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Ask HN: My recent show HN post got flagged need guidance

6 points by theguysudo 12d ago

hi recently i shared my work which is an opensource platform i made and yesterday i shared its details and its repo link on hackernews under show hn it gained good traffic reaching 16 points under 1 hour but got flagged now i need help understanding why this happened and how can i unflag it or how i can share my work with HN community

theguysudo 12d ago
any guide will be very helpful for me as i am quite new here
- andsoitis 12d ago
  Read the comments people wrote against your submission.
- dcminter 12d ago
  I have no special insight, but I think this commenter cut to the core of the problem: > "I came to the comments because the web page for Enzo explains everything except what the hell it does. Then I couldn't understand the [submission] comment either." I think you need to practice your "elevator pitch" technique before you submit here again.
- JohnFen 12d ago
  It looks like you have a new account and your only posts and comments are about promoting your project. Self-promotion is tolerated to a degree, but shouldn't be the primary or only thing you do here.
tmpsvc2695f5 12d ago
[dead]
no_time 12d ago
It just looks like slop. Now, I wouldn't flag because of this, but someone else might.
HerrlichDigital 12d ago
I got the same problem with my posts and comments. They were flagged, which was obvious for me after i activated the "showdead" option in my profile, or they got marked as "shadow-dead" and I only found out via the public JSON API. "Shadow-Dead" means, for me, everything looked okay, but no one else saw my post. After that, I asked an HN Mod what the problem was, and they thought my posts were created by GenAI, and because of that, they were flagged. And he gave me the advice that I don't use GenAI at all for HN, not even to polish my crappy text. Hope this was helpful, wish you a good Day
genezeta 12d ago
I didn't flag it, but... it was the third time you submitted the same thing, wasn't it?
bjourne 12d ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48321198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48321198
andyjohnson0 12d ago
> i need help understanding why this happened I don't know for sure but, as others have pointed out, yesterday's submission was the third time you'd posted it to Show HN. People have a low tolerance for dupe posts, especially if they're perceived as excessive self-promotion. Also, your work might be seen as vibecoded and therefore "ai slop". I dont know if it is, but all it takes is a perception. Finally, your work might be seen as a commercial threat by some people here - causing them to flag it. > how i can share my work with HN community Write a technical article about some aspect of what you've done. Talk about the challenges and how you solved them. Include a link to the repo. Put it in an external site (even github) and submit a link. If its interesting then people will notice.
austin-cheney 12d ago
[flagged]
- manlymuppet 12d ago
  A couple quotes from the guidelines of this site. > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. > Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative. > Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. This reply is as much deserving of a flag as any. Please be more kind; it really is worth the effort.
  - austin-cheney 12d ago
    You are mostly correct, but no rule exists in absolution, and my words while harsh are neither snarky nor clever. I really am hoping my comment reaches that curious soul, because I really believe kindness alone is insufficient given the context and behavior. Their failure is a failure of expectation. The way to correct for poorly aligned expectations is harshness, otherwise known as tough love. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tough_love https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tough_love
gus_massa 12d ago
I didn't flag it, but some recommendations: * Start all sentences with a capital letters and end them with a point. * Is the code AI generated? If it is people will not like it unless the project is super original. * I still don't understand what it does, or to be more clear, why it is better than ChatGPT. I think it's self hosted, but I'm not sure how many people care about that.
manlymuppet 12d ago
There are a few reasons, it seems. If you address the following things, you should be much better off to post in this forum. - You posted the same thing more than once. This could be seen as spam. Try one really good, detailed post, instead of many okay ones. - Your account is pretty new, and newer accounts have no reputation. Again, people could think you are a spam account. Try looking around this forum more, and making some good comments. This will help build your reputation here and give you a better understanding of how things work. - Your project seems to have been developed with heavy help from AI. This is fine, but AI coded projects can sometimes be poor quality and low effort. People likely assumed your project was poor quality and low effort. When using AI, try to at least do the writing yourself. Use AI for the code, but write the project description and things like the `README.md` by yourself. - Your descriptions of the project were somewhat unclear. You could gain from crafting a better, shorter, more direct [elevator pitch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator_pitch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator_pitch). This will help people understand what you've built better. - A lot of your post and comments have poor grammar and spelling. Again, this a sign of low effort. You should try to make your writing more correct with grammar and spelling before posting. If you need help with this, a good idea is to ask AI to review your writing before posting, and then rewriting based on the grammar/spelling mistakes it brings up. (Please note though that you should still write everything in the final post yourself.) People on this forum appreciate effort. That's probably why your posts were not received well. Some people on here saw a lot of signs in your posts that are common with low effort content. That's why you were flagged. That all being said, personally, I wouldn't have flagged your post. It was a little rough around the edges, and I'd urge you to polish what you put out to the world more, but overall I think you did follow this site's rules. Even if you didn't, that is no excuse for people on this site to insult you as they have. You are welcome here, and I wish you the best, friend.

