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Thanks for the feedback. Well, there are special features for users who are involved in YC, right? Name-highlighting, or specific new story queues, or something

by cryptoz 12y ago

Thanks for the feedback. Well, there are special features for users who are involved in YC, right? Name-highlighting, or specific new story queues, or something like that? An unavoidable consequence of those features is that they encourage voting favouritism. I understand that you may not have built those features with that favouritism consequence in mind, but it's there for sure. Also, it seems likely to me that you'd consider this favouritism to (probably) produce higher-quality content hitting the front page more frequently, which I've certainly seen as a stated goal of HN (quality is more important than fairness or user preference, hence titles changing, etc). So maybe it's not a bad thing. I dunno, really.

dang 12y ago
The only such feature is that YC alumni usernames are displayed in orange to other alumni. This is one of the two things that HN gives to YC; the other is /jobs. I'm admittedly a bit sensitive to charges of favouritism on HN because we put so much effort into trying to be even-handed, even though (a) it's impossible to balance these things perfectly, (b) it's hard to measure whether we're getting it right, and (c) some people won't believe what we say anyhow. For what it's worth, the corresponding complaint on the other side (i.e. among YC founders) is that HN is biased against them.