HN Explorer

Ask HN: Why was my first question killed?

63 points by joebo ↗ HN
I've been a reader for about a year now and posted my first question to review my startup yesterday - http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=1538163. I was encouraged that I got a few upvotes and then it was killed.

What did I do that triggered the kill? I assume it might be the low karma, new user, or because I posted my own 'clickable link' ? Maybe all three? In any case, I'd still like the advice on the startup and would like to know how to repost without it appearing as spam. Or should I hang out for awhile and post comments before submitting?

22 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 69.2 ms ] thread
RiderOfGiraffes
No idea. Although I'm not your target audience, the site seems to me to be perfectly respectable and useful.

I very much doubt it was any of the factors you mention. It is likely that as a new user with low karma it takes fewer "flag" clicks to kill your item, but I don't see why it should've attracted any flags at all.

It does, however, read a lot like an advertisement, and perhaps people thought it was really spam, a point of view bolstered somewhat by the new user/low karma issue.

Try again, only this time perhaps say what you want from HN readers. Ask for reactions and advice, and see if it gets flagged dead again. It may have just been unfortunate timing. My recent item asking for article suggestions in sinking largely without any reaction - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1540610 - but I'll just shrug and move on.

joebo
Thanks for the reply. I intentionally tried to add more context to the post instead of just posting a link and asking for feedback. I have learned a lot from hanging here and hoped my experience would be another data point for hackers who think its all about the tech as I did when I started...I can see how it can be a little wordy and misinterpretted.
shafqat
Not sure why you got downvoted for this comment. I've upvoted you to bring you back to neutral. Seems weird.
ivenkys
Not wanting to sound like good old days but "Seems weird" is about right , the voting patterns in the last year has been very different.

Relevant comments and topic submissions that you would think were of interest to "Hackers" just don't seem to get upvoted enough and in many cases simply drop out. This could be a sign of the changing demographics.

dkarl
I've noticed that my comments often dip immediately to negative scores before recovering. Lord knows some of my comments are worth downvoting, but it's weird that relevant and sincere comments can get downvoted to -3 or -4 within half an hour of being posted and then get gradually upvoted into double digits.
JVerstry
I experienced the same thing about a week ago. Though I had more votes on my post than other post posted earlier, it still was not displayed on the main page. I could not figure why.

I sent an email for explanation to HN, but did not get an answer.

Are there hidden arbitrary rules? Is everything disclosed? Can HN silently kill a post? If so, I think this would be unethical...

Can someone from HN clarify? Thanks !!!

scott_s
Users can flag a post. If enough users flag a post, the post can be auto-killed. Something about what you posted made several people think "This is spam."
JVerstry
Thanks for your answer.

From the guidelines, I see: "If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.)". Fine, I have no issue with a Karma implementation.

But, I don't think my article was about spamming. I was just announcing the new release of JXTA/JXSE 2.6, an open source P2P project initiated by Sun Microsystems in 2001. This is not different than PostGre announcing a new release (for example). I don't see why it would attract 'negative' Karma.

My issue is that I don't see the flag link. Moreover, there is nothing telling me if I have attracted 'negative karma' at all. If people 'vote' that way, I believe they should assume it and this information should be displayed (if not to inform the poster of spamming).

After all, HN is about providing opinion about posts. I don't see why negatives should not be revealed and accounted for publicly.

Conversely, I can imagine people instrumentalize this 'flag' link to kill a post not in their interest. Far fetched, but possible. There is a gap to 'get away with murder'.

I believe more transparency about negative karma would not hurt HK overall, and would improve overall experience of newcomers.

Robin_Message
Flagging is not negative karma, it is marking something as spam. You don't see a flag link because you don't have enough karma.

As to your post, a new version of PostGres is interesting to many people. Release of open source P2P project - not so much. However, your post is actually a blog post that has some interesting info in, so I'd suggest with a better title your post would have appeared much less spammy and encouraged more clicks (e.g. "As of today, JXTA 2.6 is a mature library for P2P in Java". But not that. Just like that. Not that.)

As to transparency, no-one sees how many flags a post has (except pg I guess and some automated algorithm.) People must simply make an honest assessment themselves if they think a post is off-topic/spam. By not showing the number of flags pile-on effects are avoided. Multiple flags are required to kill a post, so it would have to be a large, shady conspiracy to bury your P2P software - perhaps the flags came from riaa1 through riaa10!

JVerstry
Ok, I get your suggestion about title. You say my post has interesting info.

Problem is, I still don't know whether people considered it a spam or whether there has been a glitch last week (I mean, why hasn't it been displayed on the main page?).

I have no problem if some people found it a spam, but I think I have a right to know then. Isn't it a legitimate request? There must be a possibility to display that info to the poster only?

P.S.: I am adding my link here again so people can judge whether it is spam:

http://adamman71.blogspot.com/2010/07/jxtajxse-26-is-out_433...

I'd love to have people's opinion. Thanks !!!

joubert
This doesn't answer your question, but put the name/URL of your startup in your HN profile.
lss
I also experienced a similar problem. I recently linked to my own blog post about Google's transition away from the motto "don't be evil". Within an hour it recieved 13 upvotes, but also enough flags to get killed. Perhaps partly due to a misquote of CEO Eric Schmidt, which I quickly corrected.
byrneseyeview
Did you ask your friends to vote on it? That generates some obvious patterns. Combine that with your low karma, and it might have looked like spam.
joebo
Nope. Good thought though
mastermahan
Let's face it, there are many haters on HN. If you post your website for review, you can fully expect it's going to be attacked with malware or backdoor exploits, and your question will be down-voted.

There is a herd mentality here as well (I suspect it's more the younger members than the older, established ones). If you say something that's out-of-the-box or too casual in tone, your comment will be punished.

That said, there are great people here, but there are snipers in these woods.

asdf
Malware -- really? Is this speculation or something you've encountered yourself?
hugh3
If you post your website for review, you can fully expect it's going to be attacked with malware or backdoor exploits, and your question will be down-voted.

I've never heard of anything like this happening. Anything to back that up?

paul9290
Really HN majority wise to me is full of people who are polite, respectful, encouraging and intelligent. Especially when compared to the community on Digg.com.

If the community does not like what you are working on they definitely will tell you bluntly. Some can be incredibly harsh and mean(very small percentage), but majority here will provide good feedback that you can use to fine tune your idea/work.

Jun8
One thing that bothers me with the way submissions are killed in HN is that (i) it's not clear who killed them, how many kill votes it got (though this may be intentional); and what's more important (ii) the reason for the kill is not given, so that the submitted can understand why it happened.

The question closing mechanism in SO has both of these features. I had 1-2 questions closed there and immediately knew exactly why it happened, so I didn't repeat my mistakes.

parfe
http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=1538163

Why does this link point to .org? Is .org owned by ycombinator.com?

keefe
blah at lack of newline preservation

keefe@hydrogen:~$ ping news.ycombinator.org

PING news.ycombinator.org (174.132.225.106) 56(84) bytes of data.

64 bytes from 6a.e1.84ae.static.theplanet.com

(174.132.225.106): icmp_seq=1 ttl=51 time=71.2 ms

--- news.ycombinator.org ping statistics ---

1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 71.268/71.268/71.268/0.000 ms

keefe@hydrogen:~$ ping news.ycombinator.com

PING news.ycombinator.com (174.132.225.106) 56(84) bytes of data.

64 bytes from 6a.e1.84ae.static.theplanet.com

(174.132.225.106): icmp_seq=1 ttl=51 time=71.2 ms