
"Rate My Startup" Post Policy - pg
"Rate My Startup" posts have increased dramatically in the
last couple months, to the point where spammers started to
post links with "Rate My Startup" prepended.  Obviously we 
can't just allow any newly-created account to post a link
to any site, no matter how offtopic it would otherwise be,
with the claim that it's their startup (or weekend project,
or whatever).  And yet I would not want to ban RMS             
posts entirely.  We need some way to separate legit ones,
and it seems like the simplest policy is to allow them 
from established accounts but not newly created ones.<p>I'd been planning to consider ways to embody this in the software, maybe with a new type of item that (like polls) had a karma threshold, but I've been postponing dealing
with it till I was done reading YC applications.  In the meantime
for the past several weeks I've been killing RMS posts that
weren't from established accounts.<p>I really need to get back to reviewing applications, since today
is the last day.  In a couple days I'll revisit the matter.
======
tptacek
Jiminy! People: he's just saying _I'm too busy to fix this the right way
today, so you'll all have to make do with this band-aid_.

Can we stop with the star-crossed imaginings of startup questions lost to the
ages because of karma thresholds? If you have a real product you want to rate,
and you can't post it, just find someone who posts regularly and who has their
contact info in their profile. Then: _send them an email and ask for help_.

If that's too much of a hurdle for you, I have some bad news for you about
entrepreneurship...

~~~
mixmax
If you _do_ have a startup and are new to the site you're welcome to send me
an e-mail (it's in my profile). I don't mind spending a few minutes looking
through your site and posting an RMS on your behalf if everything is legit.

Be aware that I'll look on archive.org to see whether your site has been up
for five years :-)

~~~
paulnelligan
emailing you now, thanks

------
markkat
I don't think it is unreasonable to ask people to invest time in the community
before they can request the community to invest time evaluating their product.

~~~
nickfromseattle
As a non-technical, first time entrepreneur I am finding it difficult to add
value to HN. I have been lurking for ~6 months, a member for 1 month and I
made my first post yesterday.

With that said, I have learned a ton here and HN is easily the best resource I
have ever found on any subject.

edit:

Potential solution: require participation in other user's RMS before you can
post your own RMS. Even though I am non technical and don't have much
entrepreneurial experience, I can still give an opinion from the view of a
customer.

~~~
dkokelley
Surely you have a background in something unique or interesting, that others
here don't have. At the very least, you have your perspective. I don't think
it's difficult to provide insightful, valuable content to HN, in both
submissions and comments. I've noticed that the topics here tend to rotate
over time (meaning one week is all hard core programming, and the next week is
boot strapping). Also, check out the new section, where the submissions tend
to be more varied (in my experience). Find a topic or two that you have
something to contribute to and comment on it.

~~~
natep
(not grandparent, but similar situation) I've been here for a while, and I
think it is difficult to participate at a level that gets lots of karma. I
limit by intake of HN with the "Hacker News 100" feed, so that you all can
filter my content for me (I'm going to miss good articles anyways, so I might
as well not miss the popular ones). This also means that most things have
already been said, or the conversation is dead, and even if I asked a great
question, I wouldn't get a response.

This hasn't really bothered me, until the average karma/post started getting
shown, which showed me that I get upvotes on less than half the things I say.
Now that pg is also pointing out the correlation between new accounts and
undesirables, I'm worried about...something (not sure what).

------
kyro
I can definitely imagine lurkers creating accounts to show off their latest
project, so auto-killing posts from newly created accounts doesn't seem like
the best way.

Perhaps make it policy that all RMS submissions be text submissions explaining
the idea to give it a bit of authenticity, and every RMS submission with a
link in the title be auto-killed. I don't imagine spammers would go through
the effort of writing out a description of their service, asking for feedback,
etc. Also, adjusting the flag threshold to 5 on text submissions could help.
People tend to be more accepting and less likely to flag text submissions
because the chances of them being spam are less likely (due to a higher degree
of effort put into them as opposed to linking to some affiliate site), so a
reduced flagging threshold might get rid of those submissions more quickly.

