Clarity on how posts are hidden or marked as dead
It's not clear to me how posts are moderated and where can I find that ruleset. Example, I posted an article on AI which got some visibility and that was ok, yesterday I posted one on strategy and it was dead in a couple of minutes... I understand mods trying to prevent spam but it's hard to engage without understanding the rules.
11 comments
[ 0.25 ms ] story [ 50.5 ms ] threadIf the exact rules were available, it would be trivial for spammers to circumvent them by adhering to the letter of the rule and changes would have to be done way slower (because they’d have to be documented every time). It would also lead to lengthy unproductive discussions and lack of flexibility for the sole moderator when applying the spirit of the rule.
You’ll sometimes find posts by dang explaining various policies, and there are some sources which try to document the undocumented:
https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented?tab=re...
It is my understanding some websites (like dev.to) are automatically killed due to a prevalence of low quality posts. But users with showdead enabled can still see those and vouch for them, which brings them back alive. Posts may also be flagged by users for a variety of reasons such as the subject having been posted and discussed multiple times in the last few days, essentially making the new post a duplicate.
My only counterargument is that the current model seems to suffer from the same problems already. For example, the post I mentioned was an essay I wrote on execution VS ideas, not promoting me, not promoting anything I am doing. Still, it's dead apparently. Just today I found multiple links to product web pages created by green users that were live. Doesn't seem 100% fair...
What you are probably getting tripped up by is: "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity."
It’s not just you.
The account "rune19" on submission ID "31892247" looks like a clear effort to circumvent organic ranking and push your own content.
You have few comments and most of them are exclusively in your own posts, your karma is low, and all posts submitted look like attempts to draw attention to yourself and your work. I think the moderation is working exactly as intended, in which case explaining what triggered the moderation serves only to help you circumvent the guidelines/rules.
If you think you are being unfairly modded you can e-mail HN and ask what's up. I give it 50/50 on whether dang tells you why you are triggering automod or asks you nicely not to use HN for self promotion.
It's possible that you are not triggering any auto-moderation and it's directly a result of HN users flagging obviously self-promotional content. I think a good number of HN users are aggressively hostile to self promotion on HN because if that behavior is rewarded, you get more of it.
> Guidelines: Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something. Send it to hn@ycombinator.com.