
Ask HN: Are personal websites not allowed here? - franciscop
Hi everyone, long term HN user here. Recently I updated my website[0] and put a lot of work and detail into it, so I shared it to HN to see opinions about it. I followed HN rules the best I could, with the title reading:<p>&gt; Show HN: Francisco.io – my new developer website<p>Few hours later I saw it had 37 votes. This was around double of the, at that moment, top Show HN link (which was submitted at the same time) but my link was nowhere in the Show HN nor in the main page. Comments were picking up steam until they stopped at a moment. I can see some of my submissions as [flagged] but this one was never flagged. These strongly lead me to believe my website was taken down by an admin.<p>So the question is, are developers portfolios&#x2F;personal websites disallowed here? I have reviewed several times the guidelines (before and after) but found nothing, besides the obvious &quot;Show HN&quot;. I feel like developer websites might fit within what other devs&#x2F;hackers find interesting.<p>[0] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;francisco.io&#x2F;
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dang
The dividing line for a project like this is whether there's something
unusually interesting about it, either in the site content or how the site is
made. If people feel like it's just a standard personal website like they
themselves might make, they tend to have a "why is this on HN" response and
flag or post complaining comments. But if they run into something unexpected
and have a "why didn't I think of that?" reaction, such a submission can get a
lot of upvotes and become popular.

Home pages consisting of links to articles or projects don't do well on HN,
because HN itself is a list of links to articles and projects. It is better to
pick the most curious or substantive of the things and submit that instead.

------
ColinWright
From the guidelines[0]:

> _What to Submit: On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find
> interesting._

> _In Submissions: ... Please don 't post on HN to ask or tell us something._

To the best of my knowledge you can submit personal sites, but some people may
flag it. That's up to them. To the best of my knowledge the mods won't
interfere unless the submission flagrantly contravenes the guidelines, which
yours doesn't (as far as I can tell).

But the best thing to do is ask them. In the main, we can't tell if something
got flagged, or modded down, or whatever. Only they can tell you what
happened.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
franciscop
Updated; I can see my submissions that were flagged and this one never was. I
am asking now _the community_ whether they think personal websites are okay:

> Hi _everyone_

I will also contact the admins separately, thanks for the tip.

~~~
detaro
there's thresholds, on a post that already has enough upvotes/comments
[flagged] is only shown after a few users flagging, but the ranking is
affected before that.

~~~
dang
Correct, and this is what happened.

------
mromanuk
I think the issue with your site, is that is seen as outrageous “self-
promotion” (which reading from your comments wasn’t your intention) here.

Shown HN, is oriented to showing stuff you did, you should highlight some
aspect of you new site, which is to the interest of the HN community. For
example: “I built my site, crafting my site generator based in GO, which
compiles in only 0.5s”

------
Tomte
Mail the mods and ask. They are friendly.

But I feel that "Show HN" isn't a suitable format for just showing your
personal web site. It's more for products or projects.

I'd submit your articles as regular submissions, if I were you.

------
DoreenMichele
Personal websites are generally acceptable assuming there is actually
something of interest to the reader, but it isn't really what Show HN is for.
That is more for some kind of project. Also, as with any post, individuals
will react as they see fit and details like timing will impact how well it
does.

You really can't infer all that much based on how well or how poorly an
individual item does. There are just too many variables for the performance of
one item to be very informative.

Also 37 points is not bad. Plenty of stuff gets completely ignored.

