I was expecting a site with a simple URL box that would transform on the fly. Instead I get a site asking me to buy credits (why credits?) for per-site wire-framing. Not only that, but for whatever weirdo reason these credits expire after six months. What gives guys?
I believe this product has literally zero value without paying for the Pro version, which irks me a consumer who was at first interested in what it could do for me.
Since this is #1 as I write this, this is almost certainly another case of someone using lots of fake accounts to manipulate the HN algorithm. Obviously it's too easy to do if people are getting away with it.
I looked at the data and am pretty sure that's not the case. It's possible that you're right and they were an outlier of cleverness, but the likelier explanation is the cognitive bias of seeing something you don't like on HN's front page and assuming that it must have been gamed to get there.
We take voting rings seriously and have put a lot of effort into preventing them from unduly influencing HN. If you think you see evidence of someone getting around this, it would be good to email hn@ycombinator.com.
I didn't mean to imply that you weren't taking it seriously. I didn't even "not like it". But in comparison to the quality of the things that normally make it to the top spot, it didn't even seem close to possible that it got there naturally. It was also not a new service - according to the site, it has been up since 2010. It's rare that a service offering that is 6 years old suddenly becomes really popular on HN. Possible, certainly, but unlikely.
I could be wrong, but I believe I've flagged exactly one post in my ~5 years of daily use on HN - this one - and have publicly made the observation that someone may have gamed the voting system maybe two or three times in that time. So I'm not prone to making accusations based upon "cognitive bias," and looking at the comments, I'm not the only one that thought something odd had happened here. I also assume it took more than just my flag to have flagged the article off the home page.
It just seemed very out of place, to myself and others. If my assumption was wrong, I apologize to OP.
I think you're wrong but there's always the off chance that the site owner was waiting with a fleet of bots/fake accounts until someone (me) posted this link. :P
But I agree with you though, I don't think this is worthy of being #1.
I'm not a bot tho, and I have no affiliation with the site in question whatsoever, I just found it by chance and I thought I would share with the HN community.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 40.6 ms ] threadWe take voting rings seriously and have put a lot of effort into preventing them from unduly influencing HN. If you think you see evidence of someone getting around this, it would be good to email hn@ycombinator.com.
I could be wrong, but I believe I've flagged exactly one post in my ~5 years of daily use on HN - this one - and have publicly made the observation that someone may have gamed the voting system maybe two or three times in that time. So I'm not prone to making accusations based upon "cognitive bias," and looking at the comments, I'm not the only one that thought something odd had happened here. I also assume it took more than just my flag to have flagged the article off the home page.
It just seemed very out of place, to myself and others. If my assumption was wrong, I apologize to OP.
But I agree with you though, I don't think this is worthy of being #1.
I'm not a bot tho, and I have no affiliation with the site in question whatsoever, I just found it by chance and I thought I would share with the HN community.