
Ask HN: Impact of of [dead] links on submitter privileges - larryfreeman
I have great respect for Hacker News.  I visit the site every day and have tried my best to contribute to the high quality of the site.<p>I posted on HN when I quit my corporate job (id=209576).  I've posted about my time at Sun (1999-2007) and about my experience as a manager.  I've attend start up school numerous times and have really enjoyed the experience.<p>I tell you all this because I want to make it clear that I am a real person here and not someone who has tried to promote their start up or do any kind of spam.  In this question, I will not post any links directly that go outside of HN.<p>HubPages is now a site that has been blacklisted at Hacker News (For the record, I still a big fan of HubPages even though I stopped working there in February).  All the links that I submitted from HubPages are now marked [dead] even though they work fine.  To be clear, I do not have any problem with this.  Hacker News has been maintaining a high quality of content for news stories.  I understand that this is part of what happens.<p>I understand why the links have been marked [dead].  HubPages is a user generated web site and as such, many of its users have used whatever means to promote their links.  This has resulted in low quality submissions and spammers and that's why HubPages has been uniformly blocked.  Wikipedia also has HubPages blocked (An editor at Wikipedia did eventually approve links I posted to blog.hubpages.com because they saw that they were relevant to the article on HubPages).<p>I write this because I want to make clear that all the links I posted here were to blog.hubpages.com and were to links to blog posts that I wrote and which I hoped would be interesting to the audience on HN.  These were my views on the trends in the social content space.<p>None of the stories I submitted got any above a 1 rating.  This may because it was linked to HubPages.  This may be because the content is my stories was judged not to be too interesting.  I accept those judgments.  It is those judgments which makes Hacker News such a great site!  After getting enough of those nonresponses, I stopped submitting any of my blog posts to HN.<p>My question is how does having [dead] links in your submissions affect your status at HN?  I ask this because it seems to me to be a mark of shame to have it, as if I've been labeled a spammer.  I think if someone has a large number, that should penalize them.  I have 7 of them at present.<p>I thought that it might be valuable to ask this question since other people active on this site, especially user-generated web sites will hit issues of web site reputation.  If a link that we post becomes [dead], does this have any effect on the user?  Will this person automatically be denied if they apply to start up school?  Is there any process for getting a change in status to [dead] links?<p>Is there a list anywhere of all the web sites that are currently blocked on HN?<p>Thanks very much<p>-Larry
======
iamelgringo
Hey.

I've been on the leader board for quite some time, and I occasionally and
inexplicably have some of my posts declared [dead]. I suspect that sometimes I
hit against a x_num_posts/hour wall, or that I occasionally hit up against a
blocked domain.

Needless to say, I'm still on the leader board, I've been to startup school a
couple of times, and I haven't seen any deleterious effects.

There is no appeal process on HN, mainly because PG is the admin, and he's got
more important stuff to do.

Also... There's a lot more to startup life than HN. Move out here to Silicon
Valley, start attending local events like <http://www.hackersandfounders.com>
or 106 miles and get plugged in. And, more importantly, build up real life
karma points in person, rather than on HN.

~~~
larryfreeman
Hi iamelgringo,

Thanks very much for the link to HackersandFounders, that looks great! I live
in Silicon Valley so I will start attending as I can.

------
jcr
Larry, first of all don't worry about it. There is stuff that I find
interesting, but no one else around here does. Maybe it speeds past unnoticed,
or maybe it's of no interest to anyone but me. There is no way to tell either
way.

I rarely make submissions, and I rarely post, but I read, vote and flag here
constantly. It takes a lot of reading to get a feel for what others here
generally consider interesting and find the overlap with your own interests.

I have one [dead] post and seeing it in my list _still_ makes me laugh. The
reason why it's dead is simply my sense of humor got the better of me, and
oddly enough, it was upvoted a few times before being flagged to death.

If HubPages is a source of spam, move your blog elsewhere.

If you're worried about the [dead] submissions in your profile, put a link to
this submission in the text of your profile so people know the reason for the
[dead] submissions. I don't know of a person who would hold them against you,
but the system running HN is a different story.

As for your questions on the effects that [dead] posts have on users of the HN
system, sadly you're asking for dangerous information. Hacker News runs on a
lot of secret sauce to prevent abuse, so PG will not divulge how it works to
prevent the rules from being gamed. Even those with reasonably well researched
theories about the secret sauce won't talk about it if they have any respect
for PG or everyone else on HN.

For this reason, I won't even speculate about what [dead] posts might or might
not mean to the system. I hope you understand why.

~~~
larryfreeman
Hi jcr,

Thanks for the response. To be clear, the blog was the HubPages official blog.
I used to be an engineer there.

I completely understand about the secret sauce at HN. I just wanted to check
to see if there was something I could do.

I'm always amazed at how well HN runs as a PG part-time project so even if
there is an impact on me, I accept it.

I've attended start up school enough times, that if I don't get to attend
again, that's ok. Maybe it's time for me to be successful enough to be a
speaker. :-)

------
shii
Hmm, for some reason jawartak's comment below is dead, maybe he deleted it or
it's been killed for some reason. Anyways:

    
    
       jawartak 41 minutes ago | link [dead]
    
       Here's the list: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=499044 It's a bit old, though.

------
pitdesi
I'm having a similar issue, with links from our startup. Sometimes folks have
submitted links from us that probably aren't meant for the HN crowd, but we
definitely also write a lot of stuff that might be useful to HN folks. For
example, someone submitted this blogpost of ours a couple of days ago - 5
reasons to quit your corporate job and join a startup:

[http://feefighters.com/blog/5-reasons-to-leave-the-
corporate...](http://feefighters.com/blog/5-reasons-to-leave-the-corporate-
world-and-join-a-startup/)

Seemingly very relevant to HN, yet it was instantly marked [dead], and we have
no idea why. I tried submitting it too, and the same thing happened.

Can someone explain? We're active members of the community, as is obvious from
our posts/comments. Many of our feefighters posts have been on the front page
for an extended period of time... see:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2235710>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2310154>

etc... but now all of our posts are blacklisted.

Anyone? Anyone?

~~~
jcr
I can explain it, but don't consider my explanation authoritative, or for that
matter accurate. The problem is the format of your writing. It's essentially
indicating low quality content and is using link bait titles. --I know this is
not a very nice thing to say, but it is not intended as an insult, and there's
very good reason to say it...

<http://paulgraham.com/nthings.html>

Additionally, you should reread the guidelines for hacker news:

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

> If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective,
> we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to
> "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is
> meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."

The problem you face is if you get flagged by enough HN users for violating
the guidelines, the site gets automatically black listed.

~~~
pitdesi
That makes sense... Except that I've seen a lot of those on the front page (5
ways to X)

But I agree that it makes sense to crop it. Thanks for a refresher on the
guidelines.

~~~
jcr
Ya, some occasionally get through but considering PG took the time to write an
essay on the topic, you can see why they're discouraged, and hence,
problematic as submissions. I'm sorry if I was a bit to blunt in my
explanation but I lacked the panache to find a nicer way to phase it and still
get the important parts across.

