
Tell HN: Please stop offering your services - swombat
This is not a sustainable model.<p>There are thousands of HN users, each with their own areas of expertise.<p>Often, a good test of whether something is worth doing is "what if everyone did the same?" If everyone was more polite, the world would be a better place. If everyone treated others better, the world would be a better place.<p>But if everyone posted "Offer HN" posts, even if they all did it just once and with a genuine desire to help, rather than a secret need to build their public profile and/or get some interesting serendipitous contacts, HN would become <i>much</i> less valuable.<p>To those who believe that this new "Offer HN" craze is something worth encouraging, if that's the case, please create a site that's better tailored to making those offers. Maybe you can even get pg to link to it if it's good. You'll certainly get feedback, and so on.<p>But please don't post any more "Offer HN". Despite the generous impulse behind them, they are basically just spam that's pushing out other more interesting stuff, at the moment.<p>Related: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1840143
======
jacquesm
I actually think it is fascinating to see this, and I don't think they're spam
at all and suggesting they are really not nice at all.

HN is many things to many people don't let your particular view of what HN
should be dictate the status quo.

> But if everyone posted "Offer HN" posts, even if they all did it just once
> and with a genuine desire to help, rather than a secret need to build their
> public profile and/or get some interesting serendipitous contacts, HN would
> become much less valuable.

That says more about you than it does about the people offering their help.
How could you possibly suggest that those doing this are doing it out of a
secret need to build their public profile. That's a pretty cynical worldview.

> To those who believe that this new "Offer HN" craze is something worth
> encouraging, if that's the case, please create a site that's better tailored
> to making those offers. Maybe you can even get pg to link to it if it's
> good. You'll certainly get feedback, and so on.

Do you feel the same about Ask HN threads ? What about rate my startup ?
Aren't those people 'cynically using the business, design and cumulative
knowledge of HN' for their own betterment or the building of their public
profiles ?

> But please don't post any more "Offer HN". Despite the generous impulse
> behind them

Please do !

> they are basically just spam that's pushing out other more interesting
> stuff, at the moment.

Such as ?

Angelgate ? Blocks of Ice ? Parachutes ?

edit: I've posted the opposite of this article here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1840143>

~~~
swombat
Hey, you're part of the Secret Cabalistic Society of HN Worship now, you're
not allowed to disagree anymore! Get in line!

More seriously - call me a cynic if you will, but when I see people offering
help with the Twitter API or with SEO or tax advice or even help with RoR,
well, I don't know, something smells fishy to me. That help is freely
available on numerous forums to anyone who's looking for it, and it is a
pretty standard model for those industries to offer free consultations before
reeling you in.

Of course, I'm not saying that's specifically the case with these specific
offers, but I'm sure we can all see where this is going.

~~~
malbiniak
I think you're addressing a problem before it's arrived, and I don't think
that's a bad thing. I agree that this isn't sustainable, and at some point,
the offers are going to become less genuine and less valuable. However, after
looking at the bloggergirl copy deck suggestions, I want to clearly state that
she (and other offers) don't fall into this group. Great work.

I'd encourage users to ask for help. We're already doing it in the form of
"review my ..." Good posts with time invested in describing the problem and
asking for very specific help will bubble up from newest, and those that are
looking to get out of doing work won't hit the front page.

On the contrary "Offer HN" posts are hard not to upvote...for now.

~~~
bloggergirl
Thanks, malbiniak! I agree that, as interesting as Offer HN could be, the real
opportunities to help others will be in continuing to read Ask HN posts and
offering your services there, where there's a good match.

As someone mentioned already, you can give your services away to a lot of
people, and possibly only 1 will really need it, be grateful, and pay it
forward. So why not save your free services for that 1 'special' HNer who
_asks_ for help? Just a thought...

------
pg
Don't worry, these things always run their course. At least this is driven by
generosity. Plus you have to admit it's sort of interesting to watch new forms
of internet behavior evolve.

~~~
swombat
For sure. Do they run their course because posts like this one encourage them
to run their course, or would they fade away by themselves anyway? :-)

My worry is, this one is a good idea in the wrong place. This is basically a
strong variation on reddit's AMA, which has taken a solid hold there and isn't
going anywhere. Since HN doesn't support sub-forums, there is a risk that we
could be "stuck with" this for a while, if it has the durability of AMA but no
sub-forum/site to hide in.

