> A note to HN users: The intention behind Apply HN was to do something new to excite and interest the community and engage it with YC in an interesting way. That did happen, but it pains me that it also partly turned into the opposite. If any of you have suggestions for how to do better, I'd like to hear them.
How about publishing rules for a contest and sticking to them, or canceling the contest entirely if it's not going the way you expected or desired? If there was a risk that some founder you didn't like would be picked the rules should have been clear about how to prevent that (through interview, etc.). And if you realize the rules didn't cover this contingency then scrap it entirely and start over with new rules.
Frankly I'm surprised that this is being pushed back as some failing of the HN community. This is clearly a failing of the contest creators.
> I thought I'd made it clear that we'd make things up and change the rules as we went along, but it wasn't clear. It took time and a large stack of HN user comments for me to perceive this, but I get it now.
> Maciej, I'm sorry. Your interpretation of what I originally posted was not only reasonable, it was how most people read it. The fault was not yours, but mine.
I don't see them "push[ing] back as some failing of the HN community." They openly admit it was their own fault.
if you read the thread, he's plainly referring to the fact that he missed a very natural reading of his sentence (he thought it was clear he meant "we'll probably change things during this contest," but the sentence really lent itself to meaning "we'll probably change things dramatically next time we do this"--since experiments are rarely changed mid-performance). readers pointed this out, and he got it.
that's not even close to blaming the community, that's taking full responsibility for unintentionally misleading writing.
How about publishing rules for a contest and sticking to them, or canceling the contest entirely if it's not going the way you expected or desired? If there was a risk that some founder you didn't like would be picked the rules should have been clear about how to prevent that (through interview, etc.). And if you realize the rules didn't cover this contingency then scrap it entirely and start over with new rules.
Frankly I'm surprised that this is being pushed back as some failing of the HN community. This is clearly a failing of the contest creators.