

Ask HN: 20+ Postings in 20 minutes of HN. Is this considered spam ? - srean
http://www.webcitation.org/5vU30ydvF

======
jasonkester
I think it's time to stop awarding karma for submitting stories. It really
doesn't make sense to do so in the first place, but I suppose it might have
helped back when the site was young.

Now, since pretty much every good story is going to end up here anyway, I
don't see any reason to reward people for posting them.

Karma for comments makes sense, since it's an actual contribution by you.
Karma for posting something you didn't even write just leads to people gaming
the system.

~~~
srean
I would not go so far as stop awarding those karma. It gives people the
incentive to post those stories and its not that just by posting one gets some
karma. It has to be liked by the community. But the quantum of karma per post
should ideally be less than that for a comment.

Karma seems more sought after than I thought. It seems there is almost a
viable market for it. _Shudder_

~~~
jasonkester
Indeed, people are here seeking karma for its own sake. That's the problem.

It's also the reason why _every single techcrunch article_ get submitted here.
There was a time where you'd see maybe one TC article a week come through,
usually with discussion as to whether it was really worth being here.

Realistically, maybe half a dozen articles per day are high enough quality to
even be submitted here. The fact that we're seeing thousands each day is a
sign that standards have fallen drastically. Removing the incentive to post
things unless they're _really good_ would go a long way toward improving the
signal to noise ratio.

~~~
srean
Your comment made me think of a scheme where a post automatically incurs a
tiny negative karma, which can be compensated and exceeded by the karma
awarded by the community. Right now we do not have any dis-incentive for
posting noise. It will make posters think twice.

However karma has to be made a float as opposed to an integer. I am curious,
do downvoters get a tiny hit for downvoting ?

~~~
secret
I agree there should be a cost for posting stories, even going so far as
preventing further submissions if you fall below a certain threshold. You
could raise your karma back up through commenting.

------
gregschlom
Couldn't help but notice that a while ago the user submitting those links
asked for the benefits of having a higher karma on HN
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2051403>).

While this is a perfectly valid question that many people have or had, it may
also indicate an interest in getting a higher karma for the sake of it,
instead of thinking about the benefits of his/her contributions to the
community.

~~~
10smom
I am a newbie and only trying to figure it ALL out. should be able to do this
without being called out for asking a newbie question.

~~~
10smom
so even my question about being a newbie get voted down. NICE!

~~~
srean
Maybe because someone who is more than 90 days on HN isn't considered a
newbie. That's plenty time to get an idea about the community. Besides, most
fair play guidelines are universal and common sense and do not really require
to be dug out from the dark.

p.s. Just in case you think so, I have not down voted any of your comments and
am newbier than you by a shade.

~~~
10smom
I asked the question because I did not know the answer. Need to ask a question
to get the answer. Sorry I have not spent 90 days on here non stop... And as I
stated in the question that was asked ( many days ago.. Geez), I did search
FAQ before I asked.

~~~
srean

      > so even my question about being a newbie get voted down. NICE!
    

Is not a question. That's what I was referring to. You will get the context
from the indentation level. And yeah I hope :-) that not everyone has been on
the site everyday since the day their account was "created".

~~~
10smom
Ok I am taking notes: when you have, enough point to do so down vote all
newbies who are learning the ropes and discourage them from feeling welcome or
posting. Right? That is a question by the way.

~~~
ErrantX
You made a fuck up. Some people tried to help, others piled on a little
strong.

Bottom line is; things are a bit different around here (as well as much the
same as any other community). Accept you screwed up, read the advice and take
it away. Getting upset at blunt replies isn't really going to help (you or
anyone else). Getting mad about the downvotes, even less so. Starting threads
moaning about flamewarring etc. is even worse ;)

Don't worry about it. We all make mistakes. Now you've had a crash course in
some of the rules and ettitquete.

No one is out to get you.

I would ignore this entire thread from now on if I were you. There is little
else constructive to be added. I suspect a mod will kill it off reasonably
soon.

------
phwd
This is very unwelcoming and an attack to the individual. Not taking any sides
really but the way how you worded the post.

"20 in 20" sounds like you wanted a winning headline (which I guess is the
case)

Please stop scolding the user for trying something out of the norm. It just
means one will have to take a bit more effort to go back the first page of
<http://news.ycombinator.com/newest> (click the more link... some more).

You can also tell the user that comments hold more value for a person than
posting links.

It is like twitter for some people at first you try to mimic the big guys as
fast and as abundant as possible but after a while you "get" the system.

Give the user some time o0. These guidelines are taken as advice no? After all
this is just an experiment. Stop smothering the small guys, we are people too
:)

