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This is a pretty interesting move, but they really need to make sure the rules are ABSOLUTELY CLEAR to those willing to learn them. I work for ForeignPolicy.co

This is a pretty interesting move, but they really need to make sure the rules are ABSOLUTELY CLEAR to those willing to learn them. I work for ForeignPolicy.com, which could loosely be described as a competitor to the Atlantic. To avoid being spammy/bad community members, we specifically don't submit all of our pieces to reddit/HN, or even all the ones we think are relevant (Virtually our whole site would fit, say, /r/worldnews. HN less so, but occasionally FP stories do rise to the top here). Most major things get submitted anyway, and often drive a fair bit of traffic. That said, the tradeoff here is that we lose control of the headlines that we get submitted under, and the submission timing, and have to work quite a bit harder to make sure that we see submissions to get involved in comment threads when possible. It would be nice if we could get some sort of account that would let us submit our relevant content, but without any special privileges a la' the publisher feeds that helped ruin digg. We _could_ just get people with well-built-out legit personal accounts to trade off in submitting our stuff, but that still strikes me as too spammy. I know in the comments thread on reddit Alienth said that this action will only be taken in cases where they can prove that the sites knowingly offended [1], but it really worries me that the lines aren't set in stone, and a competitor could potentially make a very compelling attempt at spamming all of our links and get us banned. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/v03qc/physorg_is_not_allowed_on_reddit_this_domain_has/c5046xt http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/v03qc/physor...

saraid216 14y ago
> That said, the tradeoff here is that we lose control of the headlines that we get submitted under, and the submission timing, and have to work quite a bit harder to make sure that we see submissions to get involved in comment threads when possible. I think that the first two are ultimately good things. The headline and the timing can be more useful as feedback than as part of the message you control. As for the third, the key is figuring out how to get notified when something is submitted. If it's important enough, then the "work quite a bit harder" is worth the investment.
jerrya 14y ago
I really like the content of FP and the Atlantic. Nevertheless, I already have a feedreader, and I don't need to see HN, or reddit turned into another RSS feed or twitter. If your stuff is good it will rise to the top. In the meantime, especially at HN, it crowds out less well known sources and authors and bloggers.
- cookiecaper 14y ago
  Is there some good reason publishers shouldn't have an API to submit their stories automatically and then let the votes do their thing? The concepts of an official content feed and democratic filtration of stories are not mutually exclusive.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - nooneelse 14y ago
    The initial work-function of someone submitting a link is the first filter for if something is good/"worth other people looking at". Taking it away means more stress on the remaining levels of filtering. So if the same things are to get through the sum of all filters, either the remaining levels will need to be more robust to compensate for taking away the first filter, or the first level should just be kept in place. More abstractly, are there to be no places where people, real humans, can talk with each other without the advertising machines wedging their obnoxious way between us uninvited? Surely you can see there is some value in having such places. If the populous of reddit wants it to be such a place, then spammers are like someone at a party trying to sell watches to everyone rather than conversing. The hosts have asked them to cool it or leave. These particular louts didn't cool it, so the hosts pushed them out the door.
  - scotttobejoking 14y ago
    The good reason is that that would be trying to present a technical solution to what is a personal conflict of interest. The basic problem is that people's stories are competing for eyeballs - a personal conflict - and that people are not satisfied with a fair resolution with that conflict (letting the general public decide). They are seeking an unfair level of exposure. You can't solve the basic problem of conflict technically; the best you can do is to provide fair tools. Trying to provide tools for content access, though, is unrelated (orthogonal, really) to the issue of fairness. Changing how the content is delivered won't really change things. Either it will be fair (everyone can submit to the API) or it won't be. If it is fair, then every smart publisher will publish to the API (heck, who wouldn't want to autopublish their blog to reddit?) and the result will be a pretty useless firehose :-D If it's not fair, then you're undercutting democratic filtration...
davidw 14y ago
I would posit that nearly everything on ForeignPolicy.com is off-topic for Hacker News, since it's about politics and things of that ilk. That does not mean it's "bad" or unimportant (quite the contrary, it's probably more important than 'hacker news') or anything like that.
- showerst 14y ago
  Generally true to be sure, but every once in a while we'll write something about internet or entrepreneurship that does well here. Like I said we make it a point not to post our own articles to social media sites ourselves, but we do make the HN front page one a month or so, and it would be nice to have the option to control over the titles and submission timing when the content is relevant (assuming, of course, that we submitted the link first =P).
  - nitrogen 14y ago
    ...it would be nice to have the option to control over the titles and submission timing when the content is relevant... Once the conversation starts, it's no longer yours to control. People will say what they will about your articles, and trying to find ways of controlling that rather than adjusting the articles themselves would be quite annoying.
    - dalke 14y ago
      They are asking for control about when the conversation starts. More specifically, they are the ones who know when the article is available, so they can start the conversation at that moment. Then because they are first, they get to choose the title. That's all they wish for, not control of the conversation itself.
      - nitrogen 14y ago
        I still take exception to the manipulation of ostensibly user-generated content sites by content creators. I don't come to HN to see what the editors of publication X managed to time just right, but rather what actual hackers felt like submitting, and the title under which they submitted it.
robryan 14y ago
Yeah timing is a big one, if someone submits one of your stories at the wrong time it could quickly fall off the map, despite being a potential top story at the right time.
plorkyeran 14y ago
> have to work quite a bit harder to make sure that we see submissions to get involved in comment threads when possible Setting up automated alerts for when HN starts showing up in the referer log for an article seems like a fairly easy way to handle this.

