"Rate My Startup" Post Policy
"Rate My Startup" posts have increased dramatically in the
last couple months, to the point where spammers started to
post links with "Rate My Startup" prepended. Obviously we
can't just allow any newly-created account to post a link
to any site, no matter how offtopic it would otherwise be,
with the claim that it's their startup (or weekend project,
or whatever). And yet I would not want to ban RMS
posts entirely. We need some way to separate legit ones,
and it seems like the simplest policy is to allow them
from established accounts but not newly created ones.
I'd been planning to consider ways to embody this in the software, maybe with a new type of item that (like polls) had a karma threshold, but I've been postponing dealing with it till I was done reading YC applications. In the meantime for the past several weeks I've been killing RMS posts that weren't from established accounts.
I really need to get back to reviewing applications, since today is the last day. In a couple days I'll revisit the matter.
139 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 184 ms ] threadAs an aside, how would we distinguish between RMS posts and regular posts? Would the spammers simply revert to normal posts? I think if this is the case then perhaps we should reconsider the goal.
If the goal is to stop spam masquerading as RMS, then it seems to me that accounts should require more longevity or community contribution to post an RMS post than a regular post. As long as we define etiquette for posting an RMS post, then it should be feasible to use a combination of following that etiquette, and flagging posts that don't follow said etiquette.
If the issue is stopping spam, then perhaps that's separate to RMS posts and should be considered as a wider whole.
I care about other people's startups, but not spam.
http://xkcd.com/810/
Crowdsourcing RMS spam control sounds like it could work well. Like how investors stake their reputation by inviting other co-investors, established HN'ers would have something to lose if they posted RMS spam.
OTOH, if you say stuff that's considered interesting here, you are probably not trying to sucker us into reviewing your app.
The only problem here is a spammer that creates a ton of accounts and then uses them all at once after the 60 day threshold.
With that said, I have learned a ton here and HN is easily the best resource I have ever found on any subject.
edit:
Potential solution: require participation in other user's RMS before you can post your own RMS. Even though I am non technical and don't have much entrepreneurial experience, I can still give an opinion from the view of a customer.
This hasn't really bothered me, until the average karma/post started getting shown, which showed me that I get upvotes on less than half the things I say. Now that pg is also pointing out the correlation between new accounts and undesirables, I'm worried about...something (not sure what).
If you are generally clever and motivated, there's few situations where you won't have input. Even asking well structure questions to learn on a topic is a good contribution, and can help people out.
> Awesome App! 5 stars! Get paid apps 100% free from xyz.com!
Perhaps make it policy that all RMS submissions be text submissions explaining the idea to give it a bit of authenticity, and every RMS submission with a link in the title be auto-killed. I don't imagine spammers would go through the effort of writing out a description of their service, asking for feedback, etc. Also, adjusting the flag threshold to 5 on text submissions could help. People tend to be more accepting and less likely to flag text submissions because the chances of them being spam are less likely (due to a higher degree of effort put into them as opposed to linking to some affiliate site), so a reduced flagging threshold might get rid of those submissions more quickly.
I have to say I'm not a huge fan of the slashdot moderation system in general, but it could work within this sort of limited scope. Allow people to opt-out altogether via a setting if necessary.
Tangent: I was amazed at the first spammy RMS submission I encountered. It had actually been upvoted. Spammers self-upvoting, or people wholesale upvoting any RMS they see without looking at it first?
You could track a link click either by setting a cookie client-side with javascript, or by linking to a trampoline page on HN that tracks the click, then redirects to the real URL.
EDIT: added emphasis
But the bar is much lower than that. For the purpose of just keeping spam accounts out, I think the combination of a karma threshold with average non-karma accruing activity over time (such as upvoting others, clicking through on articles, etc) could be an effective filter.
I'm usually afraid to say something wrong, since I know that there are always experts on the topic of the post. It makes more sense to me to let said experts explain a particular topic than to possibly disseminate wrong information, even though I might have a useful perspective to add.
The issue is if people that see that you're wrong, instead of correcting you, just downvote you. In my opinion, a wrong statement should not be buried with downvotes, it should stay at 1 point with a reply that corrects it and that get a lot of upvotes.
