Tell HN: Winners of Apply HN for YC Fellowship 3

Obviously when you put something valuable up to an internet vote someone, somewhere is going to manipulate the results in some sort of fashion. Did anyone honestly think the opposite was going to happen? Did people honestly think the internet was going to play fair for the first time in history? That an online vote was going to be taken seriously?

And how do you respond like this after Maciej explicitly said it was a protest vote? How could you not see this turning Maciej/Pinboard into a martyr? You're only adding fuel to the fire and proving everything he says about Silicon Valley right.

This whole thing was played so obviously wrong from the beginning it feels like a publicity stunt. How can people who practically control this industry understand the internet so poorly? I'm honestly at a loss for words.

Of course not. And if you read the original announcement, it was very clear: "to answer one question I know will come up: Upvotes are an important factor but they're too brittle to rely on exclusively; doing so would encourage the wrong kind of trying to game the system."

Maciej tried to game the system, and got the answer he deserved: "Nice try, but we told you that we weren't going to let you do that". Actually, I think he got more than he deserved: If I had been in Kevin's place I wouldn't have bothered with the ad-hoc phone interview.

So we're going to gauge community interest both by upvotes and comments, and in case of doubt I'll make the final call—or better, figure out a way to put the final call to the community.

Pinboard was the most discussed entrant as well as the highest voted. I also don't think it's foolish of me to think that a ranking based on "discussion" or "comments" is just a glorified poll with more subjectivity, and just as vulnerable to manipulation (if not more).

It was also implied a value judgement would only be made in case of doubt, seems like Pinboard was doubtless the front runner. Very unfortunate they didn't manage to put the final call to the community though.

As an aside, i'd just like to echo how odd it is to see people on Hacker News advocate against people gaming the system

They've consistently failed to understand even the basics of community moderation here, permitting a cesspool of racism, bigotry, and "meritocracy" (a word which originated as a dystopic warning) to grow to the point that it's beyond parody in most other corners of the internet. The idea that they know anything about human interaction on the internet is a sad joke at best.

I'll concede that it could be misunderstood, but I'm sure that by "comments" they meant the content of the discussion, not just the number of comments.