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Comment by bengtan | Hacker News Reader

Hmmm ... I thought a lot about this ie. whether to include the HN link. Problem is ... when I write the newsletter, most HN links are empty or only have one or two comments.

Later on, the story reaches the front page on HN but it's a new HN link. So if I include the 'original' HN link, it's not useful to the reader, and may even mislead them into thinking there was insignificant HN discussion.

For example, I linked this story:

[Web Applications from the Future: A Database in the Browser](https://stopa.io/post/279)

in early May but it only recently garnered significant discussion a month later in early June (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27424496).

So I'm not entirely sure how to resolve this.

View on HN

You could use the “past” link that leads to Algolia search for the story.

In the case of your example https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Web%20Applications%20from%20th...

But not sure if that’s a good idea or not. Just suggesting it as one alternative to consider

I'm gonna think on how to solve this conundrum in a way that satisfies everyone. This is one data point I'll think about. Thanks for bringing it up.

But then your traffic would drive that HN discussion and then comments would appear.

Interesting. I didn't consider this.

I'm gonna think on how to solve this conundrum in a way that satisfies everyone. This is one data point I'll think about. Thanks for bringing it up.

These links are useful even if they don't have a discussion:

1. It's interesting to see that a story has been submitted many times, for instance. This can be seen by clicking on the domain name in brackets after the story

E.g., a few days ago I posted a link to Heidi Howard & Ittai Abraham's 'Raft does not Guarantee Liveness in the face of Network Faults'

It was the fourth time this 6-month-old link had been posted, each time attracting upvotes but not enough to get on the front page. (I think it usually takes about five upvotes for a story still on the first page of 'new').

https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=decentralizedthoughts...

2. Given that your newsletter mostly contains links that are less than a week old, the discussion link will still be live. You seem to think discussion is most likely to happen on a resubmitted link: I'm guessing your newsletter's readership is unlikely to be large enough to get the regular kind of front-page HN discussion going for many of the stories in your newsletter, but the opportunity to comment can still have value even if only a couple of comments are posted.

3. If a story is well-written, I generally like to glance at other things the author has written, and looking at stories that have been upvoted here on HN is often a good place to start.

I hope you think on this. On principle I think it’s wrong, but personally I care far more about any sort of discussion in general. I want some sort of link to a [higher quality] discussion or potential of one. I enjoy HN comments and the community. Trusted above others like Ars comments.

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