

Ask HN: What is a reasonable rate to submit stories to HN? - DanBC

Is there any limit or checking of how many stories people submit each day?<p>I ask because a small number of people submit very many articles.<p>(http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=daegloe)<p>88 posts in one day.
======
tptacek
I have much more of a problem with accounts submitting every story from large-
ish websites; for instance, "IT World Magazine" has had a series of accounts
that do exactly that, most recently:

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

Similarly, a small core group of people seems to be feeding Bitcoin stories,
and another core group feeding Torrentfreak stuff.

The site would be better if the heaviest and/or most consistent/homogenous
submitters submitted less.

------
dalke
Here I thought you were going to mention stupid mathema-tricks, but that's
only an average of about 2 posts per days.

If the links are good, then I don't see a problem. But I looked at daegloe's
postings. I followed only one of the first 75 links; the rest were boring on
sight, and helps drown out the things I like. That one exception was to
comment that the linked-to article was missing the point.

How effective is flagging at changing posting behavior?

~~~
benologist
If you flag too many stories you lose the flag option permanently.

~~~
dalke
Currently I flag obvious SEO pages (most of the foreign language posts are
SEO) and mathema-tricks. Perhaps 10 a day?

~~~
benologist
I don't know what the threshold is, I just know I lost it months ago.

------
benologist
I'd like to see submissions limited to 4 or 5 a day although that doesn't
really solve the problem of people just dumping generic 'safe' links to scab
karma or conceal whatever they're actually spamming or to build their social
networking cred or whatever their motive.

There was a suggestion earlier today to just do away with submission karma, I
think that has a lot of merit. Domain limits could be interesting as well,
it'd force people to at least be more creative than just spewing the usual
tech rags' links.

------
anigbrowl
More than 5 times a day, and I question whether I'm adding value or fishing
for karma. 88/day is abusive; I flag behavior like that when I see it.

------
tokenadult
I wish I could give credit to the person who said it in a comment, when one
previous username was observed over-submitting from all the hot, karma-
grabbing sites. The basic rule of thumb is that the submitter of a link should
have had time to READ the link and to verify that it is a worthwhile link that
will advance the discussion here and inform interested readers. I am a high-
submission user here, and that is the rule I try to impose on myself.

It may be that the site already has some automated defenses against any one
account submitting too often, but we have recently been observing some
breaches in those defenses, it appears.

------
daegloe
Sorry guys, got carried away today!

I was home sick all day and spent the better part of 15 restless hours
scouring the net and feeding my brain. I was collecting noteworthy links along
the way, and generally posted (what I considered to be) the good ones in
clusters as I returned to HN.

The inundation of knowledge, boredom and medication seemed to have triggered a
bit of irrational exuberance. Not my typical posting activity as you can see
by my submission history. It's back to the office tomorrow, which means I'll
return to my normal 2 or 3 posts a day.

Apologies if I offended. Lesson learned.

