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Since when has Hacker News, with its highly entrepreneurial core, ever so viciously attacked publicity? Since when polluting valuable community information res
by 1gor 17y ago
Since when has Hacker News, with its highly entrepreneurial core, ever so viciously attacked publicity?
Since when polluting valuable community information resource with paid commercial fluff became acceptable?
Aggressive promotion poisons the well for everybody. People come to HN for the honest information and opinion exchange with the like-minded, not to be bombarded with PR.
And by the way, I remember time when NH core were not get-rick-quick wannabes but engineers and, well, hackers. Which does not exclude being entrepreneurial. It just means being not easy for some 'smart business' to manipulate.
If the odds are worse without promotion, what rational human wouldn't use it?
The one that is familiar with game theory. Defection does work in the trusting, cooperative environment. First time. After that the community switches to 'tit-for-tat' strategy and bans the aggressor into oblivion. Or core of the community decamps to greener pastures leaving 'smart businesses' and their shills to their task of filling communal cesspit with more crap.
- swombat 17y agoSince when polluting valuable community information resource with paid commercial fluff became acceptable? I fail to see what pollution has happened here. Both NKS and Wolfram Alpha are pretty serious endeavours, that most hackers should be aware and probably interested in. Aggressive promotion poisons the well for everybody. People come to HN for the honest information and opinion exchange with the like-minded, not to be bombarded with PR. You're mixing various concepts here... "Aggressive promotion" is, effectively, what most entrepreneurs need to do at some point to get some users on the system. The problem is not with promotion or how aggressive with it. The problem is with "unethical", brutal, blunt promotion, like spam. I don't think anyone here has something against "aggressive promotion" in the form of interesting information that happens to relate to something that someone is building. Except for you, perhaps.
- 1gor 17y agoI don't think anyone here has something against "aggressive promotion" in the form of interesting information I think you are the only one here enjoying reading PR releases. This sure looks like spamming (or a good PR work): http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:news.ycombinator.com+wolfram+alpha http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:news.ycombinator.com+w...