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Hacker News Guidelines

(news.ycombinator.com)
446 points tonmoy | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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lapcat ◴[] 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."

replies(11): >>37251884 #>>37251894 #>>37251910 #>>37251953 #>>37252203 #>>37252412 #>>37252427 #>>37252464 #>>37252487 #>>37252828 #>>37253626 #
1. styfle ◴[] No.37251953[source]
I'm pretty sure that submitting a duplicate link is automatically turned into an upvote on the original
replies(3): >>37252117 #>>37252438 #>>37252675 #
2. em-bee ◴[] No.37252117[source]
only if the url is an exact match, which often it isn't.
3. Hamuko ◴[] No.37252438[source]
I'm pretty sure that it isn't.

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.backblaze.com%2F...

4. dang ◴[] No.37252675[source]
Yes but only if (1) the previous post got significant attention and (2) it was within the last year or so. Otherwise we let reposts through, because we want good stories to get multiple chances at attention, and because it's good for the culture when classic articles cycle through once in a while. Just not too often.