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Hacker News Guidelines

(news.ycombinator.com)
446 points tonmoy | 5 comments | 24 Aug 23 16:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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lapcat ◴[24 Aug 23 17:25 UTC] No.37251854[source]▶
IMO the guidelines could use some updates. For example, there are some unwritten conventions that could be formalized:

1) Search for duplicates before you submit a link.

2) If the submission is not from the current year, append (YEAR) at the end of the title.

3) It should be clarified that the guidelines about comments apply to linked article authors too. "Be kind. Don't be snarky." "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work."

4) There's dang's own idiosyncratic, controversial, unwritten exception to "Please submit the original source", i.e., unless it's a corporate PR.

[EDIT:] Three different replies have said to append [pdf] and [video] to submissions, but that's already in the guidelines. "If you submit a video or pdf, please warn us by appending [video] or [pdf] to the title."

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1. tomashubelbauer ◴[24 Aug 23 17:28 UTC] No.37251884[source]▶
AFAIK (I saw dang state this a few times in his comments) it is fine to submit duplicates to HN assuming enough time has passed (a year?). He'll even reach into the second change pool and re-submit submissions that did not gain much traction the first time around, I think. So I think your first rule isn't really something that is much enforced on HN. (Which I think is a good thing.)
replies(2): >>37251962 #>>37251973 #
2. DavidPeiffer ◴[24 Aug 23 17:32 UTC] No.37251962[source]▶
I hadn't heard about the 2nd chance pool until I submitted an article and he emailed me to say he was going to 2nd chance it.

That was a really neat mod intervention I wasn't expecting but really appreciated.

3. lapcat ◴[24 Aug 23 17:33 UTC] No.37251973[source]▶
That's in the FAQ: "If a story has not had significant attention in the last year or so, a small number of reposts is ok. Otherwise we bury reposts as duplicates." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
replies(1): >>37252290 #
4. kergonath ◴[24 Aug 23 17:53 UTC] No.37252290[source]▶
It’s more of a guideline than an ironclad rule, though. Two different sources might have different takes on the same thing and it is not rare to have more than one story about the same subject on the front page, for good reasons. The community (and the mods) seem to be very effective at filtering real duplicates.
replies(1): >>37258560 #
5. dredmorbius ◴[25 Aug 23 05:53 UTC] No.37258560{3}[source]▶
Another case where looking through dang's moderation comments is helpful.

The duplicates-detection code is deliberately porous: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7650172>

But overwhelming the front page with multiple takes on a story (e.g., the Tver aircraft downing yesterday) would be tiresome, and even multiple takes on what's essentially the same story over a span of a few days or weeks can get tedious.

The critical qualifying exception is "significant new information": <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8406835>