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That's fair. Having looked at a few of those threads, I think the premise behind the "level playing field" statement is likely flawed. These are press releases

That's fair. Having looked at a few of those threads, I think the premise behind the "level playing field" statement is likely flawed. These are press releases. They will be sterile. Compare that with someone linking to their personal website where they can choose to add any title of their choosing. I'd humbly suggest that those two categories being treated the same on HN isn't right given how the latter may or may not be an originating story. I respect the work you guys put in to offer such a service to the community and for the patience in putting up with a nobody who's challenging your historical decisions in the comments :) I hope i don't come across as rude by saying that the experience for niche topics might be a little better if the headlines are made accessible without adding opinion. Other than that, i respect your work and will not editorialize the titles anymore.

pvg 4y ago
I'd humbly suggest that those two categories being treated the same on HN isn't right given how the latter may or may not be an originating story. There are a lot of other mechanisms that deal with this stuff though. One is that press releases tend to be disfavoured in general - that takes care of press releases being boring. The 'you can write your own blog post with your own spin and title' thing - you totally can, and the level playing field then is competing with all other submissions. If the commentary is interesting enough, it will end up on the front page. If it's just content recycling, someone will notice and the URL and title will be replaced with the original by the 'use original sources' rule. If you follow dang's comments (essentially the public moderation log) you'll see most of these in action pretty quickly, at the price of having to trudge through a bunch of generic dang scoldings about other, more boring things.

pvg 4y ago

I'd humbly suggest that those two categories being treated the same on HN isn't right given how the latter may or may not be an originating story. There are a lot of other mechanisms that deal with this stuff though. One is that press releases tend to be disfavoured in general - that takes care of press releases being boring. The 'you can write your own blog post with your own spin and title' thing - you totally can, and the level playing field then is competing with all other submissions. If the commentary is interesting enough, it will end up on the front page. If it's just content recycling, someone will notice and the URL and title will be replaced with the original by the 'use original sources' rule. If you follow dang's comments (essentially the public moderation log) you'll see most of these in action pretty quickly, at the price of having to trudge through a bunch of generic dang scoldings about other, more boring things.