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Comment by brlewis | Hacker News Reader

Where is the abuse in seeking attention by using a truthful description? I think making a title that catches the attention of news.yc readers is only abuse if it does not truthfully describe the link it points to.

If there is some other reason why you don't like "YC reject" in titles (unhealthy us vs them mentality?), why not comment on the submitted article asking the submitter to edit the title? I'm not affiliated with knewjax, but it looks to me from his comments that he would be happy to comply. I think most, if not all, previously-rejected applicants who post here would do the same.

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You are right, I would comply and in my opinion the wording doesn't really matter that much. I think the readers are smart enough to understand that "Rejected YCombinator company" is the same thing as "Not Accepted Ycombinator Company" "or "YCombinator Applicant" and I do not mean any negativity with the title. It is mearly meant to highlight the fact that we are a company who submitted an application and the decision was made not to fund our company, and hopefully gain some attention from hackernews readers who might relate to that more than they would another random startup. YCombinators decision might turn out to be a good one for all I know, of course I would hope to prove otherwise by building a successful business.

At the same time I can respect PG decision to edit the title. After all one of the goals in titling my post with "YCombinator Rejected Company" is to gather more attention for our site. Can you fault me?

Because your selection of truths carries a message in itself. Compare "Bush, a Yale graduate, started a war" to "Bush, who didn't fight in Vietnam, started a war". Both statements are true. In our case, the message is more subtle, but it's still there, and it seems ego-oriented and unnecessary to me.

Where is the abuse in seeking attention by using a truthful description?

It is truthful, but it is not a description.

If the site linked to was submitted in a YC application and was not accepted, then "YC reject" is truthfully an attribute of the linked site. It is as descriptive as, say, the color scheme the site uses. You may see it as an uninteresting attribute; others may find it interesting. Voting answers the interesting/uninteresting question. What the editors do is to answer the appropriate/inappropriate question.

From your argument follows that any true statement about something is descriptive. Under that acception, my post is self contradicting.

I was relying on a less inclusive meaning of the word: to describe as in to relate intrinsic properties of something. Yes, 'intrinsic' itself is a sloppy concept defined mostly by convention, but that's true for most of our language. I'll leave it at that, apologize for my sloppy language, and appeal to common sense.

My point is that the "rejected by YC" tag doesn't add much information, certainly not enough to merit being in the title. Its main effect is attention grabbing. Those priorities are inappropriate enough for me, and I support the banning of this kind of stuff.

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