted to do something like that, how could we ever get away with it? I'm guessing you're referring to Nodejitsu.com. They're banned because they created an army of sockpuppets to vote up their posts.

strmpnk 15y ago
A fair argument, but I don't see how excluding content without transparency is any better. At the very least you could let people know why or what is happening when something is submitted. Not all communities need to overlap and it's HN's decision for what goes here. Also, you'd be better off if your guidelines included some wording on this. As for the competitors line, I was possibly confused by past drama certain threads that there was something going on with that. Sorry for any misinformation this may have spread. It might be to everyone's advantage to ensure that there is a proper way to communicate with HN to get someone unbanned (I am not with Nodejitsu but I'm sure they'd be willing to talk). There is good content on that blog.
- pg 15y ago
  I don't see how excluding content without transparency is any better. You can see everything that gets killed by turning on showdead in your profile.
  - strmpnk 15y ago
    I think it's more about informing the person submitting. Most people who hear about this are surprised and had no idea. It might be solving the problem of transparency from the wrong end.
    - pg 15y ago
      When we kill something it's almost always for some form of abuse: usually spamming, or in a handful of cases for particularly egregious sockpuppet upvotes. I don't feel like we owe such people much. Plus the more you tell them, the easier you make it to get around you.
      - strmpnk 15y ago
        I'll let it rest here as I'm sure you've thought much longer than I have but I do feel it a bit unfair to assume it's always the spammers submitting content when the domain is shared. https://twitter.com/#!/FrankDenbow/status/128144916655259648 https://twitter.com/#!/FrankDenbow/status/128144916655259648
  - luser001 15y ago
    Ok, that statement seems a little misleading. I just turned on showdead. Yes, I can see the text, but the link doesn't seem to be there, so I can't convince myself that the kill was warranted. Am I missing something? E.g., "[dead] Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer, hacker in AT&T iPad case, on Occupy Wall Street (youtube.com)" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3146776 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3146776 Edit: another killed link, "Funding for venture capital industry plunges" from the mercury news. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3146633 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3146633 The article seems pretty relevant to the audience here.
    - tptacek 15y ago
      YouTube links are auto-deaded. Write a short blog post about the YouTube video, post that, and see if it dies. I'm guessing it won't. I don't know if the Mercury News is auto-deaded, but I wouldn't be shocked if it was.
      - pg 15y ago
        Actually neither site is banned.
    - pg 15y ago
      I make the links inactive to ensure spammers get no traffic, and thus give up spamming us. HN gets so much traffic that otherwise they might get a significant amount just from people clicking on the dead link. Anyone who wants to see the url of a story can see it on the edit page, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=3146776 https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=3146776 As for your specific examples, the first was killed because that user is banned from submitting, and the second I killed myself because when I tried the link it was broken; it's since been fixed so I unkilled it.
      - deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
  - viraptor 15y ago
    The poster is completely unaware however. See http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3146243 http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3146243 - I posted the link to check whether it's actually banned. It showed up and I could see it. Now it's dead without any notification or feedback for me.
- storborg 15y ago
  I don't think pg's trying to hide anything. It's presumably just a lot of work to maintain an up to date public index of blocked domains and rationale.
  - strmpnk 15y ago
    Simply killing submissions and relying on a lesser known profile switch on the users end is pretty indirect if not obscure. The submitter should be able to lobby to get something unblocked and to do that they need to know what happened in the first place. It's a pretty simple change to the process.
marakmarak 15y ago
> They're banned because they created an army of sockpuppets to vote up their posts. That is inaccurate, and libelous. We have never used fake accounts to artificially upvote anything. Your users and moderators harassed me to the point where I would be forced to create a new anonymous account every-time I wanted to post materials, so I wouldn't have to deal with the onslaught of your abusive community. I was very candid about this, tweeted about it, talked about it in IRC, it wasn't a secret. These accounts were all used once, then instantly abandoned. You have full logs of all of this. I think you've been fed some bad information, because if you checked your logs you will find what I'm saying is accurate. Show me one instance where our "army of socketpuppets" upvoted something from nodejitsu.com. You can't, because it never happened. - Marak
indexzero 15y ago