Another possible danger is that the community will lash back against it
because of the noise, even though it's a good idea, and so we'll lose a good
idea. I really do think that if someone made a special site for this (which
wouldn't take that long to code up), it might be something of lasting value.

~~~
wccrawford
They die on their own. The only thing posts like this do are discourage
helpful people. It causes them to see the community as hostile, and they take
their helpfulness elsewhere.

These people aren't -just- posting these offers. They also contribute to the
site in other ways. Their loss -is- a loss to the community.

Gently nudging them into something more helpful is great, but flat telling
them to go away is very bad.

------
wccrawford
Why do you get to decide what this site does? Who are you to tell people to go
post that stuff on another site?

If it's pushing out 'more interesting stuff', it's because people have upvoted
it because THEY find it worthwhile.

I'll admit, I find them mildly annoying, but much less annoying than the total
crap that occasionally gets posted, like videos of dancing bears and such.

I watch the rss feed and I see -all- of that crap. And I ignore the stuff I
don't care about, and upvote the stuff I do.

~~~
gxti
On the other hand, as of this writing this complaint post has 131 points. That
seems to suggest that more people are against the offer posts than for them.
Curiously, the only post on the frontpage now with more posts is "Things Paul
Graham is Wrong About", another post with a flamebait title. Not surprisingly,
flamebait attracts the upvotes!

~~~
alextgordon
That would only be a reasonable deduction if HN had < 262 users. As it stands,
it's impossible to judge based on a score that cannot be downvoted, and that's
without considering selection bias.

------
ScottWhigham
I respectfully disagree that they are "basically just spam" but yet I agree
with a few other points you make. No, it isn't sustainable but yes it makes HN
a more interesting place. I'd far rather see those types of posts than some of
the things that I'm sure you think are "more interesting". And I don't say
that in a mean-spirited way; what I mean is that we all have different
interests and just b/c you (or 400 others like you) don't like it isn't a
sufficient reason to kill it/them.

------
tzury
could not agree more, those are all from the last hour. perhaps we shall have
a '/offers' or something else which hackers can go there and offers their
goods.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1839375>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1839394>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1839450>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1839460>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1839662>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1839611>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1839736>

~~~
calloc
<http://news.ycombinator.com/offerless> (as pg posted a couple of posts up)

------
aristidb
Often, "what if everyone did the same" is a very bad test. For example because
not everybody will do the same.

I'm not sure whether that's the case here.

~~~
chc
Indeed. It could argue against almost anything, because the real problem
indicated is a lack of balance, not an inherent harmfulness of the thing in
question. For example: "If everyone became a DBA, society would come crashing
down, so I should not become a DBA."

DBAs are good and helpful — they just aren't the be-all end-all of human
existence. I don't think anybody should be held up to that standard.

------
p0ppe
The community as a whole seems to appreciate them, based on the upvotes.

~~~
mattmaroon
That's not a fair assumption since there are no downvotes. If 20% of people
really like something, and 80% hate it, it could still very easily own the
front page.

~~~
parenthesis
The hypothetical 80% who hate it are free to vote up the items they'd rather
see (higher) on the front page instead.

~~~
mattmaroon
What if they only like 1 in 10?

Regardless you're focusing too much on the numbers I threw out there solely
for example. The point is that without down votes its entirely possible for a
number of similar items to hit the front page even though a majority of people
dislike them, thus invalidating the idea that a number of similar items on the
front page means a majority of people find them useful.

------
rokhayakebe
Tell swombat: What/who gives you the right to say that?

Swombat, you are one of the greatest contributors, but you are wrong here. Let
them offer, it does not hurt anyone. I think the community is quick to
identify the honest folks from those who aren't.

Some people love to help just as much as you love to comment. Saying stop
offering services is not so different than saying stop giving feedback on ask
HN.

Maybe we just structure the way people Offer HN. They could just probably
share the feedbacks here so a lot more companies can benefit from it.

At any rate, keep offering if you want to offer. If you do not care for offers
just skip them.

------
ax0n
Once the community gets tired of it, they'll stop upvoting them, or maybe even
flag them. That's the beautiful thing about HN.

Offer HN: A cane to shake at people.

------
alain94040
I'll start worrying about this once it becomes a problem. So far, it's been 2
days. For now, my asumption is that it will go away soon, and it's fun to
watch for a while.

