Hacker News Reader

Comment by PaulRobinson | Hacker News Reader

A great take, and thanks for your all hard work dang.

Yesterday the top comment on two stories I went to discuss had deep and meaningful content, before the last line which was a "and I talk about this stuff all the time on my newsletter [link]", and I was conflicted. Same poster each time.

The poster had done the HN thing: responded with thoughtful examination of TFA, unique and interesting insight, and I don't feel it was AI generated.

And then they marred it. They pushed something just slightly out of context. Not entirely, just a smidge.

I hope we can keep an eye on that sort of thing around here, it feels like it could slide into something...

View on HN

The appropriate place to link to your website, newsletter, whatever is on your bio page (which people have to actively click into, specifically because they want to know more about you and potentially find such links).

I agree that linking to your own work in comments is generally bad form.

Yeah, this "btw I have a newsletter here" seems overly promotional. HN as a forum doesn't have support for "signatures", then it feels a bit off to end every post with something not really relevant.

The grey area is people constantly linking to their own blog, but the linked post is relevant (example [0]). Like, it's good when people post relevant links to diver deeper, but when it's constantly your own content, that irks me a bit.

[0]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

> [0]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

simonw is a smart guy, definitely an HN darling for anything LLM related nowadays but at the same time he is constantly pushing for his personal brand, IMO. Maybe unconsciously and just because he is very prolific but still, I get that feeling.

He writes because he loves writing. People can tell, and thus like reading it. If that creates a "brand", there's not much he can do about it. He's an active, valuable, good-faith participant here, has a subject matter expertise in something HN obviously cares very deeply about, and isn't going anywhere.

Agreed. Simonw comments and posts are always on discussion and insightful. Never once have they come off as some sort of linkedin influencer bs.

I'm not denying that, in fact I think it's basically because he writes a lot and participates a lot. But yet, it can give the feeling that he is curating his own brand. But probably it's just an organic thing, not a fabricated one.

It's an extraordinarily rude thing to say about an HN regular with a long track record of constructive participation.

I don't think I have been rude at all, and also seniority does not give any special authority over opinions.

My point was that the "creating the personal brand" part - which can seem something intentional - is just a byproduct of posting, writing and contributing. And he contributes because he has knowledge, opinions and things to say.

It's like writing your own blog with good content and getting organic traffic from search engines vs writing SEO content to get traffic and get noted.

Maybe I initially expressed myself not the way I really wanted.

I'll be honest and blunt: I try to avoid his blog posts and comments as much as possible because I do find his contributions to be super spammy. It's about the frequency of his self-promotion (as a researcher in NLP it's tiresome to constantly see his self-promotion on nearly all posts on HN related to LLMs). Seems I'm not the only one.

If he posted on the ML subreddit while I was still a mod there (left after the API kerfuffle) I would have messaged him and asked him politely to tone it down.

Where by "self promotion" you mean "sharing his thoughts"?

I have no issue with simonw's work/comments; I've never gone near it because it's far afield from my non-tech world. He is, though, someone who breaks one HN guideline:

>Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity.

His submissions here are usually to his own work. Admittedly, that HN guideline is like an obscure 19th-century law which is still on the books that few know of and is never enforced. Even so, he's clearly well-regarded based on the amount of conversation his blog posts elicit.

I don't know why he would bother submitting any of his own pieces --- they're all going to get submitted anyways.

[flagged]

His LLM tool rules. I cite it too. Used it a bunch earlier this year for the municipal data work I was donig. Why wouldn't he cite it? Avoiding these kinds of mean-spirited criticisms would require him to twist himself into a pretzel. I'd rather we just all agree not to say shit like this.

Why can't the thoughts be shared here, though, instead of always a link "to read more" somewhere else?

To read my full comment to you, visit my webpage.

Looking at the examples, each one goes to a different post that is relevant to the discussion. For me that's fine.

I'd be unhappy if it's always the same link, for example to the top of his blog. Or different post to slightly related topics.

> Yesterday the top comment on two stories I went to discuss had deep and meaningful content, before the last line which was a "and I talk about this stuff all the time on my newsletter [link]", and I was conflicted. Same poster each time.

In my opinion, if they put thought into a deep and meaningful answer, then I think that's fine. If they say "Oh yeah I talked about this in my blog [link]" that's totally different.

Not a mod, but I do hope you flag comments like that. Dang is awesome, but it is user moderation that makes a giant difference.

Done.

You flagged an otherwise good comment because it linked out to a newsletter?

Not the GP, but, yeah, because it is still a form of spam.

If it's only a link to a newsletter, sure. And "signing" a comment breaks a norm here. But if it's otherwise a good comment, seems like a poor use of "flag"; one of the rare instances where maybe you want to leave a short, polite note ("don't sign off with links to your newsletter, we don't sign things here").

Flagging deprives everyone else of the comment, and is especially hostile if there's already a thread sprouting from that comment.

It's really contextual so... maybe? A good comment that just happens to do it once, likely not. But OP saw it multiple times in a short time from the same user, so probably.

Constant self promotion is what is hurting so many other platforms, I'd hate to see this one take even a step in that direction.

I have a different take. If someone uses effort to post something genuinely interesting just so they can advertise their blog, good. You don't have to click the link, and it's better than nothing (assuming other comments here aren't as interesting).

Like https://xkcd.com/810/

That is one xkcd which I feel has aged exceptionally poorly.

Cf: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46303291>.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com