Ask PG: Shall we ban Techcrunch articles?

32 points by eugenejen ↗ HN
I think most users here read Techcrunch frequently. Shall we just ban submissions linked to Techcrunch? We can have room for more interesting stuffs.

64 comments

[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 110 ms ] thread
I actually don't read TC.

I'd rather have the knowledgeable folk on here upmod a good TC article, then I'll read it.

Crowdsourcing my reading :)

I agree, but I'd also like to have the ability to down-vote submissions.
considering that TC employees regularly check news.yc it's plausible to assume they automatically upvote all TC stories.
Yeah, which is why you should be able to downmod.
If you add in the ability to downmod submissions this place will rapidly turn into Digg. i.e. An environment where a handful of people control the majority of the information.

As far as excluding TC content goes, while I could live without it, think about the number of AWESOME discussions that would have killed in the past, then ask yourself if that's what you want for the future.

A handful of people already control the majority of the information on this forum.

ValleyWag posted a flurry of articles which were counter to YCombinator interests and now ValleyWag articles are automatically posted with the dead attribute. The same scenario could happen with TechCrunch.

I occasionally skim TC to find articles about photo sharing, since that's related to my startup and possibly not as interesting for other news.yc readers. I mostly find interesting non-photo-sharing TC articles by seeing them rise up on news.yc.
Very true indeed - perhaps it would be better to have filters :-)
As much as people bag on Techcrunch, with many times said bagging being justified, I find that it's one of my main sources for startup news. They tend to cover a lot of startups that I wouldn't hear otherwise from other sources, probably runner up being Mashable.

You guys have to remember that they are writers, so it's in their nature to write stuff that's interesting and conspiratorial, granted this can come at the price of accuracy, but that's where the community here can filter and chime in.

But inaccuracies of specifics aside, I still think it's a great source.

More room? Is there some submission/day limit I'm not aware of?

It might be that most read TC, and it might also be true that most read it through here.

I like Techcrunch. I can't keep up with it though, they just publish so many articles, and I don't have time for all of them.

I count on Hacker News, Reddit, etc. to tell me which ones are worth the read, so I vote no.

Yes. I like the unique interesting stuff Hacker News aggregates. Techcrunch is like fast food these days.
should fast food joints be banned? just because you don't like something isn't adequate argument to ban it.
No please. The comments here on TC articles is very interesting. The comments on TC often are trolling and add no value.
Don't bite the hand that feeds you. I know that some people find Mr Arrington very annoying etc, but a lot of people read TC and he does generate a lot of traffic towards the target, even if what he writes isn't nice.
I would say no. I do read Techcrunch, but I very rarely read the comments there. The important articles do find their way on News.YC, and I'd rather read 20 insightful comments here than 100 spammy comments there.
Unlikely to happen, since YC companies get so much coverage from TechCrunch....
well said they definitely scratch YC's back and are a key media outlet for startups. I get a bit annoyed seeing every TC article on YC but oh well
No.

I don't read TC that often (or at all, really), so I get use out of having the better articles posted here.

techcrunch != valleywag

so you're saying you read valleywag often? :)
Instead of banning any website, pg can enable down-votes just for posts from websites that are brought up for ban.
A personalized blacklist would be nice. I.e. a submission with a blacklisted URL won't even be visible on my front page unless its score is over a configurable threshold.
This capability is available as a third-party tool:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=173581

Great, thanks, but - no.

(a) it doesn't exactly do what I want it to

(b) it's a third party (officially unsupported) extension

(c) GreaseMonkey itself is just too much of a security risk.

PS. I did upmod your post though :)

As the 'third party' that wrote this, I have to ask:

(a) What else do you want it to do? I'm bored and willing to add to it.

(b) Is it so mission critical you need official support? I'll gladly sell you a support contract for $100/yr. That will buy you piece of mind that if PG ever changes the html structure of the page, I'll update my GM script accordingly.

(c) Don't install scripts without looking at the source first. I posted mine for all to see.

PS. I'm serious about (a) ... I'll gladly work on it for fun.

> I'm bored and willing to add to it

Kind of unrelated request:

Can you write a GM script that displays a red envelope like in Reddit, if someone replies to any of my comments?

Thanks for the blacklist btw. Very useful. And your cross site GET via image request is interesting. How about multiple requests when the data doesn't fit (with an end-of-requests marker)

A bit OT, but what I like about this thread: PG didn't even react, the community decided what is best. And the title is wrong - it should be "Ask HN" not "Ask PG".
No.

Too much noise to read TC directly. I prefer to see the noteworthy posts show up here.

What harm is Techcrunch doing here on HN? None that I can see. (Valleywag may be another matter.)
Let's ban everything!
ok guys it's not that amazing. stop upvoting this and write a better comment please.

edit: they keep upvoting it. i feel like gail wynand.

Banning is hard... let's go shopping?
(comment deleted)
I've been pretty critical of the content of TechCrunch articles in the past, but I'd never suggest an outright ban on them for any reason (either volume or content). If we really believe in crowd-sourcing, then any issue with any content provider, TechCrunch or otherwise, should correct itself if the collective group thinks that it's becoming a problem. Artificial, arbitrary bans shouldn't be necessary.
'Ban' is a very strong word. Maybe there should just be a handicap that rates TC articles 'lower', that way if the article is good it can be rated up, but the ones nobody cares about will trickle down
No, don't ban them. I only read TC articles when they show up here.

The comments here are also good.

I agree. Hacker News acts as a good filter, and the comments here are generally higher quality than what one sometimes finds on TechCrunch. No point in banning it -- some of their stories are worth reading.
Nope. Dont like the idea for the reasons mentioned by others.
I would rather ban TechCrunch inlinks to News.YC. Every mention of News.YC there means an incremental merging of that community into this one, meaning here becomes more like there.
I'm still more interested in having the number of upvotes required to get somthing in the rss be increased, having 1 other person finding something interesting isn't enough.

3 or 4 should be about right

No. Thats a daft suggestion. This site acts as a filter for the more popular techcrunch articles.
No it doesn't. The techcrunch shills submit and upmod (multiple times) every techcrunch article. Techcrunch's writing style is terrible, and the articles are usually hearsay and completely unresearched.

In the words of a famous kitten: DO NOT WANT.

on those wire photo contests, you can count up votes and down votes separately. what if you could filter by:

-- x up votes -- -- y down votes -- -- x/y ratio --