saraid216 14y ago

> That said, the tradeoff here is that we lose control of the headlines that we get submitted under, and the submission timing, and have to work quite a bit harder to make sure that we see submissions to get involved in comment threads when possible. I think that the first two are ultimately good things. The headline and the timing can be more useful as feedback than as part of the message you control. As for the third, the key is figuring out how to get notified when something is submitted. If it's important enough, then the "work quite a bit harder" is worth the investment.

jerrya 14y ago

I really like the content of FP and the Atlantic. Nevertheless, I already have a feedreader, and I don't need to see HN, or reddit turned into another RSS feed or twitter. If your stuff is good it will rise to the top. In the meantime, especially at HN, it crowds out less well known sources and authors and bloggers.

cookiecaper 14y ago
Is there some good reason publishers shouldn't have an API to submit their stories automatically and then let the votes do their thing? The concepts of an official content feed and democratic filtration of stories are not mutually exclusive.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- nooneelse 14y ago
  The initial work-function of someone submitting a link is the first filter for if something is good/"worth other people looking at". Taking it away means more stress on the remaining levels of filtering. So if the same things are to get through the sum of all filters, either the remaining levels will need to be more robust to compensate for taking away the first filter, or the first level should just be kept in place. More abstractly, are there to be no places where people, real humans, can talk with each other without the advertising machines wedging their obnoxious way between us uninvited? Surely you can see there is some value in having such places. If the populous of reddit wants it to be such a place, then spammers are like someone at a party trying to sell watches to everyone rather than conversing. The hosts have asked them to cool it or leave. These particular louts didn't cool it, so the hosts pushed them out the door.
- scotttobejoking 14y ago
  The good reason is that that would be trying to present a technical solution to what is a personal conflict of interest. The basic problem is that people's stories are competing for eyeballs - a personal conflict - and that people are not satisfied with a fair resolution with that conflict (letting the general public decide). They are seeking an unfair level of exposure. You can't solve the basic problem of conflict technically; the best you can do is to provide fair tools. Trying to provide tools for content access, though, is unrelated (orthogonal, really) to the issue of fairness. Changing how the content is delivered won't really change things. Either it will be fair (everyone can submit to the API) or it won't be. If it is fair, then every smart publisher will publish to the API (heck, who wouldn't want to autopublish their blog to reddit?) and the result will be a pretty useless firehose :-D If it's not fair, then you're undercutting democratic filtration...

davidw 14y ago

I would posit that nearly everything on ForeignPolicy.com is off-topic for Hacker News, since it's about politics and things of that ilk. That does not mean it's "bad" or unimportant (quite the contrary, it's probably more important than 'hacker news') or anything like that.

showerst 14y ago
Generally true to be sure, but every once in a while we'll write something about internet or entrepreneurship that does well here. Like I said we make it a point not to post our own articles to social media sites ourselves, but we do make the HN front page one a month or so, and it would be nice to have the option to control over the titles and submission timing when the content is relevant (assuming, of course, that we submitted the link first =P).
- nitrogen 14y ago
  ...it would be nice to have the option to control over the titles and submission timing when the content is relevant... Once the conversation starts, it's no longer yours to control. People will say what they will about your articles, and trying to find ways of controlling that rather than adjusting the articles themselves would be quite annoying.
  - dalke 14y ago
    They are asking for control about when the conversation starts. More specifically, they are the ones who know when the article is available, so they can start the conversation at that moment. Then because they are first, they get to choose the title. That's all they wish for, not control of the conversation itself.
    - nitrogen 14y ago
      I still take exception to the manipulation of ostensibly user-generated content sites by content creators. I don't come to HN to see what the editors of publication X managed to time just right, but rather what actual hackers felt like submitting, and the title under which they submitted it.

robryan 14y ago

Yeah timing is a big one, if someone submits one of your stories at the wrong time it could quickly fall off the map, despite being a potential top story at the right time.

plorkyeran 14y ago

> have to work quite a bit harder to make sure that we see submissions to get involved in comment threads when possible Setting up automated alerts for when HN starts showing up in the referer log for an article seems like a fairly easy way to handle this.