Your claim that Nodejitsu "created an army of sockpuppets to vote up their posts" is outrageous. Let me enumerate the issue here: 1. Your moderators are simply unable (or unwilling) to distinguish "sockpuppets" from a legitimate community of developers (that is the node.js community). Yes, when we post something to HN we send out the link via Twitter and IM to colleagues in the node.js community who may potentially upvote it. This is natural "word of mouth". We have never used bots, or any kind of malicious automation to ensure posts reach the front-page. 2. There is no transparency for bans, nor is the ban every communicated to the owner of the HN account. If you think an account is unfairly trying to manipulate the voting system; you have to contact them. Anything less is blatantly ambiguous and unacceptable. 3. Given the silent nature of bans on HN, we have no choice but to move onto a new HN account and continue to submit legitimate posts using legitimate word of mouth dissemination. Perhaps you view this as "sockpuppets," but what other choice do we have? 4. In the particular case of Nodejitsu, this behavior is even more unacceptable. We are a platform-as-a-service where any user can create a publicly available application on a subdomain of nodejitsu.com. How can you ban the entire *.nodejitsu.com domain when we are not responsible for malicious actions (real or perceived) taken by a given user? This is not an admission that any such behavior has taken place; I'm sure that your claim is addressed in [1]-[3]. In the copyright world, site owners are protected by malicious actions of users through DMCA safe-harbor. In such senarios, the owner of the site will be contacted and the malicious behavior (real or perceived) can be addressed and/or removed. By silently banning posts and not communicating with members of the HN community about what you perceive as malicious behavior you are doing yourself a serious detriment. This has (and continues to) raise questions about the legitimacy of the content on HN as just a shill for YCombinator. If you'd like to speak with me personally you can email charlie@nodejitsu.com Charlie Robbins Founder and CEO Nodejitsu Inc.
- tptacek 15y ago
  You could have just emailed him and asked. You seem to be having difficulty with the concept that what you know not to be sockpuppetry would, to the part-time admins of this site, seem like sockpuppetry. HN makes banning mistakes with some regularity. Get over it or go somewhere else. It's ungracious to spit venom ("unacceptable", "blatantly ambiguous and unacceptable", "HN as just a shill for YCombinator") at the site admins, all of whom have better things to do than resolve individual disputes like this. I'm as cynical as anyone about YC, 'pg, and the valley culture, but I can see when someone's doing me a favor. Like, every f'ing day for one thousand four hundred fifty two days. I too would run a site like HN differently, but that is irrelevant, because I didn't build a site like HN and so my opinion doesn't matter.
mcantelon 15y ago
>[Nodejitsu.com] is banned because they created an army of sockpuppets to vote up their posts. Some evidence to support this claim would be useful.
- SamReidHughes 15y ago
  How would it be useful? Are you planning on making your sockpuppets more realistic?
ajpiano 15y ago
> They're banned because they created an army of sockpuppets to vote up their posts. I too am interested in some sort of substantiation for this claim.
- alessioalex 15y ago
  +1 Show us some proof, don't just throw (up) accusations around.
- jacobquick 15y ago
  I for one made at least 30 accounts to request this evidence be presented forthwith
frankdenbow 15y ago
The problem with that is you are also penalizing Nodejitsu customers (like myself) that host their projects on their platform. I support the Nodejitsu guys but I'm not an employee and don't share all their viewpoints; I was just working on my first Nodejs project for NodeKnockout and wanted to get some feedback from the HN community, but my site was blocked also.
nkurz 15y ago
Repost from a dead link that seems relevant. I know nothing about this situation, and don't know Marak, but it seemed best to let someone defend their company: marakmarak 5 hours ago | link [dead] > They're banned because they created an army of sockpuppets to vote up their posts. That is inaccurate, and libelous. We have never used fake accounts to artificially upvote anything. Your users and moderators harassed me to the point where I would be forced to create a new anonymous account every-time I wanted to post materials, so I wouldn't have to deal with the onslaught of your abusive community. I was very candid about this, tweeted about it, talked about it in IRC, it wasn't a secret. These accounts were all used once, then instantly abandoned. You have full logs of all of this. I think you've been fed some bad information, because if you checked your logs you will find what I'm saying is accurate. Show me one instance where our "army of socketpuppets" upvoted something from nodejitsu.com. You can't, because it never happened
timlindinct 15y ago
I'm disappointed that HN has become such a big news site, because it is not designed responsibly to be one, so trying to get a post featured is very difficult. I think the only reason any posts do get featured is because of the 'sockpuppets' that the submitters have built up (or that follow the content), but that is legitimate upvoting (I'm not sure why someone would upvote something they aren't interested in?). Perhaps the most important change that HN needs to make is to have topics. It isn't fair to other people and content if the stream is full of NodeJS content, but that is a legitimate interest so HN can't ban the prominent workers in that field (bizarre). The ban from HN seems to be purely a side effect of the fact that the maintainers are not interested in designing the system responsibly (they are too busy with other responsibilities). Topic channels are obviously needed. I think the difference between HN and reddit needs to be considered well and the two should be integrated some how, I would like to see topic channels on HN.

