
Tell HN: readwriteweb.com Canvassing HN'ers for their 'HN Love' - jacquesm
http://jacquesmattheij.com/readwriteweb.com-canvassing-hn-members
======
icey
All of these meta-police postings are starting to get ridiculous.

I get that you're outraged because someone asked you to read or post
something, or vote for something; but come on - surely you have a little more
faith in the intelligence of the people here that you don't think that we're
just going to blindly submit things because someone has asked us to.

This sort of submission doesn't accomplish anything except starting arguments.
Even if a thousand people vote this up, nobody is going to stop asking other
people to vote for their submissions, nobody is going to stop emailing people
from out of the blue and asking for them to submit stories, nobody is going to
stop posting links to their submissions from other sites with a plea to upvote
it.

Instead, the top story is now about how someone was once again done wrong by
the dark and terrible forces of the internets, conspiring to destroy the very
fabric of Hacker News.

It's the sort of story where everyone can weigh in, because there's no barrier
to entry for having an opinion. You can already see the race to the right
margin starting, and this has only been up for 2 hours.

Good content has its way of making it to the front page. I can generally tell
when I submit something if it's going to make it to the front page; I haven't
had to ask anyone for any votes and yet they get there.

I guess I'm a little irritated about the insinuation that we don't have the
capability to make decisions as to whether or not we vote or submit something.
The suggestion that we can't is just getting old.

~~~
TrevorJ
As several people have pointed out, the core 'problem' is that it opens the
door for less scrupulous activity in the future. I think we all have a mutual
respect for the intellectual capabilities of the current HN'ers in regard to
not blindly submitting or upvoting stuff.

However you can't ignore the fact that as HN gets more readers there's more
skin in the game for startups. Getting your story to the front page could get
you some of the momentum you need to attract that first angel investor, or to
find your first seed group of alpha users. There are plenty of forces that
will tend to corrupt the process as HN gains more readership.

We can't just consider the issue at hand, you must also consider the precedent
this sort of thing sets and how that could evolve in the future.

Edit: I find it a tad ironic that the people saying this stuff _isn't_
happening are also linking your comment in IRC and asking for it to be
upvoted. Point being: it just rings false to 'lobby' for votes. Nothing
personal, just an observational, I get that it is at least partly tongue in
cheek.

~~~
bhousel
I'm not so sure that a dangerous precedent is being set here. Don't you think
it's far easier (and more harmful to the community) to game the killing of
stories than to game the promoting of stories?

~~~
TrevorJ
Just because one is bad doesn't mean the other isn't. I'd argue that neither
are particularly desirable, however, there are less reasons to kill content
than there are to promote your content to the front page. It may make sense to
kill content in the narrow band where that content competes with your own
startup and/or blog, but beyond that there doesn't seem to be much reason for
it.

------
patio11
When people ask for marketing advice on HN, one of the things I always suggest
is getting to know bloggers in your niche because, hey, help them help you.
This is generally fairly well-received advice here, and has been practiced by
many folks successfully. (I really like Peldi's pitch emails. They're on his
blog somewhere, and are very worthy of emulation.)

I am unsure in what relevant respect contacting someone to post something to
HN is different than contacting someone to post on their blog. Is it that we
have a reflexive allergy to being marketed to? I find that people generally
don't mind, as long as they're buying what you're selling. For example, every
once in a while I get an email from startups about the new foozit they're
working on, particularly for A/B testing.

Heck yes, I want to hear about that. Please, send me email. I understand
you're not sending it to me because you woke up this morning and decided "What
can I selflessly do to brighten Patrick's day?" That's OK -- we're all
businessmen here. If you know my name and have given enough individualized
attention to believe I will like it, I'll at least give it a looksie. (Running
/bingo/ against whois records does not count as personalized attention -- and
no, I'm also not impressed that you have a fake female persona do the letter.)

While it is extremely unlikely that I'd ever submit something from
ReadWriteWeb or your tech blog of choice (simply because if it was worth
reading y'all would all have already seen it probably days in advance of me),
I wouldn't feel particularly dirty submitting something that I discovered via
an email. I mean, since you guys are my main source of startup/software/etc
news, and I don't submit duplicates, eliminating the "somebody told me about
this" route would pretty much mean that the only way to find something to
submit would be to write it myself.

Not that I have a problem with that, either. :)

~~~
jacquesm
Accounts are free, what stops someone from posting it by themselves? If it's
good it will float to the top (or at least, it should).

By asking 'well known' people in the community to submit stuff for them
they're trying to ride the reputation of others in order to maximize their
exposure, while at the same time hiding the fact that these are not 'natural'
submissions.

It's like using other HN users as your personal sock puppets.

~~~
patio11
Rather than using an identifiable person for my example I'll use non-existent
Bob. Suppose Bob has been here for the last 3 years and has a bazillion karma
and is well known to everyone as The Freaking Man on the subject of email
marketing. (Sidenote: Do we have a Bob here? We could really use a Bob here.
Show yourself, Bob!)

Anyhow, suppose some random email startup convinces Bob that their thingee is
worthwhile enough to post about. Yes, I would trust that endorsement more than
I'd trust randomHacker123's post. That is because Bob's endorsement _matters_
to me, because I can use it as a filter for things I am likely to enjoy.

I understand they're using Bob's endorsement to maximize their exposure. I'm
just _not troubled_ by that. Bob's endorsement _matters_ to me, at least on
the subject of email marketing. He's doing the work sifting through the email
marketing pitches so I don't have to. Yay! Bully for Bob.