Not that I'm complaining of course. I think I've only used my downvote powers once normally. The only other time I've used such powers was when I noticed some spam comments, and chose instead to flag them on the noobcomments list.
I honestly think that something like my level of karma is too high a limit for posting things like an RMS. This place isn't reddit, so I take my comments on here a lot more seriously. As such, I don't comment nearly as often since I don't usually feel I have a comment of sufficient intelligence to contribute.
Really, I'm quite amazed anytime I see my karma increase here. I have a definite inferiority complex when reading some of the great comments here.
With experience like that, building any measure of karma could be a slow and arduous process for the typical new user. Unfortunately, I'd imagine a lot of people working on their first project would have the same sort of inferiority complex, yet they would be exactly the sort to benefit the most from an RMS sort of post.
In fact, I'm building (very slowly, thanks to inexperience and a bit of RSI) my first "major" project, and I had hoped to show it off here first, but now that same "I'm not worthy" feeling is making me feel like it wouldn't be welcome.
I think the grandparent (xatax) is being far too timid, I am sure 221 karma is enough to do anything on here that any other non-moderator is allowed to do.
I guess it also makes sense not to have submission downvotes, since the really bad posts will just get killed, and the iffy posts just won't get enough points to get very visible.
Thanks for the explanation.
Good for drawing crooked lines between accounts of a similar age, eg. there is a signature for legitimacy that appears on short (two day) and long (two year) time scales. Talk about specific thresholds seems misplaced when it can be computed from a small training sample.
Why would that be?
I've been a member since late 2009, but I've made 2 or 3 comments so far. My case is not atypical. Maybe there's a better way?
I personally haven't come across any "rate my start-up" posts I'd considered spammy, but maybe that's because the measures that are currently being taking have been effective (marking as dead, lack of upvotes for spammy posts). Mostly I've only seen that kind of spam in comments.
As for RMS posts in general, I really enjoy seeing what other people have done. So I would be opposed to an outright or unnecessarily restrictive ban.
It's still like WoW. You put in the time and you get the exp/karma/level what have you.
I mean, if you invent special treatment for RMS-posts then why wouldn't the spammers simply go back to submitting their stuff without that prefix?
Is there any kind of captcha on the submission for RMS? If not perhaps a direct link to the other RMS's and a requirement to post there.
Timing is actually one of the simplest techniques to game. Create the account and wait. Content creation is one of the best ways to ensure no gaming is happening.
comments are easier for the community to moderate and its easier to pick out spammier ones, since they're clearly off topic or include random inappropriate links.
they might sneak in on the less popular submissions, but i kind of feel like it won't get by any more of a problem than it already is. if comments were more a effective way to spam, they'd already be a problem.
alternatives: disallow links in comments until a certain karma/age. disallow both comments and submissions (ha) until you've voted on enough statistically different things. make it a game by creating a new metric that people can be measured on based on the number of spammers they've sought out and identified via flagging, and create a new top list for it.
But don't name it rms, that means something else on any hacker site.
Can we stop with the star-crossed imaginings of startup questions lost to the ages because of karma thresholds? If you have a real product you want to rate, and you can't post it, just find someone who posts regularly and who has their contact info in their profile. Then: send them an email and ask for help.
If that's too much of a hurdle for you, I have some bad news for you about entrepreneurship...
Be aware that I'll look on archive.org to see whether your site has been up for five years :-)
I like this idea, and from what other have said about this, I got the following idea: How about letting regulars promote/vouch for RMS posts. That way, the person behind the site can post it and it will still be clear that it is not spam.
in fact.... i sense a new startup/weekend project. 'spam link analyzer service' which incorporates user defined metrics (e.g. HN metrics)
I've got to imagine that everyone who reads these forums has at least 2-3 domains that they've owned for a while for future projects.
On top of that, record the IP address of the poster, and display the post but only to the spammer. Basically hiding it from everybody else. The spammer will think the post is still active. Everybody else will not see it.
Perhaps it's time for a more generic categorizing system of some kind? You could make it so that people can't post in certain categories without meeting a certain karma threshold.
While this is true to some extent, it undervalues the fact that RMS posts create value for everyone, since the comments are then available for everyone (not just the poster).