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Most times I found out that one of my articles was on the HN frontpage was because I got a spike in traffic and news.ycombinator.com was the most common referre

by arp242 3y ago

Most times I found out that one of my articles was on the HN frontpage was because I got a spike in traffic and news.ycombinator.com was the most common referrer; now it's "spike in traffic, maybe it's HN?" which isn't really an improvement. This applies even more to other authors who won't think "maybe it's HN?" and will never show up here as a result, which would be a loss IMO. The Asahi people still won't be able to "soft block" HN, so nothing changes for them. It's punishing everyone because some people threw a hissy fit. Lobsters has a "compromise approach", where it sends referrers for the first hour after posting and then stops sending them [1] (not sure if it really helps to "disincentivize content marketers" as the comment says; they generally don't seem to care as long as they can spam out their links), but that may be a more complex change to make. This is how I discovered that Lobsters exists a few years ago: somone people posted my article and I "found" it in the refers, so I asked for an invite and replied to some comments. [1]: https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters/blob/2981689c26a1bd2461fab123e6816c692f5d6b71/app/models/story.rb#L895-L900 https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters/blob/2981689c26a1bd2461...

dang 3y ago
It's true that some people discover HN through referers. In fact, one of the best contributors I know found Hacker News that way. Perhaps we should go back to the status quo ante. To be honest I'm not sure what to do.
- arp242 3y ago
  It seems to me that: 1. Don't send referrers at all because some sites pick up on them. 2. Don't send referrers for specific sites because we know they pick up on them. Are essentially the same, except that with (1) you're also losing all the benefits. Or maybe HN just shouldn't muck about with referrers at all. IMHO the entire thing seems petty and childish from the Asahi people (and also jwz and others), but they have a right to be that. Then again, you'll end up with lots of confusion in the comments and the work-arounds are trivial (see: all the archive links to bypass paywalls). The Lobsters "compromise solution" will result in links working for some and then not for others, which would be very confusing. I don't envy your position, but but adding noreferrer to everything seems like the worst option.
- ezekg 3y ago
  FWIW, I had a hard time determining the source of a spike of traffic today because it had no referrer. It ended up being from HN, coming from some auxiliary discussion happening on a run-of-the-mill comment I made. I saw the rel=noreferrer on my link and was curious if it was new (because I had always remembered seeing HN referrals), and it was. I personally like the referrer. People will always complain, and you shouldn't feel too inclined to please or slight people like this who are openly hostile to the HN community. But you do what you think is best for HN, of course. Just my $0.2.

by arp242 3y ago

dang 3y ago

It's true that some people discover HN through referers. In fact, one of the best contributors I know found Hacker News that way. Perhaps we should go back to the status quo ante. To be honest I'm not sure what to do.

arp242 3y ago
It seems to me that: 1. Don't send referrers at all because some sites pick up on them. 2. Don't send referrers for specific sites because we know they pick up on them. Are essentially the same, except that with (1) you're also losing all the benefits. Or maybe HN just shouldn't muck about with referrers at all. IMHO the entire thing seems petty and childish from the Asahi people (and also jwz and others), but they have a right to be that. Then again, you'll end up with lots of confusion in the comments and the work-arounds are trivial (see: all the archive links to bypass paywalls). The Lobsters "compromise solution" will result in links working for some and then not for others, which would be very confusing. I don't envy your position, but but adding noreferrer to everything seems like the worst option.
ezekg 3y ago
FWIW, I had a hard time determining the source of a spike of traffic today because it had no referrer. It ended up being from HN, coming from some auxiliary discussion happening on a run-of-the-mill comment I made. I saw the rel=noreferrer on my link and was curious if it was new (because I had always remembered seeing HN referrals), and it was. I personally like the referrer. People will always complain, and you shouldn't feel too inclined to please or slight people like this who are openly hostile to the HN community. But you do what you think is best for HN, of course. Just my $0.2.