------
jemfinch
> Often, a good test of whether something is worth doing is "what if everyone
> did the same?"

Nice try, Kant!

~~~
petercooper
That's why I didn't become a doctor. I thought, if everyone else became a
doctor, there'd be no-one left to fix my car or grow food for us to eat.

~~~
techiferous
That's why I'm not going to comment on this. If everyone did it, then it would
overwhelm the servers.

------
doki_pen
Of all the types of posts to complain about, this type seems odd. Do you
really think this trend will continue for more then a week? A month, tops?

------
winternett
If it was undesireable, there would be no option to use it. If people offer
their help, its up to the people that take them up on it to determine whether
its a bait for service sales tactics. Asking people to stop volunteering their
help for free is not a good idea in general. It mean's you're probably reading
HN too much, and possibly on a screen that's too small. Just get used to
clicking on the "More" button, it works! :P

------
cabalamat
> _But please don't post any more "Offer HN". Despite the generous impulse
> behind them, they are basically just spam that's pushing out other more
> interesting stuff, at the moment._

I disagree. I think they are interesting stuff. In any case, HN has a voting
system so what goes on the front page will be whatever the community finds
interesting.

------
ryanc
I think Offer HN is appropriate in some situations where the offer is
something particularly unique you wouldn't be able to find elsewhere on the
Internet such as the Ivy League UG Application reviewer. The rest of it is
offering info you could probably learn through Googling.

------
bigohms
I enjoy having access to "thousands of HN users, each with their own
expertise" and the gall and cojones to offer their wisdom (and fragile
reputations) up to the community.

In this age of "what's in it for me", the minimal networking benefit offered
is the very LEAST the community can give to support the model. We should only
be so lucky.

I'm curious as to your background, since it sounds like by your post, your
entrepreneurial pursuits have resulted in great wealth which allows for access
to unlimited operations, creative and technical knowledge in all areas of
business by responsible, domain-expert, timely and proactive professionals.

You, my friend have struck CEO paydirt, can you offer us your secret?

------
HackyGeeky
Why worry about sustainability ?! If someone wants to do good for the
community by offering their skills, let them. "Sustainable model" - Sounds
like throwing words around.

I'm going ahead and blaming global warming for this post ;)

------
p_alexander
If it gets really bad, won't the community just respond by having a monthly
"Who's Offering" thread, much like we now have the monthly "Who's Hiring"
thread?

------
roadnottaken
If people didn't think these offers were interesting/worthwhile, they wouldn't
get sufficiently up-voted to stay on the front page.

------
simplegeek
I don't think we should be worried about these. As PG said, it's fascinating
to see how Internet evolves. My only worry is that for some "Offer HN" posts
I'm not yet prepared to ask for their help, however, I certainly see myself
looking for these "services" in future and I'm not sure how it will pan out
then ;)

------
duck
What is great about HN is that the community can decide on how useful they are
and it will run its course. If there is other content that is "worth" more to
users, it will rise to the top. I am going to add a section to the Hacker
Newsletter for these since they appear useful at the moment.

------
DanielBMarkham
I haven't read a lot of HN over the last two days, but I saw that we had one
"Offer HN", and then a slew of them.

I think it's a great idea -- pay it forward! But I wonder if I would want to
visit a board full of "Offer HN" posts. "Ask HN"? Sure. "Rate my startup"?
Sure. But not so much "Offer HN"

Perhaps that means I'm selfish but geesh, this thing could go on forever.

It's the same problem as job offers/requests. It's such a common thing -- it
could easily pollute the board.

Not happening yet, sure, and I'm enjoying watching them so far. But this could
turn out to be a worse meme than Erlang Innards.

I don't know. I'll let you secret HN leader cabal-types figure it out. I just
know that after about 20 "Offer HN" posts, I'm burnt out. And I don't feel
that way about the other types of posts. Beats me why.

------
kloncks
Let's not address this problem prematurely.

This will likely simply fizzle out after awhile. If it doesn't, then we can
discuss it and see what solutions are out there. But for now, no damage has
been done and the "Offer HN" threads have been rather substantive in quality.

------
tobtoh
I think there is a big difference in an 'Ask HN' post and a 'Offer HN' post.