by pg 15y ago

strmpnk 15y ago

A fair argument, but I don't see how excluding content without transparency is any better. At the very least you could let people know why or what is happening when something is submitted. Not all communities need to overlap and it's HN's decision for what goes here. Also, you'd be better off if your guidelines included some wording on this. As for the competitors line, I was possibly confused by past drama certain threads that there was something going on with that. Sorry for any misinformation this may have spread. It might be to everyone's advantage to ensure that there is a proper way to communicate with HN to get someone unbanned (I am not with Nodejitsu but I'm sure they'd be willing to talk). There is good content on that blog.

pg 15y ago
I don't see how excluding content without transparency is any better. You can see everything that gets killed by turning on showdead in your profile.
- strmpnk 15y ago
  I think it's more about informing the person submitting. Most people who hear about this are surprised and had no idea. It might be solving the problem of transparency from the wrong end.
  - pg 15y ago
    When we kill something it's almost always for some form of abuse: usually spamming, or in a handful of cases for particularly egregious sockpuppet upvotes. I don't feel like we owe such people much. Plus the more you tell them, the easier you make it to get around you.
    - strmpnk 15y ago
      I'll let it rest here as I'm sure you've thought much longer than I have but I do feel it a bit unfair to assume it's always the spammers submitting content when the domain is shared. https://twitter.com/#!/FrankDenbow/status/128144916655259648 https://twitter.com/#!/FrankDenbow/status/128144916655259648
- luser001 15y ago
  Ok, that statement seems a little misleading. I just turned on showdead. Yes, I can see the text, but the link doesn't seem to be there, so I can't convince myself that the kill was warranted. Am I missing something? E.g., "[dead] Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer, hacker in AT&T iPad case, on Occupy Wall Street (youtube.com)" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3146776 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3146776 Edit: another killed link, "Funding for venture capital industry plunges" from the mercury news. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3146633 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3146633 The article seems pretty relevant to the audience here.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    YouTube links are auto-deaded. Write a short blog post about the YouTube video, post that, and see if it dies. I'm guessing it won't. I don't know if the Mercury News is auto-deaded, but I wouldn't be shocked if it was.
    - pg 15y ago
      Actually neither site is banned.
  - pg 15y ago
    I make the links inactive to ensure spammers get no traffic, and thus give up spamming us. HN gets so much traffic that otherwise they might get a significant amount just from people clicking on the dead link. Anyone who wants to see the url of a story can see it on the edit page, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=3146776 https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=3146776 As for your specific examples, the first was killed because that user is banned from submitting, and the second I killed myself because when I tried the link it was broken; it's since been fixed so I unkilled it.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
- viraptor 15y ago
  The poster is completely unaware however. See http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3146243 http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3146243 - I posted the link to check whether it's actually banned. It showed up and I could see it. Now it's dead without any notification or feedback for me.
storborg 15y ago
I don't think pg's trying to hide anything. It's presumably just a lot of work to maintain an up to date public index of blocked domains and rationale.
- strmpnk 15y ago
  Simply killing submissions and relying on a lesser known profile switch on the users end is pretty indirect if not obscure. The submitter should be able to lobby to get something unblocked and to do that they need to know what happened in the first place. It's a pretty simple change to the process.

marakmarak 15y ago

> They're banned because they created an army of sockpuppets to vote up their posts. That is inaccurate, and libelous. We have never used fake accounts to artificially upvote anything. Your users and moderators harassed me to the point where I would be forced to create a new anonymous account every-time I wanted to post materials, so I wouldn't have to deal with the onslaught of your abusive community. I was very candid about this, tweeted about it, talked about it in IRC, it wasn't a secret. These accounts were all used once, then instantly abandoned. You have full logs of all of this. I think you've been fed some bad information, because if you checked your logs you will find what I'm saying is accurate. Show me one instance where our "army of socketpuppets" upvoted something from nodejitsu.com. You can't, because it never happened. - Marak

