How we hack Hacker News and consistently hit the front page

Vouched for and upvoted because I think it's important for readers here to see how much effort goes into creating posts that game the system. I think it's better for these strategies to be known than hidden. It will be interesting to see how tactics like this one evolve as ChatGPT use becomes more widespread.

There's a definite tension between the rule of not accusing other users of being shills and the reality that there are quite a few shills out there. I think it a still good rule, but not because it's never right. Rather, the rule is good because the false accusations do more harm than letting some shilling slip by.

There’s a silent part of that rule: if you suspect a shill, gather the evidence and present it to dang via email.

Yes please.

Edit: actually not so silent - it's the latter part of this guideline from https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."

It's part of the contract we have with HN users - we ask them not to post this stuff in the threads, but in return we always look into cases that they report to us directly.

How long do shill posts last before they've been taken care of?

Just out of curiosity, what sort of answer are you expecting? Your post reads as vaguely accusatory to me - like you're implying that messes are being left intentionally