In general terms, an 'Ask HN' post is the HN crowd helping an individual.
Everyone can participate to help that individual. An 'Offer HN' post is one
person helping one other person (or maybe a small handful). I enjoy seeing the
occasional Ask HN post because I can participate/contribute in some way to
most of the requests. For Offer HN posts, I can't participate unless I have
that specific need.

To me, there is less 'value' to the HN community from the Offer HN posts to
the Ask HN ones for that reason. Yes - I understand 'value' is subjective, but
this I think my point is reasonably objective from a 'whole community' point
of view.

------
marze
Startup concept:

Think about this tiny trend in light of the unemployment situation in the USA.
I imagine that most if not all of these offers are from people who are
employed. What about the 20M (or whatever it is) who are not?

If there was a site where they could volunteer to work for a startups, think
of the army of available talent. And these don't need to be tech startups
only. If it could be set up so those volunteering could be compensated later
that might be good, but even without any promised compensation I bet people
would do it.

Does anyone know if such sites exist, sites that easily let startups hook up
with volunteers/remote interns?

------
micheljansen
As long as it is genuine, uncorrupted generosity, I don't see the harm. There
are not that many offers and it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling that there are
people willing to spend time and effort on this sort of stuff :)

------
anigbrowl
I think it's nice, but that OP has a valid point about sustainability. There's
a lot of this in the arts sector, and while it's awesome in some ways it also
exerts a downward effect on prices at the lower end of the market. Arty types
like helping each other out for cheap; they genuinely love what they do,
helping out advances everyone's skills, and the whole is often greater than
the sum of the parts. But the fact that many of them are not in it for the
money is often misread to mean 'not interested in money.'

A common problem for freelancers in film and graphic design is getting
callbacks (or even referrals) where clients propose paying peanuts or even
that the creative should do this bit of work for free - the client is sure of
success and it will either be great for the portfolio, or there'll be a lot
more work coming down the pipe, or they have a great rolodex. They think
[whatever job you do] is _extremely_ important, but most of their budget has
gone on [something else important]. So they frame it as a sort of partnership
situation, only most of the benefits end up flowing towards them. Sometimes
this is straight-out greed, more often it's well-meaning incompetence or an
inflated sense of entitlement without any deliberate intent to rip anyone off.
But it often looks like a good prospect, and the more people that are
involved, the more they reinforce each other's belief in the project...Titanic
syndrome, if you will.

Unfortunately for every one of these low-budget projects that scores big and
gives everyone involved a big career boost, there's about 99 others which
don't. Half pay for themselves in other ways - making new contacts, or
building new skills, or by a decent product. A third or so suck but are over
quickly, and easy to screen out in the future. The remaining sixth are jobs
from hell, where it's apparent within 24 or 48 hours of starting that
something is terribly wrong but you're going to have to see it through to the
bitter end.

I'm not suggesting such people are lurking on HN, but to the extent that a
reputation for karma-based mutual aid builds up around the community, it will
start to attract people on the lookout for freebies. Have a look at the gigs
section on Craigslist, under the creative, writing or crew headings rather
than computers. Generosity is great, but sometimes it ends up as the 'tragedy
of the commons' - so don't undersell yourself either.

------
dotBen
OP's post is the one time I wish front-page items could be down-voted

------
trizk
While I do not think that they are spam, I think that the trend will
eventually have a negative impact on the community. If you eat too much
chocolate you will get sick of chocolate.

------
lukifer
> Often, a good test of whether something is worth doing is "what if everyone
> did the same?"

I don't buy this logic; it implies, for instance, that no one in the world
should be a professional programmer, because if everyone was, no other jobs
would get done.

In this specific instance, I think the Offer HN submissions go against the
"News" part of Hacker News, but a few here and there are not necessarily a bad
thing. Perhaps allowing anyone to downvote self-referential posts would help
stem the tide?

------
noglorp
Altruism doesn't exist, and this is not a bad thing. To 'provide help', even
anonymously, is to help yourself by bettering the environment in which you
live ("Karma" sans magic).

I don't think anyone has posted any sort of story or comment to HN (or read HN
for that matter) without _some_ hope for personal betterment as a result.

As far as chilling trends in the future, I see HN as 'the new Slashdot', and
I'd be more afraid of it following similar patterns over the long term.

