Ask PG: Getting started on HN? | Hacker News Reader

Ask PG: Getting started on HN?

8 pointscyrusradfar9 comments

I'm new and want to contributed but don't really understand the community dynamics and product.

I realize the basics around voting and the fact you shouldn't ask for or compel people to vote for content.

1.) Looks like all ASK posts don't have a link, is that a community agreed requirement

2.) When do people downvote?

3.) Are there moderators and who are they?

4.) Is sharing your own work viewed negatively?

5.) Linking vs re-posting text to HN. What do you prefer?

If people would share what they know, I'd be happy to summarize it and re-share.

Thanks! Sorry for being a noob =) But I've been waiting for someone else to ask these and haven't seen it.

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Read the FAQ: http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

Read the guidelines: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Hang around for a while and read the comments and see what the style is here.

Really helpful stuff. Realizing, I never saw those footer links!

Thanks @jgrahamc.

1) I wouldn't say community agreed so much as set by PG. But yes, it's a requirement.

2) They exercise their own judgement. The capability becomes available once you pass a deliberately non-public karma threshold that I honestly couldn't remember if I wanted to.

3) There are. I don't believe their identities are public.

4) No. At least not in general. Sharing non-interesting posts is viewed negatively.

5) For anything that exists on its own page or is longer than a paragraph or two, definitely link. I guess you can make a case for inline quoting when you just want a very short excerpt that can only be found on a long webpage.

Regarding your point 2, the min. Karma threshold is 500 to be able to downvote.

Thanks and wow! Looks like I will only be upvoting for a long while.

This is just supposition, but I believe that it is also periodically increased. It was around 200 at one point, I think.

I believe I read once that the threshold increases as membership does.

Thank you for the answers and tips! Really appreciate it @lmm.

Since you're new and looking for tips: "thanks" posts like this are seen negatively, they add noise to the conversation. If you want to express your appreciation for someone's reply it's better just to upvote it.

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