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Comment by metadat | Hacker News Reader

It's a nice idea, but I like how HN is devoid of blatantly automated posts. Reddit is full of them and it's annoying.

Dang has actually written a response to OP a few days ago, saying essentially that he understands the intention is good, and that this sort of automation is at odds with the core philosophy of HN existing to promote curiosity and interesting conversation between human beings. When a post is popular enough, the community tends to organically post the un-paywall links, making the bot unnecessary.

Imagine having machine-automated archive link posts on every NYT and WaPo submission, it would be annoying and the early comment count would become meaningless noise, not even indicating that some person found it interesting enough to dig up the archive links for.

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> but I like how HN is devoid of blatantly automated posts. Reddit is full of them and it's annoying.

This argument I understand, because as @dang said - while this bot would enhance the HN experience, once the Floodgates are allowed to open, it will have unintended consequences and lead to a worse HN experience

> this sort of automation is at odds with the core philosophy of HN existing to promote curiosity and interesting conversation between human beings.

I don't agree with that statement. Enabling easier access to the articles that are being discussed, would allow more people to participate and enhance the conversation

> it would be annoying and the early comment count would become meaningless noise

Maybe, but (a) Whats the impact of a single comment? (b) you could always prevent the bot from commenting the archive link on posts with less than N points or N comments.

That being said, I think the first point @dang made is a strong argument against the bot

would allow more people to participate and enhance the conversation

Whenever there's an access issue, someone posts a workaround. The argument for making an exception for some bot has to be stronger than 'takes something that isn't broken and fixes it so it's clunkier and noisier'. The entire premise that it's 'enabling easier access' just not well-supported by what one can easily see by reading HN threads.

> and the early comment count would become meaningless noise, not even indicating that some person found it interesting enough to dig up the archive links for.

I was on the fence, but this is the compelling argument against, IMO.

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