Comment by acangiano | Hacker News Reader

Comment by acangiano | Hacker News Reader

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Warning: my reply is a bit strong, but it's aimed at the community and not at your, relatively mild, complaint.

I have an issue with the way people define "spam" as anything they don't like. Spam is a real and serious problem, and we dilute the importance of fighting it when we call anything remotely commercial as spam.

A blog has the right to make money. How? Typically ads and affiliate offers. As long as there is disclosure for both, I see nothing wrong with their use. OP wrote a review of a product and then submitted it to HN. People liked the review and therefore up-voted it. I think that's totally fair. Or are you suggesting that the OP is gaming the site?

The lack of comments may be explained by the fact that people didn't have much to add about the product, they are afraid of being labelled as SEO people, or they are simply toying with SEOmoz after reading the review.

HN-Books.com looks like a site dedicated to (mostly) book reviews. I don't see 10 posts a day from it, so I think it's totally okay.

I'm not crazy about bit.ly either in principle (for the reasons that you said) but again, the OP is definitely within his rights to use that service if he wants. Redirect links can be used for tracking purposes, for convenience, or very honestly for increasing one's conversions rates. Even in the latter case, I fail to see a problem with it.

If you don't like the content, ignore it (and if it's bona fide spam, then flag it by all means). If you like the content, but not the conditions under which it is provided, use AdBlock and don't click on the links. Screaming "spam" every time "commercial-ish" blog entries are posted is uncharacteristic and unbecoming of a community of entrepreneurs.

It would be one thing if it was a book review. This is a product pitch page for $99/month SEO monitoring software.

A post I would like to see is how a minimal amount of search engine knowledge + Google analytics can help you more than a $1188/year on an SEO app.

Nobody is trying to "pitch" you anything. Take a look in the search tab on the page: this is a product that people on this site already recommend to each other.

The whole purpose of the site was to take things you were already recommending to each other, write up a comprehensive review, put all the information available in one place, and then provide links to get it if you want. The article clearly states that you can do this without using the tool. It also states you can use the tool for free.

The purpose of HN, last I checked, was for people to try out different things and share them with each other. I don't mind criticism. If you have it, bring it. I criticize people all of the time. I want to do better. Please tell me how I'm screwing up.

But when you criticize somebody, the point is to help them make their work better. I am doing this to help the community. If you don't like it, tell me what I can do to help the community in a better way. You want more of a warning about outgoing links? Fine. You want free ebooks reviewed? Fine. You want step-by-step instructions on how to use tools that startups use? Fine. Don't want any kind of commercial activity? Fine, go ahead and suggest it, but I'm going to tell you to go climb a tree. But don't just throw out snarky comments and imply things that aren't true about somebody's else's character and reason for doing something. That really sucks.

I have thought about the proper tone for my reviews for some time, and I posted a long blog article about my ethics and what appeared on hn-books or not ( http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2011/02/media-morals-...) To summarize, I only talk about things you guys already use and like, and I only choose things that have a great reputation in the community. That means that there aren't going to be many negative reviews. That doesn't mean I'm pumping, or pitching, or anything else. I'm simply sharing. It is the nature of the site to collect the best of the best.

This thing is a hobby for me. Last I checked, there's a voting system right up top there for things on HN you don't like. So use it. Why so much ugliness? We're supposed to be helping each other. I post something in good faith and folks tell me I'm using bit.ly to hide affiliate links? That I'm reviewing a tool so I can "pitch" it? Come on, guys. We can do better than this.

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