~~~
10smom
Thanks so much. I needed to read this after the not stop down votes I have
been getting. NO matter what I post.

~~~
semanticist
Perhaps you should consider changing what you post, then? Most of the comments
you've left have exactly the same style/tone, and it's a very self-serving and
self-entitled one.

It might be better to listen for a while and stop posting more comments
complaining about down-voting - the more of those you post the worse your
average score will be (because you can be sure that a comment complaining
about down-voting will never be voted up much).

------
bdfh42
The suite guide would indicate that this is considered "bad form".

------
smoyer
I do ... one of the nice things about HN is the quality of its human filter!

But to address the cumulative comments made by 10smom below, here's the
snippet from her profile - "I am a Female, self funded, Startup Entrepreneur".
From what I've seen lurking around here for a year or so, you're best bet is
to ask for feedback on your start-up. You'll either get accolades or at least
constructive criticism but I strongly doubt you'll get into an argument like
this one.

If you're thick-skinned enough to be an entrepreneur, I'm sure you can forget
about this thread ... let's just start over as though we'd never met you.

And if you're worthy of karma, people will realize that over time and you'll
get it. I started following patio11 a long time before he was a rising karma
star, but if you read his comments here and his blog at
<http://www.kalzumeus.com>, you'll realize why he has (and deserves) so much
respect.

Pleased to meet you 10smom!

------
srean
Or take a look here

<http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=10smom>

~~~
10smom
Y combinator encourage posting news by their rating system. Nothing wrong here
by doing exactly what YC encourages. Why not post if I find good news? They
even make it extremely easy by their bookmarklet. Also it gives me a great way
to keep good news in one place: my profile! :)

~~~
rms
Generally the unspoken rule here is that if you are taking up most of /newest
you are posting too much. Sorry that's unintuitive; it's quite weird that
Hacker News has lots of secret rules.

~~~
zppx
It's not a secret, it's in the guidelines.

~~~
rms
:) Great. <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

------
geoffw8
Whoah, the whole of newest is this guy. Moreso, what on earth is web-citation?
Apart from a tad annoying!

~~~
maushu
Think Google Cache. He used it since that page is always changing.

~~~
geoffw8
Ahh I see. Makes sense, very clever. HN should have the same sort of thing
that Techmeme has. Clever stuff, that.

------
10smom
If you notice most of the news is CES 2011 and thought it was worth while info
to post. LOts of news coming out right now from CES. Do a search you too will
find a ton of new stuff since I posted. Feel free to post! I promise I will
not call you out. :)

~~~
rlpb
If you want to post something about CES 2011 that you think would be of
interest to hackers, do it, but pick ONE item that you think is the best and
submit that.

If that one item doesn't make it to the front page, then you confirm that
others don't have interest in the other not-as-good items, so don't submit
those.

------
10smom
OK so, Now I am getting the system: Flame A person for being a newbie, Collect
as many up points as you can by doing so then, follow that newbie around and
down vote everything they post? Do I have that straight? I just want to be
sure.

~~~
sebg
Careful... You are bordering on being inflammatory with your sarcastic
questions. Having read all of your posts/replies, you are close to what people
would call a troll.

From wikipedia - In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory,
extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online
discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking
other users into a desired emotional response[1] or of otherwise disrupting
normal on-topic discussion.

As I am sure this is not the intention you have, please be a bit more careful.
We are all friends here. No need for sarcastic questions or inflammatory
messages.

------
peterhi
The problem is that we are (mostly) programmers and the temptation to automate
this sort of thing is quite overwhelming :)

Well we use tools to automate the reading of this site, why not the posting
too?

~~~
srean
Sure I can bulk dump entries from my feed reader to HN, but that doesn't mean
I should, right ?

------
drtse4
Definitely. And regarding karma, for me the only karma that "counts" is the
messages one, the ones who only dump links on HN without commenting further
are on the wrong site, imho.

------
JonnieCache
This probably results from a collision of the submission bookmarklet and an
RSS reader, perhaps combined with someone's massive morning cup of coffee.

------
J3L2404
"Please don't submit so many links at once that the new page is dominated by
your submissions"

PG

