4 ms·

why?

• Namrog84 13y ago
  It's promoting repeated posting of the same article in attempts to get lucky. It borders in the grey area of spam. Spam works. But it's still spam.
  • drum 13y ago
    the post got 112 upvotes yesterday and stayed on the front page all day. that many upvotes is an indicator of relevant content, not spam.
  • aalbertson 13y ago
    While I can see the argument in that direction, the point he made was to "delete" the other post before reposting. Think of it like first drafts of a story/article/blog post you're writing, you almost NEVER get it right the first time. Sometimes it takes a few iterations (just like software development hmmm?) before you find the right combination to trigger a general interest. HN, Reddit, Slashdot, all of these share similar requirements of "finding the right combo of post/title/content/etc... to appease to the wider audience". What he recommends, I think is a worthwhile endeavor. As long as it is not abused...
  • avalaunch 13y ago
    As the author notes, the fact that he finally did get a bunch of upvotes sort of proves that his posting wasn't spam to begin with. It was relevant to the community. What it shows more than anything else is that the system for achieving the coveted front page status is broken. I'm not sure what a good solution would be though.
    • weavie 13y ago
      It does show the importance of choosing a good title to attract enough attention to get to the front page. This is textbook copy writing.
  • rhizome 13y ago
    It's not a gray area.
• benologist 13y ago
  Most of us aren't here to be the audience for whatever startups and sites that treat HN like a marketing tool. This morning when I checked HN there was 4 advertisements on the front page excluding the official yc hiring notices - exitround, envato, statuspage.io, aws. 42floors' the other week described HN's front page as part of their SEO campaign - we're literally being exploited just to boost their visibility on google. It's making HN unattractive to me at least. Note: I'm not talking about "Show HN" posts. Those I like because they generally tap HN for feedback.
  • jcutrell 13y ago
    I agree with this. At the same time, I'm quite glad the OP reposted a few times. I may not have seen this app otherwise. The hustle required to delete and repost doesn't feel spammy to me. And, furthermore, the original post made it to the front page and retained its location per the algorithm, which gives a lot of power to time. I think the value prop for a lot of HN readers here isn't so much about whether or not this was an ad - I think it was more about "this is a cool idea that could spark other location-oriented ideas" in the thread, and quite a few folks did treat this as a Show HN. It's a fine line, for sure, but it's also a gamble - will people look past the outer layer of "spammy" to the inner layers that can be learned from? I felt this way about the Envato article today too. Disclaimer, I write articles for their tuts sites periodically. But I knew when that article hit the front page, it would be received as spammy. We need people like you (benologist and the clear-headed readers of this comment) to maintain a strict hold on what is considered valuable on HN, certainly while simultaneously appreciating and giving space to the efforts of other programmers in the space.
    • benologist 13y ago
      I think it's pretty easy to separate - this is a place where people like patio11 might tell you why you're doing it wrong, that's the value of HN. If all you want is traffic you're just wasting this opportunity. Not to mention this is bad traffic for most purposes. There was a site that posted followup numbers the other day with I think 70 trials and 1 paid customer out of 15,000 visitors... you can't build a company that way.