~~~
pg
If there was an established rule about who got to submit RMS posts, lurkers
would know that and create accounts.

~~~
pmjordan
An option might be to send RMS posts from users with low karma into a
slashdot-esque crowdsourced moderation. Randomly show it to 10 users with a
high enough karma on any of the list pages (frontpage, newest, classic, etc.).
It's then only made public if a high percentage of such "moderators" approve
of it (not necessarily counting "approval" as an upvote, just meaning "this is
legit"). The percentage could be pretty high, say 80%, and it could optionally
be log(karma)-weighted or similar. 100% might be risky; I have no idea.

I have to say I'm not a huge fan of the slashdot moderation system in general,
but it could work within this sort of limited scope. Allow people to opt-out
altogether via a setting if necessary.

Tangent: I was amazed at the first spammy RMS submission I encountered. It had
actually been upvoted. Spammers self-upvoting, or people wholesale upvoting
any RMS they see without looking at it first?

~~~
LiveTheDream
Rating without looking at the underlying content is horrible. Perhaps it could
be mitigated by tracking if the link was followed, weighting authenticated
upvotes more heavily than unauthenticated ones (where "authenticated" means a
click-through to the content was observed).

You could track a link click either by setting a cookie client-side with
javascript, or by linking to a trampoline page on HN that tracks the click,
then redirects to the real URL.

~~~
teach
I have, on occasion, voted up a link on HN without clicking through _iff_ I
have already read the article in question on, say, reddit. (I mouseover to
make sure it's the same URL, though, and not just title and domain.)

------
bdittmer
What constitutes an established account? I rarely comment on posts but have
had an account for 2.5+ years and regularly upvote posts and comments. Is my
account "established"?

~~~
jakestein
I have no first hand knowledge, but I would be surprised if a 2.5 year old
account with 250 of karma (like you do) is not considered established enough
for this purpose.

~~~
andre3k1
What about a 2.5 year old account with no karma? You'd be surprised at how
many lurkers there are. I know quite a few (and was one myself up until a
short while ago).

EDIT: added emphasis

~~~
scottnyc
I as well. I've been 'lurking' on hacker news for almost two years. It doesn't
mean I don't want to participate, it's just that whenever I do have something
to say it's typically been addressed already by another user (the topics I'd
probably post on are the hot-topics that draw more eyes.) And I'd rather not
add redundancy to comments. To me the natural game mechanics that arise from
'gunning for karma' by being first to post (relevantly) takes a lot of effort.

~~~
David
That's basically where I'm at (speaking of redundancy).

I'm usually afraid to say something wrong, since I know that there are always
experts on the topic of the post. It makes more sense to me to let said
experts explain a particular topic than to possibly disseminate wrong
information, even though I might have a useful perspective to add.

~~~
patd
People shouldn't be afraid to say something wrong. If you say something wrong,
people should correct you and everyone will learn (including readers that
don't know anything about the subject).

The issue is if people that see that you're wrong, instead of correcting you,
just downvote you. In my opinion, a wrong statement should not be buried with
downvotes, it should stay at 1 point with a reply that corrects it and that
get a lot of upvotes.

------
RealGeek
So a hacker who has been reading HN everyday while coding his product, but
does not post often; is not allowed to post RMS anymore?

~~~
wushupork
I'm in your boat. I read HN pretty religiously but don't have much time to
comment or follow up on comments. Every time I even think about doing that I'd
almost always rather spend more time obsessing about my product. Thus I barely
have any karma points. But every once in a while, I like to post my latest
project.

~~~
blahedo
You "barely have any karma points"?? Your profile says you have 453... that's
going to be far, far, far over any threshold pg is likely to set.

------
petercooper
Block _any_ submissions from accounts with under 10 (or similar) karma. A tiny
amount to earn through comments but enough for nearly all spammers not to
bother. There are enough users on HN submitting things now without pandering
to those who can't even post a few insightful comments.

------
codeglomeration
An effective way of dealing with spammers is letting the community moderate
it. You can add a "Mark as spam" link to every post and only make it visible
to users with a certain amount of karma or whatever metric. Basically giving
trusted members the option to moderate.

On top of that, record the IP address of the poster, and display the post but
only to the spammer. Basically hiding it from everybody else. The spammer will
think the post is still active. Everybody else will not see it.

------
mickdarling
i think this XKCD points out the issue rather well. <http://xkcd.com/810/>

Is there any kind of captcha on the submission for RMS? If not perhaps a
direct link to the other RMS's and a requirement to post there.

~~~
djtumolo
Agree. Also add a moderation queue. It doesn't go live as an RMS unless you
pass either captcha + moderation or karma check. A great way to gain karma
would be to review the moderation queue.