6 points by theguysudo 12d ago

theguysudo 12d ago

any guide will be very helpful for me as i am quite new here

andsoitis 12d ago
Read the comments people wrote against your submission.
dcminter 12d ago
I have no special insight, but I think this commenter cut to the core of the problem: > "I came to the comments because the web page for Enzo explains everything except what the hell it does. Then I couldn't understand the [submission] comment either." I think you need to practice your "elevator pitch" technique before you submit here again.
JohnFen 12d ago
It looks like you have a new account and your only posts and comments are about promoting your project. Self-promotion is tolerated to a degree, but shouldn't be the primary or only thing you do here.

tmpsvc2695f5 12d ago

[dead]

no_time 12d ago

It just looks like slop. Now, I wouldn't flag because of this, but someone else might.

HerrlichDigital 12d ago

I got the same problem with my posts and comments. They were flagged, which was obvious for me after i activated the "showdead" option in my profile, or they got marked as "shadow-dead" and I only found out via the public JSON API. "Shadow-Dead" means, for me, everything looked okay, but no one else saw my post. After that, I asked an HN Mod what the problem was, and they thought my posts were created by GenAI, and because of that, they were flagged. And he gave me the advice that I don't use GenAI at all for HN, not even to polish my crappy text. Hope this was helpful, wish you a good Day

genezeta 12d ago

I didn't flag it, but... it was the third time you submitted the same thing, wasn't it?

bjourne 12d ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48321198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48321198

andyjohnson0 12d ago

> i need help understanding why this happened I don't know for sure but, as others have pointed out, yesterday's submission was the third time you'd posted it to Show HN. People have a low tolerance for dupe posts, especially if they're perceived as excessive self-promotion. Also, your work might be seen as vibecoded and therefore "ai slop". I dont know if it is, but all it takes is a perception. Finally, your work might be seen as a commercial threat by some people here - causing them to flag it. > how i can share my work with HN community Write a technical article about some aspect of what you've done. Talk about the challenges and how you solved them. Include a link to the repo. Put it in an external site (even github) and submit a link. If its interesting then people will notice.

austin-cheney 12d ago

[flagged]

manlymuppet 12d ago
A couple quotes from the guidelines of this site. > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. > Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative. > Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. This reply is as much deserving of a flag as any. Please be more kind; it really is worth the effort.
- austin-cheney 12d ago
  You are mostly correct, but no rule exists in absolution, and my words while harsh are neither snarky nor clever. I really am hoping my comment reaches that curious soul, because I really believe kindness alone is insufficient given the context and behavior. Their failure is a failure of expectation. The way to correct for poorly aligned expectations is harshness, otherwise known as tough love. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tough_love https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tough_love

gus_massa 12d ago

I didn't flag it, but some recommendations: * Start all sentences with a capital letters and end them with a point. * Is the code AI generated? If it is people will not like it unless the project is super original. * I still don't understand what it does, or to be more clear, why it is better than ChatGPT. I think it's self hosted, but I'm not sure how many people care about that.

manlymuppet 12d ago

There are a few reasons, it seems. If you address the following things, you should be much better off to post in this forum. - You posted the same thing more than once. This could be seen as spam. Try one really good, detailed post, instead of many okay ones. - Your account is pretty new, and newer accounts have no reputation. Again, people could think you are a spam account. Try looking around this forum more, and making some good comments. This will help build your reputation here and give you a better understanding of how things work. - Your project seems to have been developed with heavy help from AI. This is fine, but AI coded projects can sometimes be poor quality and low effort. People likely assumed your project was poor quality and low effort. When using AI, try to at least do the writing yourself. Use AI for the code, but write the project description and things like the `README.md` by yourself. - Your descriptions of the project were somewhat unclear. You could gain from crafting a better, shorter, more direct [elevator pitch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator_pitch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator_pitch). This will help people understand what you've built better. - A lot of your post and comments have poor grammar and spelling. Again, this a sign of low effort. You should try to make your writing more correct with grammar and spelling before posting. If you need help with this, a good idea is to ask AI to review your writing before posting, and then rewriting based on the grammar/spelling mistakes it brings up. (Please note though that you should still write everything in the final post yourself.) People on this forum appreciate effort. That's probably why your posts were not received well. Some people on here saw a lot of signs in your posts that are common with low effort content. That's why you were flagged. That all being said, personally, I wouldn't have flagged your post. It was a little rough around the edges, and I'd urge you to polish what you put out to the world more, but overall I think you did follow this site's rules. Even if you didn't, that is no excuse for people on this site to insult you as they have. You are welcome here, and I wish you the best, friend.