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It's an imperfect system and some human judgment about fairness applies. In this case, the original URL submitted had the YouTube video prominently embedded, a

by tomhow 1y ago

It's an imperfect system and some human judgment about fairness applies. In this case, the original URL submitted had the YouTube video prominently embedded, along with some commentary. It's no big deal to do that, as sometimes the commentary adds something. In this case nobody seems to think it does so I updated the URL to the primary source, but there's no need to penalize the submitter. If the primary/best source for a topic has been submitted by multiple people, all being equal we'll promote the first-submitted one to the front page and mark later ones as dupes. But things aren't always equal, and if the first submission was from a user who submits a lot and gets many big front page hits, we don't feel the need to just hand them more karma and will happily give the points to a less karma-rich user who submitted it later, especially if theirs is already on the front page.

aspenmayer 1y ago
> But things aren't always equal, and if the first submission was from a user who submits a lot and gets many big front page hits, we don't feel the need to just hand them more karma and will happily give the points to a less karma-rich user who submitted it later, especially if theirs is already on the front page. I know dang has said that generated comments and bots are against HN guidelines previously, but should I read what you're not saying between the lines, and should I interpret it as consistent with HN policy to use scripts or bots to post to HN? Because that seems to be happening in this case, and keeps coming up, because it keeps happening. After a certain point, inaction is a choice and a policy by proxy. inb4 someone asks what it is and what it is that is happening; if you don't already know, ask somebody else, and if you're not a mod on HN, I'll likely consider your response a concern troll if it isn't on topic for this thread or attempts to derail it, which I fully expect to happen, but I am constantly willing to be surprised, and often am on this site. As the previous construction was rather strained, I'll say it plainly: Is it okay, as in, consistent with and affirming the HN guidelines, to use scripts/bots to post to HN, or not? My reading tells me no.
- tomhow 1y ago
  We ban bots that submit a lot of spam or other content that’s a bad fit for HN. We ban LLM-comment bots because we want the discussions to be between humans sharing original human ideas. If someone has written a script that finds and submits articles that are good for HN, I don’t see why we should ban them. We can use human judgment to decide which of their posts should be rewarded or downranked; we’re doing manual curation all the time anyway.
  - aspenmayer 1y ago
    > We ban bots that submit a lot of spam or other content that’s a bad fit for HN. We ban LLM-comment bots because we want the discussions to be between humans sharing original human ideas. > If someone has written a script that finds and submits articles that are good for HN, I don’t see why we should ban them. We can use human judgment to decide which of their posts should be rewarded or downranked; we’re doing manual curation all the time anyway. You should ban them for the same reason generated comments are banned. This is not a great outcome for HN, so I don't expect this to actually occur, mind you! I just think that the status quo unfairly advantages those who have already demonstrated that they're actively and successfully gaming the system. If the points don't matter, then script users' contributions matter even less than a human-initiated post, so why not run the script in-house under an official username at that point. This arm's length scripted behavior leaves a bad taste after Digg and every other site that has done this, or allowed others to do it. Either the content is user-submitted, or it isn't. Bots aren't people.
    - tomhow 1y ago
      I don’t know what kind of game is going on when you quote my whole comment like this. That’s not a norm on HN. We don’t treat them the same because they don’t have the same effects and aren’t the same thing. They’d be the same thing if someone made a bot to write whole articles and post them as submissions. Of course we’d ban that, and indeed we have banned bots like that, or at least banned sites whose contents are mostly LLM-generated, along with the accounts that submitted them. If a user’s script finds and submits good articles that attract many upvotes and stimulate good discussions, it would be a net loss for HN to ban them.

by tomhow 1y ago

aspenmayer 1y ago

> But things aren't always equal, and if the first submission was from a user who submits a lot and gets many big front page hits, we don't feel the need to just hand them more karma and will happily give the points to a less karma-rich user who submitted it later, especially if theirs is already on the front page. I know dang has said that generated comments and bots are against HN guidelines previously, but should I read what you're not saying between the lines, and should I interpret it as consistent with HN policy to use scripts or bots to post to HN? Because that seems to be happening in this case, and keeps coming up, because it keeps happening. After a certain point, inaction is a choice and a policy by proxy. inb4 someone asks what it is and what it is that is happening; if you don't already know, ask somebody else, and if you're not a mod on HN, I'll likely consider your response a concern troll if it isn't on topic for this thread or attempts to derail it, which I fully expect to happen, but I am constantly willing to be surprised, and often am on this site. As the previous construction was rather strained, I'll say it plainly: Is it okay, as in, consistent with and affirming the HN guidelines, to use scripts/bots to post to HN, or not? My reading tells me no.

tomhow 1y ago
We ban bots that submit a lot of spam or other content that’s a bad fit for HN. We ban LLM-comment bots because we want the discussions to be between humans sharing original human ideas. If someone has written a script that finds and submits articles that are good for HN, I don’t see why we should ban them. We can use human judgment to decide which of their posts should be rewarded or downranked; we’re doing manual curation all the time anyway.
- aspenmayer 1y ago
  > We ban bots that submit a lot of spam or other content that’s a bad fit for HN. We ban LLM-comment bots because we want the discussions to be between humans sharing original human ideas. > If someone has written a script that finds and submits articles that are good for HN, I don’t see why we should ban them. We can use human judgment to decide which of their posts should be rewarded or downranked; we’re doing manual curation all the time anyway. You should ban them for the same reason generated comments are banned. This is not a great outcome for HN, so I don't expect this to actually occur, mind you! I just think that the status quo unfairly advantages those who have already demonstrated that they're actively and successfully gaming the system. If the points don't matter, then script users' contributions matter even less than a human-initiated post, so why not run the script in-house under an official username at that point. This arm's length scripted behavior leaves a bad taste after Digg and every other site that has done this, or allowed others to do it. Either the content is user-submitted, or it isn't. Bots aren't people.
  - tomhow 1y ago
    I don’t know what kind of game is going on when you quote my whole comment like this. That’s not a norm on HN. We don’t treat them the same because they don’t have the same effects and aren’t the same thing. They’d be the same thing if someone made a bot to write whole articles and post them as submissions. Of course we’d ban that, and indeed we have banned bots like that, or at least banned sites whose contents are mostly LLM-generated, along with the accounts that submitted them. If a user’s script finds and submits good articles that attract many upvotes and stimulate good discussions, it would be a net loss for HN to ban them.