~~~
LiveTheDream
How do you stop spammers from building up their karma by reviewing that
moderation queue by upvoting their own spammy submissions?

~~~
jackolas
Meta-moderation? But thats a lot of effort, and you'd really have to want to
see feedback.

------
jjclarkson
I don't have a startup but dreams of doing it dance in my head. After reading
this and realizing that I could miss out on the benefits of the hn community
when the time comes because I've just lurked for the past 700 days, I'm
logging in now to get more involved. Not sure if that's the result @pg would
like to see, but that's how this policy strikes me. Hopefully others like me
can figure out when to lurk and when to speak.

------
moe
But how are "rate my startup" posts different from any other posts?

I mean, if you invent special treatment for RMS-posts then why wouldn't the
spammers simply go back to submitting their stuff without that prefix?

~~~
pg
They're different because they can be to sites that would otherwise be
offtopic.

------
j_baker
I see a few things happening: we've got a separate link for "Ask HN" topics,
another one was created for "offer HN" topics, and now we're talking about
having one for RMS topics.

Perhaps it's time for a more generic categorizing system of some kind? You
could make it so that people can't post in certain categories without meeting
a certain karma threshold.

------
ryanto
I am a total HN lurker (read HN every night before bed). I think I have 2
posts total, and a whopping 3 karma. I was just about to login and make a RMS
post for a weekend project I just completed.

Then I read this thread and I am going to hold back. I do not want to make a
post that you would delete.

I really enjoy HN and I can see the need for me to give back to the community
before I can post. However, posting/writing/articulating has never really been
my strong point. Writing a public post like this is a huge process for me
(rereading, spell checking, editing)... A simple post can take me 20-30
minutes to write.

Instead of posting, I find other ways to give back to HN. I actually read the
new queue and upvote interesting / non spam items. This is something I enjoy.
I wish those metrics could be weighed into who can post a RMS and not just
karma. That might be asking for way too much.

------
Kaizyn
Paul, I understand that you consider Hacker News your baby and are loathe to
relinquish some control over it. However, because you have other obligations
that are more pressing than playing with the News.YC code, maybe it is time to
start considering moving this "site" in the direction of well-established open
source projects. The Python model in particular comes to mind as reasonable.

As issues arise on the site, some form of public debate on the issue ensues
and someone is tasked with implementing the change to the Arc/Hacker News site
code based on the final approved solution. You give the submitted patch a
careful look over and once everything is satisfactory, it goes live on the
site. Just something to think about.

------
kamechan
not suggesting that HN should copy other sites out there... but twitter and
the like have a "report as spam" feature.

this, in conjunction with a min karma requirement, could possibly be a useful
tool to enact more drastic measures towards combatting spam on the HN site. no
idea what form this would take. enough "report as spam" votes by high-level
users might ban the user directly, or maybe just generate an email to some
administrative review process that would make the final decision.

i, too, have noticed a recent surge RMS posts and, though i'm a newcomer to
the site myself, find them rather annoying as well.

of course there are probably RMS posts being generated by well-intentioned HN
readers who aspire to be an active part of the community but lack a firm
history of contributions at the time they make them. it seems like there are
also people who try to game the system looking for a cheap, but highly
visible, promotion. even if that's not the case, asking the community to
review one's ideas before an individual has made any significant contributions
to the community seems contrary to the notion of "karma".

for what it's worth, i'll do my part to not clog up the feed with
premature/shameless RMS posts :D

------
araneae
Is this a request for input?

I personally haven't come across any "rate my start-up" posts I'd considered
spammy, but maybe that's because the measures that are currently being taking
have been effective (marking as dead, lack of upvotes for spammy posts).
Mostly I've only seen that kind of spam in comments.