~~~
giles_goat_boy
Nobody who is an expert on e-mail marketing would ever wander in here. They'd
be too busy driving their Ferrari. I came in here by accident and came away
with a prime example of why Hacker Newspaper doesn't link to comment threads.
For every one intelligent comment by you, Patrick, there's a hundred by a
bunch of people getting into bicker-y little soap operas about who voted for
who. I study the Bobs and I can tell you they're all too busy for that shit.
:-) I'm a little too busy for it myself.

Anyway, for the record, I will happily get any story on the front page of
Hacker News for the right price. I'm not kidding, I've done it before, on
purpose. I once set out to teabag Hacker News and get a story about my own
balls on the front page. It only took me two attempts. My e-mail is
gilesb@gmail.com and I am more than happy to take your ducats.

~~~
Psyonic
I'm glad you've finally stated outright that this community means nothing to
you other than being a great place to advertise. I think it was already fairly
obvious... but thanks for clearing up any doubt. You realize that paid upvote
rings are a large part of what killed digg, and are killing reddit? And they
will kill HN, if they become common enough. It may seem innocent and fun while
you personally do it, but before long the front page is nothing but posts
about balls, and who wants to read that?

Feel free to rag on all the "drama" it creates, but that's because people here
actually care about the quality of this site. Is that stupid? Naive? To you,
clearly. But I think it's perfectly reasonable to desire that your favorite
stomping ground not become just another place where the almighty dollar trumps
all.

~~~
swombat
Well done for falling into Giles' trap...

Standard response: don't feed the trolls (even the well-known trolls)

~~~
Psyonic
I'm well aware of the possibility that he could be trolling, but I also don't
doubt that he'd do all he could to push an article to the front page for
money. Obviously I can't control his actions, but what do you suggest we do?
If we all just ignore him, it might work, but it also might suggest to people
on the fence about the issues that the HN community doesn't care about that
kind of behavior.

~~~
swombat
Dude, when it comes to Giles, it's not a "possibility that he could be
trolling". It's a certainty. :-)

~~~
Psyonic
So what does that mean exactly? That because he's "always trolling," any
attempt to argue with him is a waste of time? It seems like an easy cop-out,
like declaring "I'm an asshole," before being a dick, and somehow thinking
that excuses the behavior.

------
Angostura
The fact that a company - any company - is not posting material on its own
behalf suggests that it is attempting to rely the poster's reputation to get
it promoted rather than pure the merit of the article quality.

I don't particularly see anything wrong with this as long as there is a degree
of transparency and the poster adds an initial comment to the effect that:

Bob from example.com asked me to post this and since it is clearly neat, I
have.

or

Bob from example.com asked me to post this and since he paid me $500, I have.

... as appropriate.

~~~
harpastum
The issue there is that unless you're posting a link to a blog entry you wrote
(that allows you to make that such a disclaimer), HN will only display the
link. I don't think we should start encouraging content-less blog entries that
allow us to fully disclose that we're being told to post something. Just post
it if it's worth posting, don't if it's not.

~~~
ericd
It's easy enough to drop a comment, if it's highly relevant, it will be
upvoted to near the top of the heap.

------
kylec
It's possible that it's more insidious than simply trying to get high-profile
users to submit links to their articles. When you try to submit a duplicate
link, the system will redirect you to the older submission and _cause you to
automatically upvote it._ If you can get a handful of people to 'submit' the
same link, you've managed to boost your article's ranking and likely will get
it on the front page.

~~~
zitterbewegung
I am not that high profile and I have been approached because I have a
midrange karma.

~~~
iamelgringo
I've been on the leader board for a couple of years, and I do get plenty of
random requests about starting HN meetups (I host Hackers and Founders --
Silicon Valley ). I also get a number of random pings to give feedback on
people's sites, which I'm generally happy to do.

That being said, I've never been approached to submit a post.

------
suzyperplexus
Hey Jacques, I just read your post and as per my email, I sent you my article
for feedback. I DO want to do a better job in writing stories that are useful
to the HN community and this is why I reached out in the first place. It was
never my intention to undermine any aspects of the community, if anything I
asked you for your advice in honor of your position as a community leader. I
have no problem nominating my own stories, but your nomination and feedback
tells me if an article is a good resource for entrepreneurs and programmers.
Thanks in any case for your initial email on trends. For those of you who do
want to let me know what stories you'd like to see written in 2010, I'm
grateful for your feedback.

Dana Oshiro

~~~
jacquesm
Hey Dana,

Thanks for posting here.

I'm not a community leader by any stretch of the imagination, as I already
wrote to you, just someone that in episodes spends way too much of his time on
HN.

My 'nomination' will never be given to stuff I'm asked to submit because that
already stacks the deck, I'm no longer unbiased towards what you wrote.

