Note from the future: After this got published and submitted on HN by me, I feel like kinda guilty for even writing it. The submission also seem to have its first comment(s), which I'm sure will not be very positive.
openly admitting what you did and talking about it is a good step to avoid the rabbit hole of posting just for the sake of getting points.
it's worth reflecting on that.
it could be worse. while searching for a way to filter submissions based on points i discovered a website that claims to sell upvotes for hackernews posts or comments, and downvotes too. supposedly these votes would be made from high-karma accounts. they even offer to sell accounts.
if you are ever short on money, apparently your account would fetch a pretty penny (NO! don't even think about it)
so you figured out what's popular. there is no harm in that. might even turn into a study. just take a look at the mail client submissions of the past day:
I believe that points gained from submissions and those gained from comments are weighted differently.
That's in regards of unlocking "features" like the dislike button.
But I don't think the difference in these two is visible on a users profile.
If it starts a discussion, what's the harm? It also bring into attention various things that one might not have heard of it that one might have forgotten about, especially with software. (I love GNUCash)
openly admitting what you did and talking about it is a good step to avoid the rabbit hole of posting just for the sake of getting points.
it's worth reflecting on that.
it could be worse. while searching for a way to filter submissions based on points i discovered a website that claims to sell upvotes for hackernews posts or comments, and downvotes too. supposedly these votes would be made from high-karma accounts. they even offer to sell accounts.
if you are ever short on money, apparently your account would fetch a pretty penny (NO! don't even think about it)
so you figured out what's popular. there is no harm in that. might even turn into a study. just take a look at the mail client submissions of the past day:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31696109
there were five submissions by five different people. it's easy to see which one is the most popular.