Hacker News Reader

Comment by sph | Hacker News Reader

No need for conspiracy. HN has its darling companies that people are really enthusiastic about, more so when they actually work really good. And karma whores know this fact and know any Tailscale article will probably hit the frontpage.

Blame the game, not the player.

I know I will click on a Tailscale post because people have said it's cool, I tried, and it is indeed cool and it feels like I'm only scratching the surface.

There is astroturfing on HN but don't forget we're a bunch of enthusiastic tech nerds. Do you complain because there is a big number of Linux or M1 posts? People really like them.

Disclaimer: not affiliated with Tailscale or any of its employees, haven't interviewed with them, not even giving them any money. I am not from a marketing or ad agency but just a lowly SWEng nerd.

View on HN

Yes I also don't want to go to the conspiracy blame game.

However as I propose to the ask HN, the HN could add a rule to impose a limit to the amount of product related articles on the front page per month (or some specific time duration). This will protect other companies in the same space and improve the quality and interest of the site.

HN has grown too big to ignore this.

So one Linux article, one Apple article…

Not really! These are not the same thing :)

It'd be more like one Apple ipods article, one Linux Debian article etc.

Does a Tailscale iOS article and a service disruption post-mortem from them count as two separate articles? They deal with different topics with potentially different audiences. What about two articles about running Debian, one on an iPod the other on a PC?

These intricacies is why we have lawyers and Reddit moderators killing your post because there is an arbitrary exception to their 15 rules you hadn't considered. We can do without these.

(This whole conversation thread reminds me of my time reading Bakunin & co. :)

You're favouring larger companies over smaller ones then, instead of what HN users actually put forth and vote on.

No thanks.

Who decides the rule? Who enforces it? Who monitors the ruler?

Let HN regulate itself. You don't like it, hide or flag it or ignore it. People will soon move onto the next shiny thing, and that time, you might be one of the enthusiastic commenters being excited about it.

The more the rules, the more ways to exploit and game the system. Not everything has to be codified.

> Let HN regulate itself.

That's not how it works today though, the moderator (dang) can move posts to and from the top of the frontpage, one example being posts about YC funded companies being artifically bumped to the top at times.

Gitlab was the same back then. Also some companies coordinate votes better than others. I think everyone else would just like to be able to do the same.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com