Hacker News Reader

If anything, HN scribd posts seem to turn into straight pdfs. I think the admins search for posts with [scribd] in the title and link to a pdf version instead.

View on HN

No. I say this with absolute certainty, having just submitted a link to a PDF, to which the [scribd] portion was added, either by the system or by an HN administrator.

If you click on the title, it still goes to the original URL, which in my case was a straight PDF. If you click on the [scribd] portion, you are taken to a copy at Scribd.

Oh, from the original post I took it that it replaced your link with a scribd link (rather than adding a second link). I still think it is a questionable practice, but find it much less objectionable than I did at first.

IIRC, when I joined (circa mid 08) it did replace your link with one to Scribd. There was some questioning about whether this was right, people don't like the Scribd layout, blah blah, and I believe the decision was made to add a Scribd link but keep the original.

Posting it violated the Scribd TOS sections 8.1 and 8.8.

Oh I see. I always assumed when I saw that, that somebody had uploaded a scribd link and an admin had modified it to go to the straight pdf. Thanks for the correction.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com