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Two HN Announcements

(blog.ycombinator.com)
698 points tilt | 2 comments | 29 Sep 15 18:40 UTC | HN request time: 0.416s | source
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feedjoelpie ◴[29 Sep 15 19:58 UTC] No.10299138[source]▶
Serious question, not rhetorical:

I have noticed there appear to be artificially-bumped posts from time-to-time that relate to YC companies. Is HN providing extra clout to YC companies' PR above and beyond organic community moderation, and if so, will HN's extra autonomy in any way change that?

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1. gus_massa ◴[29 Sep 15 23:22 UTC] No.10300567[source]▶
I think one problem I that there are de facto fanclubs. For example, I'm guilty of voting almost all stories of the sites http://www.kalzumeus.com (patio11) and http://www.righto.com (kens). When I see on of them, I read them immediately because they are almost sure good and then I upvote them.

I don't have the data, but probably most programing languages have a set of users that is very interested in them. IIRC this caused a few times a false positive with the voting ring detector a few years ago.

Probably, YC has a mix off many happy alumni here and many fans, so any story about YC get many upvotes fast, and that may look like an artificial bump.

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2. dang ◴[30 Sep 15 19:15 UTC] No.10306354[source]▶
There definitely are de facto fan clubs, and it has been interesting to see them shift around over the years. I don't see this as bad for HN, unless it becomes excessive. It's great that people are passionate about these things and I hope every HN user finds something to be passionate about here.