As a casual reader and others obvious interest in this area I'd very much prefer a sentence or two about the quality of the work presented, feel free to link your own stuff afterwards, it's a bit offputting to see such blatant self-promotion.
I have a use case for this project but I likely won’t get to it for a year or so. When that happens I’ll come back to this thread and all the projects working on the problem will be right here in the Hacker News thread. I’ll be able to see which ones are still alive, and maybe even see why some stopped development.
This happens all the time for me with HN - if people didn’t link their related work the thread would have way less utility.
Looking at the projects presented here with nothing else offered am not convinced of good-faith participation. Would you say the same?
Also, you would occasionally see comments along the line of “awesome project / congratulations on launching, I like the fact that it does this and that. My project also does this and that, check it out: insert link.” Hardly any better.
The projects that succeed to working prototype are one off itch scratches or API Jigsaw projects. Mine included, most of my code is API glue. But I never see HN as having utility in this way. But I'm in a small niche.
Did you recognize how many people relate to their own experiences when you tell them a story while totally forgetting about the things you just said?
You are totally right and if someone wants to present their project because it is similar they should at least say something about the differences etc. not just paste a URL to promote it.
What you really want is feedback on your own project
But also: self-promotion is a good thing. Or I should say: a better thing. If you can't promote your own project, then you are left to use advertising. This is why advertising is so hot right now. There aren't many avenues for self-promotion.
Let people post their links and let's see where the chips fall.