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Hacker News Guidelines

(news.ycombinator.com)
446 points tonmoy | 2 comments | 24 Aug 23 16:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.402s | 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. pb7 ◴[24 Aug 23 17:46 UTC] No.37252203[source]▶
>There's dang's own idiosyncratic, controversial, unwritten exception to "Please submit the original source", i.e., unless it's a corporate PR.

I said it before and I'll say it again: this is a bad rule. People can read through the corporate bullshit themselves instead of having some "journalist" tell them what to think of it.

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2. wolverine876 ◴[24 Aug 23 21:05 UTC] No.37254545[source]▶
The news reporter doesn't tell you what to think, they do the research - talk to competitors' CEOs, talk to independent experts, bring up that lawsuit and interview leading attorneys in the field, research prior comments and actions, ask followup questions to the CEO of the corporation who issued the press release, etc etc - and then share it with you.

No one has time to do that themself, and the CEOs, attorneys, experts, etc. won't return your calls anyway (they can't return everyone's calls).

Opinion writers are the one who tell you what to think. IMHO, few of them are better than blogger.