------
jgrahamc
I offer things by putting them on my blog. For example, I wrote a long piece
about getting press the other day: <http://blog.jgc.org/2010/10/how-to-hack-
media.html>

I prefer that approach and anyone who wants to ask for PR advice can contact
me.

------
doki_pen
I'm sure glad Hanna Montana Linux Distro[0] still made it to the front page.

[0] <http://hannahmontana.sourceforge.net/Site/Home.html>

------
speek
[http://techstartu.ps/r/techstartups/comments/nk/welcome_hn_r...](http://techstartu.ps/r/techstartups/comments/nk/welcome_hn_refugees/)

~~~
s3graham
Wherein the top post is a meta-discussion about css.

------
itsnotvalid
Personally I just don't click offers for now, as it just don't worth the time
to go over all the offers in the current form.

------
willlangford
What if someone wanted to offer a physical product to HN community as a thank
you? Would that be appropriate?

~~~
jacquesm
That's already happened, someone offered a whole pile of books, including some
pretty valuable ones.

------
mr_twj
Not to be overly melodramatic, but I think this is my last comment here on HN
for better or worse, simply because this is exactly the microcosmic ideal I've
hoped for HN from my beginning involvement--if it dies, there's no need to
drag things out and I am grateful for all of HN's _relentless resourcefulness_
I've encountered. And if not, I'll probably be helping HN continue to develop
this idea further through _action_.

I think I can safely assume the majority of active members representative of
YC here have startups that are in need of traction, but of a different kind
not yet fully explored; but nevertheless, in need of _resources_. I hope I'm
also not mistaken in the feeling most of us feel "not ready" or not in the
right stage for official seed funding and don't necessarily fit into
traditional crowd funding landscape, or simply don't want that much of a
burden to worry about while developing.

Yes, money is a burden because it's an anchor you must tie yourself to in most
cases, and is hard to come by. I've read it many times here before, as it
should be, since this is the YC news. However, there could be something
faster...

So, this new or new-old, dare I say _model_ , is a natural progression--or in
pg's adapted words, _evolution_ (hopefully I am not putting words in your
mouth). To where? Call it Crowd Ramen Funding (CRF), where the angels are the
untold majority.

All that's needed is a standalone site to register your startup with the
community, associate needed resources to your startup/project, and have others
with those available resources either give or lend them to you while you're
still getting off the ground. It doesn't have to be big; maybe some food, a
sheltered corner to hack under, language manuals, maybe some light consulting,
or other things of this nature. And like other crowd funding platforms, you
make sure there are enough hands to help you down the edge so you don't have
to _take the dive_ by yourself. _In return_ , the angels may receive the
startup's product if it was something they personally wanted, or maybe simply
the joy of having helped a hacker or two that is adding more value to the
world than he or she is taking out, or maybe it's a kind of symbiosis not
easily definable.

In short, I feel I'm not alone when I say this has much more potential than
just being slash or pipe "Offer", and being so, it really is out of place in
the header. HN community participation shouldn't be a function narrowed in
scope by its site header, nor should the header sacrifice its functionality of
directing users contributing and reading news. I think at heart it's really a
classical inheritance problem, in which case, it's best to just extend rather
than subtype the current functionality. May the entire _community_ see this
_thing_ through to either a bitter end or choosing to forward it on into the
future. That is all.

~~~
jacquesm
Please don't leave.

------
sabat
_But if everyone posted "Offer HN" posts_

That's a false proposition, isn't it? Everyone is not going to offer his
services. It's going to happen on occasion, and it's usually useful when it
does happen.

If it ever did rise to the level of spam, then HN already has a mechanism for
dealing with it. But it's nowhere near there.

Offering services (e.g. SEO) gives occasion for interesting discussions on
topics as well. This is certainly useful for the community.

------
J3L2404
Premature Optimization - You are solving a problem that may not need to be
solved, or to put it another way

Worry is interest paid in advance on a debt that may never come due.

------
msquared
Thank. God. This was getting unbearable. Understood the generous nature behind
all these offers but c'mon. Not the venue.

------
motters
I don't think there's any interesting phenomena going on here, and to me the
"Offer HN" posts look quintessentially like spam. I don't read HN in order to
see a lot of folks touting for business - no matter how talented or fast on
the keyboard they may be. I know business is thin on the ground right now, but
please post that stuff elsewhere.