As for RMS posts in general, I really enjoy seeing what other people have
done. So I would be opposed to an outright or unnecessarily restrictive ban.

~~~
akkartik
I suspect it's at least partly a heads-up in case a reasonable story was
mistakenly killed.

------
andreas_bak
I like to see others people work. Sometimes RMSes are linking to things that
are just weekend small projects, but still it is nice to publish them and ask
for opinions of other members.

I think that spam posts will disappear in few minutes from the frontpage,
because nobody votes them up. In this case a kind of collaborative filtering
by HN community will do its work.

I believe that by not allowing new users to submit links is a radical
approach. There are many kinds of users, for example I crated this account
recently (because I lost my old password and did not find a way to recover
it). Usually I visit this page 2-3 times a week just for reading. By
forbidding new users to post the community will be divided in two classes "the
privileged one" (those who have time to read and write comments) and "the
rest" (no write access, because probably they do not have enough time for
writing comments (my case)).

I think that "classical" approaches will minimize the spam. For example
CAPTCHAS will stop spam-bots. And throwaway accounts may be limited by
verifying email addresses of members.

------
dbingham
As someone who posted one of those RMSs that got closed, I understand your
reasoning but am not pleased with the execution.

My RMS was not spam. I'd been participating on the site and had posted
feedback to multiple RMSs posted by other people. I only had 50 karma, because
many of those RMS posts never made it to the front page or ever got more than
a few comments.

I was already getting great and very useful feedback on my own RMS and it had
spent some time on the front page with about 23 upvotes. Then it was closed
with out warning. I never received an e-mail - or a comment telling me why it
was closed. Only that commenting to it was suddenly shut off.

Five seconds would have shown that my RMS was not spam. Reading the comments
alone would have shown that. At the very least, I think users posting with in
what appears to be the current rule of things deserve the courtesy of a
comment or e-mail explaining why their post was killed.

What is the karma threshold or an RMS post?

------
jpmc
As a fellow hacker in the trenches I like to see what others are doing. The
rate my startup posts are a great way to see what is going on and some of the
current trends. I have learned a lot from the posts, not only evaluating the
site myself but the feedback that is received. Some of it has been spammy or
half-baked. Maybe a karma threshold is in order. Better yet as a site of
mentors maybe a RMS should be sponsored by a “senior” member. Karma of the
sponsor would be on the line if it is spam as judged by his down voting peers
but share the rewards of karma if it is a worthy site.

------
AlexC04
Sounds fair.

I'm glad my recent 'weekend project' got through. I've implemented the
majority of the feedback I've gotten and like my site a lot more now. What's
more is my "I made $1" multiplied to the point where it paid for the domain
and a month of hosting & a little bit more.

There's still a few weeks work before I could call my redesign 'finished' but
I'm really looking forward to the point where I can post another follow up and
show off all the value HN has given me. Quality advice is really just
invaluable.

RMS (weekend project) posts are what gave me the inspiration to do them
myself.

------
Stevenup7002
Perhaps you could add a moderation queue for RMS posts from users below a
certain karma? It would kinda suck to completely block ALL of the RMS posts
from new users.

------
netmau5
I'm working on an app (www.sparkmuse.com) to handle some of these "Rate My
Startup" type posts. I'm hoping it will go to beta with the November Launch
Group, but it will probably be a bit later because of the irl job. Anywho, I
don't want to steal pg's thunder, so if you guys have any ideas for more
specific "Rate My Startup" features apart from the HN format, please let me
know.

------
kleiba
Oh boy... it took me almost a minute to resolve RMS to "Rate My Startup"... I
guess I've been working with FLOSS for too long already ;-)

------
sainib
I think if a conclusion is made about the policy posting them somewhere easily
noticible will really help readers like me. I was a passsive reader for this
site for a while before I signed up which was also to get feedback on my site.
I see the point about spammers and think its fair to ask readers to contribute
but just that the policy should be clear to new users

------
arihant
Why not create a peer review, recommendation type system? To post an RMS post,
you need an "OK" vote worth 1000 karma points. If you have more than 1000, you
can post. If not, you need to to show your post to other people you know or
met in HN and if they "OK" vote it, their karma gets added to your post's
karma tally.

People can "OK" vote your RMS post by visiting your profile.

------
phr
I'd rather see a fairly low karma and a few weeks or months account age
thresholds, but then I'm biased, being mostly a lurker here.

~~~
wccrawford
Spammers would just create accounts months in advance, and then use them when
they mature. They're not above that sort of thing for high-traffic sites like
this.

~~~
pg
In fact they do it constantly.

------
duck
I have been collecting RMS type posts for my weekly Hacker Newsletter and I
have seen exactly what PG is referring to. The numbers have been increasing
and the quality of the bottom half of posts are questionable. I've done some
pruning as I curate them and was planning on raising the bar more. Seems like
a great idea for everyone.

------
bambax
Many answers to this new policy proposals mention some version of the argument
that _if you don't participate, you shoudn't be able to solicit the help of
others_.

While this is true to some extent, it undervalues the fact that RMS posts
create value for everyone, since the comments are then available for everyone
(not just the poster).

------
dpcan
Maybe new accounts can submit RMS posts if established users "second" and
"third" the submission, validating it.

I do think new users with real startups can really benefit from the community,
and there should still be a way to submit them before their startup isn't a
startup anymore while they're taking their time generating karma.

------
petervandijck
So this is structured procrastination in action?
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/1fe/antiakrasia_technique_structured...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/1fe/antiakrasia_technique_structured_procrastination/)
:)

------
mark-r
I signed up for HN over 2 years ago, made one post, then promptly forgot my
login. I've tried on a few occasions to remember, but this is the incentive I
needed to finally figure it out - thanks.

------
enan
Wouldn't allowing downvotes on submissions (or a spam flag a la craigslist)
solve this problem?

Long time lurker so I had to create an account to post this. I wonder if there
has been a spike in sign ups today :)

------
noodle
how about you just disallow all frontpage submissions until a certain karma
level? make people comment before they're allowed to submit links or text
content, since those are the easiest to game.

comments are easier for the community to moderate and its easier to pick out
spammier ones, since they're clearly off topic or include random inappropriate
links.

