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Comment by sbashyal | Hacker News Reader

Shameless plug - visualize this or any other hacker news polls using HN Charts http://hnlike.com/hncharts/chart/?id=6573796

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I appreciate your desire for humility, but I hate the "shameless plug" thing. Let's all try to avoid it - showing people something you built that, in any imaginable way, could be useful isn't shameful - it's awesome. If the person doesn't understand it, they can ask you - it's the best way to ever get intro'd to anything.

Great stuff!

> I appreciate your desire for humility, but I hate the "shameless plug" thing.

Though I don't hate it myself, I see your point. I think affiliation should always be mentioned though, e.g. by "(full disclosure: I made this)".

Doesn't shameless plug mean that he is in fact unashamed? Or does it have an implied meaning opposite of the literal meaning? Or perhaps somewhere in between, that he believes he should be ashamed but is not? I've always been a bit confused about this particular idiom.

Good point - it means he's being shameless, but being aware of it implies he's somewhat ashamed.

The term comes from people who would shamefully post their content, posing as someone else unassociated with their product/idea/etc.

He or she, I mean

He. I looked him up before I wrote my comment.

Or it.

I used shameless plug more as a means to imply I am associated with the project. The phrase probably roots from the general tendency of hackers to feel ashamed of promoting their own work?

Yeah, hackers use it more than some because they're a bit more ashamed. The community makes you feel that way sometimes though - I don't think you have any reason to. Thanks for sharing!

The phrase doesn't come from hackers--everyone uses it.

I've seen a few cases of people posting their own projects on HN without a disclaimer and receiving some really rude comments. Saying "disclaimer: I made this" instead of "shameless plug" sounds better IMO, but that doesn't seem to make people respond in a better way.

All of this seems a little funny and counterintuitive. We are a community of people who love coding for fun and developing these types of side projects, yet in comments, where the majority of us are heard, sharing your own relevant projects isn't exactly welcomed.

Yes, there are "ShowHN" posts, which are great, but it's more difficult to be heard through this avenue unless you're lucky enough to make it to the front page.

Nice, thanks! I didn't find one on your page, so I made a quick bookmarklet to open the chart:

  javascript:id=document.location.href.match(/id=(\d+)/)[1];document.location='http://hnlike.com/hncharts/chart/?id='+id

Edit: rewritten to open it in a new tab:

  javascript:(function(){var id=document.location.href.match(/id=(\d+)/)[1];url='http://hnlike.com/hncharts/chart/?id='+id;var w=window.open(url, '_blank'); w.focus();})()

Awesome. You should feel no shame.

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