indexzero 15y ago

Your claim that Nodejitsu "created an army of sockpuppets to vote up their posts" is outrageous. Let me enumerate the issue here: 1. Your moderators are simply unable (or unwilling) to distinguish "sockpuppets" from a legitimate community of developers (that is the node.js community). Yes, when we post something to HN we send out the link via Twitter and IM to colleagues in the node.js community who may potentially upvote it. This is natural "word of mouth". We have never used bots, or any kind of malicious automation to ensure posts reach the front-page. 2. There is no transparency for bans, nor is the ban every communicated to the owner of the HN account. If you think an account is unfairly trying to manipulate the voting system; you have to contact them. Anything less is blatantly ambiguous and unacceptable. 3. Given the silent nature of bans on HN, we have no choice but to move onto a new HN account and continue to submit legitimate posts using legitimate word of mouth dissemination. Perhaps you view this as "sockpuppets," but what other choice do we have? 4. In the particular case of Nodejitsu, this behavior is even more unacceptable. We are a platform-as-a-service where any user can create a publicly available application on a subdomain of nodejitsu.com. How can you ban the entire *.nodejitsu.com domain when we are not responsible for malicious actions (real or perceived) taken by a given user? This is not an admission that any such behavior has taken place; I'm sure that your claim is addressed in [1]-[3]. In the copyright world, site owners are protected by malicious actions of users through DMCA safe-harbor. In such senarios, the owner of the site will be contacted and the malicious behavior (real or perceived) can be addressed and/or removed. By silently banning posts and not communicating with members of the HN community about what you perceive as malicious behavior you are doing yourself a serious detriment. This has (and continues to) raise questions about the legitimacy of the content on HN as just a shill for YCombinator. If you'd like to speak with me personally you can email charlie@nodejitsu.com Charlie Robbins Founder and CEO Nodejitsu Inc.

tptacek 15y ago
You could have just emailed him and asked. You seem to be having difficulty with the concept that what you know not to be sockpuppetry would, to the part-time admins of this site, seem like sockpuppetry. HN makes banning mistakes with some regularity. Get over it or go somewhere else. It's ungracious to spit venom ("unacceptable", "blatantly ambiguous and unacceptable", "HN as just a shill for YCombinator") at the site admins, all of whom have better things to do than resolve individual disputes like this. I'm as cynical as anyone about YC, 'pg, and the valley culture, but I can see when someone's doing me a favor. Like, every f'ing day for one thousand four hundred fifty two days. I too would run a site like HN differently, but that is irrelevant, because I didn't build a site like HN and so my opinion doesn't matter.

mcantelon 15y ago

>[Nodejitsu.com] is banned because they created an army of sockpuppets to vote up their posts. Some evidence to support this claim would be useful.

SamReidHughes 15y ago
How would it be useful? Are you planning on making your sockpuppets more realistic?

ajpiano 15y ago

> They're banned because they created an army of sockpuppets to vote up their posts. I too am interested in some sort of substantiation for this claim.

alessioalex 15y ago
+1 Show us some proof, don't just throw (up) accusations around.
jacobquick 15y ago
I for one made at least 30 accounts to request this evidence be presented forthwith

frankdenbow 15y ago

The problem with that is you are also penalizing Nodejitsu customers (like myself) that host their projects on their platform. I support the Nodejitsu guys but I'm not an employee and don't share all their viewpoints; I was just working on my first Nodejs project for NodeKnockout and wanted to get some feedback from the HN community, but my site was blocked also.

nkurz 15y ago

Repost from a dead link that seems relevant. I know nothing about this situation, and don't know Marak, but it seemed best to let someone defend their company: marakmarak 5 hours ago | link [dead] > They're banned because they created an army of sockpuppets to vote up their posts. That is inaccurate, and libelous. We have never used fake accounts to artificially upvote anything. Your users and moderators harassed me to the point where I would be forced to create a new anonymous account every-time I wanted to post materials, so I wouldn't have to deal with the onslaught of your abusive community. I was very candid about this, tweeted about it, talked about it in IRC, it wasn't a secret. These accounts were all used once, then instantly abandoned. You have full logs of all of this. I think you've been fed some bad information, because if you checked your logs you will find what I'm saying is accurate. Show me one instance where our "army of socketpuppets" upvoted something from nodejitsu.com. You can't, because it never happened

timlindinct 15y ago

I'm disappointed that HN has become such a big news site, because it is not designed responsibly to be one, so trying to get a post featured is very difficult. I think the only reason any posts do get featured is because of the 'sockpuppets' that the submitters have built up (or that follow the content), but that is legitimate upvoting (I'm not sure why someone would upvote something they aren't interested in?). Perhaps the most important change that HN needs to make is to have topics. It isn't fair to other people and content if the stream is full of NodeJS content, but that is a legitimate interest so HN can't ban the prominent workers in that field (bizarre). The ban from HN seems to be purely a side effect of the fact that the maintainers are not interested in designing the system responsibly (they are too busy with other responsibilities). Topic channels are obviously needed. I think the difference between HN and reddit needs to be considered well and the two should be integrated some how, I would like to see topic channels on HN.