~~~
pg
Because then spammers would start to post comments instead, and those are
harder to catch.

~~~
noodle
are they? we kind of tend to smash down comments that are even slightly off
topic or non-contributory.

they might sneak in on the less popular submissions, but i kind of feel like
it won't get by any more of a problem than it already is. if comments were
more a effective way to spam, they'd already be a problem.

alternatives: disallow links in comments until a certain karma/age. disallow
both comments and submissions (ha) until you've voted on enough statistically
different things. make it a game by creating a new metric that people can be
measured on based on the number of spammers they've sought out and identified
via flagging, and create a new top list for it.

------
alexro
Having karma as the measure of legit accounts will force spammers to make more
submissions, most likely in automated mode.

------
danvoell
Perhaps in addition to the user's credentials you could analyze the url they
are submitting. Has it been submitted before?

~~~
joebo
crazy idea: maybe also check to see when the domain was registered? more than
a year old doesn't sound like a 'startup'. it could be another metric in the
decision engine.

in fact.... i sense a new startup/weekend project. 'spam link analyzer
service' which incorporates user defined metrics (e.g. HN metrics)

~~~
scottnyc
If this was implemented, I'd imagine the quality of names for RMS candidates
would drop off a cliff!

I've got to imagine that everyone who reads these forums has at least 2-3
domains that they've owned for a while for future projects.

------
paradox95
What qualifies as an "established" account? I have been here for a while but
don't post that often.

------
KevinMS
Maybe another section like the "new" section?

But don't name it rms, that means something else on any hacker site.

~~~
pchaso
Indeed I was phreaking out thinking pg was deleting Stallman's posts !! ;-)

------
bpedro
If RMS is getting so popular, how about creating a special section just for
that type of posts?

------
RVK
The place for this would probably be ratemystartup.com (yes, it exists, no
it's not my site)

~~~
CharlesPal
Totally to my surprise to see this comment... ratemystartup.com is actually my
site.

I can speak first hand to this issue... A massive number of submissions to
ratemystartup are spam. I evaluate each of these submissions by hand and it's
not always easy to do.

On ratemystartup users have editorialized content. On HN I would suggest that
link posts are only permitted to users with X amount of karma. I am personally
more of a HN reader than a contributor but I would gladly sacrifice the
ability to post links (unless the karma threshold is reached) in exchange for
maintaining a great HN reading experience.

------
shibataism
I think it's better to put "rate" or "RMS" in the header/menu to distinguish
from others.

------
danest
Would RMS post be classified differently then view my weekend hack posts?

------
ajaimk
@PG What do you consider an established account on HN?

------
handrake
Maybe it's time to have spam url filter setup.

------
kapauldo
What's the point of "flag"? By killing legit RMS posts from low-point posters,
you're creating a lot of ill will, particularly when they follow up with "Why
was this thread killed?" posts.

------
GDH
I'm new to HN and I wouldn't post my startup link, as I've yet to contribute
enough to the community to earn the time other members would need to review my
startup. That being said, I do believe that a karma threshold for RMS posts
would be a valuable asset to HN.

------
sswam
Can't we have a 'this is spam' button? I guess it's not much bother if each
spam is only read by one or two people before it's trashed / moved to the
'spam' section. Perhaps there could be a karma threshold before you're allowed
to mark something as spam. This would solve the problem for all types of spam
rather than just for RMS spam.

------
TimothyBurgess
Welp... just registered today so that hopefully when I try to post my own
startup thread, I can. I'll try to post more from now on instead of lurking
but I'm pretty busy. :|

~~~
n-ion
Yeah - same here... Aren't lurkers users too?! I feel separate but equal.

