

Ask HN: Is it rude/inappropriate to submit your own content? - alecbenzer

(see title)<p>Ie, linking to your own blog
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sorbus
If you think that it's good content, that people on HN would enjoy, then you
should submit it - I would rather that my upvote goes to the person who
actually wrote the content. If you get upvoted, then you were right and should
trust your judgement. If not, then either you should reconsider your
judgement, or you submitted it at a time when there aren't many people on the
site.

However, if you find yourself submitting everything you write - or that most
of your submissions are being killed, or flamed - you might want to reconsider
your judgement (or all of the stuff you're writing is enjoyed by the
community, which should be very obvious if it turns out to be the case).

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jp
Am I the only one who finds this line of thinking slightly naive ? This site
is probably gamed out of existence by sock puppets, social media experts and
old Digg users. I am just waiting for the "accidental" porn reference to hit
the front page.

There is also a ton of haters on this site who downvote full time because of
high karma from the old days. But it is better than part time haters who just
got lucky with a funny comment or TechMeme snatchup. Every time I say anything
my karma goes up and down like that girl on Jersey Shore the other night. Some
commenters get -4 while spammers get -2. Now THAT is the college effect !

Remember, all honesty is brutally punished in academia !

~~~
hluska
This is wonderfully stated - thanks for brightening my mood!

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benologist
I think it's easy to figure out - if the person's a genuine member of the
community then who cares. If like macobserver, tekgoblin and a bunch of other
sites they just treat it like a link dump, then it's spam and they're just
exploiting HN and the community for traffic and seo.

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andrewflnr
On the front page right now is a post by raganwald from his own blog blog [1].
I've seen other examples as well. If your content is worthwhile and
appropriate, it should be fine.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2837905>

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chc
I think it's best to keep ego out of it: The fact that it's yours has no
bearing either way on whether it would be appropriate to submit it. People
will appreciate good, relevant articles and they'll be turned off by mediocre
or irrelevant articles. Unless you're Zed Shaw or something, your identity
doesn't factor into most people's opinions.

A more relevant concern would be how honestly you can evaluate your own work.
If you think everything you write is golden (i.e. you simply can't view your
work critically), it's probably best to leave it to other people to submit
your deathless prose. But if you just really think a particular piece would
interest the community you're posting to, hey, it's worth a shot.

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Mizza
Of course not! That's the whole point of the upvote system. If your content is
good, it'll float. If it's spammy, it'll sink.

Well, in theory.

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rawsyntax
I think it's ok. Most of my blog posts get 3 up votes or so, but my post on
side projects got 130 [http://rawsyntax.com/post/5982784556/importance-of-
side-proj...](http://rawsyntax.com/post/5982784556/importance-of-side-
projects)

But then again, I write blog posts I feel this crowd would be interested in

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pbreit
Not necessarily but discretion is advised. Some prolific users submit their
own posts (ex: <http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=2837905>).

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ecounysis
Not at all if you feel someone in the community would find something of value
in your content. Comments are essentially one's own content and there are tons
of those around.

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glimcat
If it's worth my time, no.

If it's spam, yes.

~~~
alecbenzer
right, but how is one to know if it's worth _your_ time?

I wrote something on my blog. I think it may be interesting/insightful to
some. should I post it and let the vote system take care of whether I was
right or wrong? or am I going to get flamed for shameless self-promotion
(well, would I deserve to be flamed)?

~~~
aerique
Just try it out. It's usually very obvious whether something is spam or not.

That said, don't feel bad if your blog is interesting but doesn't make the
front page. You might be just unlucky.

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Mz
People do this all the time. I can't tell you how to judge how well it will go
over with the community. If I could figure that out, I would post links to
things I sometimes write. (I think I did that once and it wasn't in hopes of
promoting it but in hopes of getting feedback from smart people and it didn't
result in much.)

Best of luck.

