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Comment by ajaygoel | Hacker News Reader

Hey everyone - someone just alerted me to this post. I'm Ajay, the person interviewed in that article. Let me go through now and respond to people's comments.

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Maybe I'm cynical, but I have a hard time believing that the brand new user JamesIH created three hours ago whose only submission or comment is posting a link to your indiehackers page, and then you, a relatively savvy SEO person from skimming the article, suddenly show up because you were "alerted" to the post, when the post has a specific link to HN in its sidebar. My guess is that the simplest explanation is probably the right one: you created the JamesIH account, posted the link to your content, then were "alerted" to the post to post here and help give it traction. A better story than posting it yourself to be sure, but also kinda scammy.

Please don't post like this to Hacker News. It's really easy to convince yourself that you've uncovered a sinister plot that simply must be true—everything adds up! and then it's hard not to come out blasting. But because you're working with incomplete information, most of the time it's just not true—and the people on the receiving end of the blast are as human as you are, and basically it just really sucks. This is covered by the site guideline that asks: "Assume good faith." (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Sure, a small portion of the time, you guessed right and your suspicions were correct. But the upside of being right isn't worth the downside of being wrong. Statistically speaking, it poisons the commons, even though your intention was to protect it.

Dang! The was a very even-handed correction.

You are exceedingly good at your job :)!

Well, that was nice of you. It's mostly just a lot of practice, but there's an interesting part too, which is learning to observe one's own reactions so one doesn't unconsciously just feed them back to the other. Slow process.

I run all of the content for Indie Hackers, and I recently hired James as our new managing editor for text-based interviews and a couple other content series. He is not Ajay Goel.

Okay.

I absolutely did not create the JamesIH account. I have no idea who that is. From the "IH" part of it, I'm guessing someone that has something to do with Indie Hackers.

Given that it's perfectly fine to just post it yourself, and that you only really get one shot at making the front page, I personally don't really have a problem with people trying to find the right way to do these kinds of submissions, even if it feels a little gamey. Would be nicer if the community didn't take itself so seriously, but that's the world we live in.

> Maybe I'm cynical

Confirmed.

I don't see anything wrong with posting your own content as long as it's not all you post. Way better and more honest than using a sock puppet.

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