I'll post the stuff that I find on the net while surfing, irrespective of the
source of my relationship with a source.

As a rule, if someone mails me their submissions I'll read but not upvote,
unless it is excellent stuff.

If I come across readwriteweb articles that really interest me - and not
through my inbox - then I'll definitely post it, or upvote it, but otherwise
definitely not.

I understand that the pragmatic view is that 'everbody does it' but I simply
don't feel comfortable with doing this.

It suggests some kind of collusion, possibly in the long term a quid-pro-quo
and I like to be independent.

Over the years I've had plenty of press on my projects but not once was there
any kind of behind the scenes dealing going on, and I frown on the cozy
relationships that some press people build with people in the industry. Having
press contacts is one thing, getting too close is imo not good.

As for HN, I'd expect readwriteweb.com content to be caught by enough people
to be submitted anyway if it warrants that, I doubt you'd need to go out and
solicit it (I could be wrong there), so for that you really don't need me or
any other HN user specifically.

The best 'nomination' you can get here is to simply post your stuff and see
what sinks and what swims. It's far from perfect, good stuff will fail plenty
of times and fluff will rise to the surface but on the whole it is better than
anywhere else, and to carefully read the comments, there is plenty of really
good feedback there.

best regards,

Jacques

~~~
suzyperplexus
Thanks Jacques. I appreciate the discussion and I've learned a ton about the
community in this process. Thanks HN.

------
chaosprophet
Ah shoot. RWW and VentureBeat were the only blogs I really trusted in the
startup space. Needless to say, all respect lost for RWW. And it's not like
RWW could be added to the banned domains list, because they actually write a
lot of stuff people are interested in.

~~~
jlees
One bad apple does not a blacklist make, surely?

------
niyazpk
What is the big deal here?

It is a very well known fact that in _most of the_ social news websites people
always contact the users with the most reputation ask them to submit/upvote
their articles.

If you want to get featured in Techcruch or RWW or any high profile blog, you
have to send them emails to get their attention (opposed to they noticing you
because you are a promising startup).

This is the way the world works. There is no point in blaming someone who
comes from _that_ world for contacting you privately. If you think it is
against the spirits of HN, great; now let Dana Oshiro understand the same by
telling him this privately.

There is nothing black hat in what he did. It is what they always do. It is
their standard operating procedure - contacting powerful people in other
fields and build a reputation from there.

I don't want to sound as if I don't care about the quality of HN. I do. I just
want to suggest that people from outside may not know these norms and it is
not polite to disgrace them in public like this.

~~~
robin_reala
If it’s not a big deal then posting this isn’t ‘disgracing them in public’
surely?

~~~
niyazpk
"Hi John, over here there is no need to talk so loud to get attention"

Vs

"Hey everyone, did you ever notice John talking loudly to get attention?"

~~~
andrewtj
I don't think there's any shame to discussing this in public and I don't think
any less of RWW or Dana for inadvertently sparking it. It affirms what the HN
community values and let's "outsiders" know what expectations are. This isn't
a witch-hunt, it's just public discourse.

------
petercooper
Just a data point: I'm in the top 100 (though not top 10 likes jacquesm!),
know a couple of people at RWW (not the person involved with this, though),
and I've _never_ been approached by anyone randomly at RWW or anywhere else
with the intention of gaming or posting to HN.

------
tripngroove
I think it's naive to assume there's anything that happens on HN that _isn't_
socially engineered in some way.

Sounds glib, but render down the actions and incentives of participation on
the site. In a business-focused environment where there's opportunity to
influence a large group, whether for direct commercial gain or reputation-
building, competition will necessarily arise.

We're all socially engineering each other all the time.

Take away posting attribution and karma and it mightn't be that way, but those
are big incentives for continued participation, once a person is invested.
Could the site exist without them?

------
zitterbewegung
Wolfire regularly approaches me to post their blog posting to HN. The blogs
are really interesting and seem to be very popular so I really don't feel bad
about posting it for them. In fact I don't do much distortion either I mainly
just post it with the regular title.

~~~
jeff18
I will take full responsibility for this. I felt weird submitting my own
content, so I asked my friend to submit it on my behalf, which is obviously
much worse. I have since learned that submitting your own content is
encouraged, so I am basically a dumb ass and humbly apologize to the HN
community and to zitterbewegung for asking him in the first place.

-Jeff from Wolfire

~~~
jacquesm
Spoken like a man, thanks for that.

~~~
jolie
Hey Jacques - Well, we've certainly got egg on our face now. =)

In Dana's defense, she wasn't asking for a submission. She was trying to put
the story on your radar in the event that you were interested in the topic.

I'm sorry you saw this as her trying to turn HN into Digg - which RWW
certainly doesn't want to do. We'll be submitting our own stuff from now on.

In the end, whether you're talking about Digg, Twitter, Reddit, or a more
niche site such as HN or Slashdot, the best content comes from active members
of the community. I guess ReadWriteWeb needs to have more startup writers as
active participants, not just content creators.

------
J3L2404
I think all the valid points have been made; maybe it's time to flag this out
of existence(meta).

