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It seems that this post may have been artificially upvoted by the author of this post. The oldest comments are all at the bottom and are short, trivial and gra
by markmccraw 15y ago
It seems that this post may have been artificially upvoted by the author of this post.
The oldest comments are all at the bottom and are short, trivial and grayed out comments. One of those comments appears to be legit and another appears to be from a fellow Brazilian entrepreneur. However the rest are suspect.
The submitter/author of the post created his account 23 days ago.
The following accounts were all created 22 and 23 days ago and have only commented on everwrite related posts.
http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mateusbicalho http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mateusbicalho
http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bgrossi http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bgrossi
http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lucasarruda http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lucasarruda
These accounts were created shortly after this was submitted and have only posted on this submission with the same short, positive comments.
http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jpresende http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jpresende
http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=eusouomatt http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=eusouomatt
These all do have real name formats, so perhaps these are all employees of everwrite and were asked to come vote this up? I'm not sure what the official rules are here, but it certainly leaves a bad taste in the mouth to send five associates here to vote this up and comment on the article in the early stages of the post, where five upvotes likely makes a large difference. And if it's straight up sock puppeting, it's simply unacceptable.
EDIT: I take back that one of the early comments seems legit, this account http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lucianot http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lucianot is also associated with everwrite in some way. http://twitter.com/#!/lucianot/status/114152173767639042 http://twitter.com/#!/lucianot/status/114152173767639042
I hate to be the one who makes the drama, but the whole thing seems disingenuous to make all these fluff comments without disclosure and is not beneficial for the community. Imagine if a company with 2000 employees sent an army this way!
- bobds 15y agoGoing to all this trouble to create accounts and upvote, then making empty blogspam-like comments... seems like a waste.
- diegogomes 15y agoWe shared the post with some friends, that's for sure. But everybody seems to have liked it. ain't that a good post? We thought that by writing about our incorporation adventures we would be giving back to the community. Sorry if you didn't like it, unfortunately we can't please everybody.
- markmccraw 15y agoThe quality of the article is not the issue. It's just that if everyone behaved the way you did, HN would merely be a contest of who can call in the most favors/have the most accounts under their control.
- diegogomes 15y agoSo now you rule here. And i can't mail my friends with my article here. Ok then.
- lucianot 15y agoIf you feel that friends shouldn't upvote a post, fine. That's your opinion of how the community should work and you are entitled to it. But don't accuse people of "sock puppeting" unless you have all the facts. Sock puppeting implies creating faking accounts, which is not the case and this should be easy for the admins to verify. Also, stating that they used employees to upvote is pathetic, because they have no employees! The truth is much simpler: OP wrote a blog post about his experience, posted it on HN and shared the link with his network of friends/acquaintances (myself included). I enjoyed the post, upvoted and wrote a positive comment. Period. What is wrong with that?? I am a real user (746 days old account) and legitimately thought the post was well written and very helpful for other starting entrepreneurs. It seems many other people also found this to be the case, as there were several links to the post in the local media, not to mention dozens of comments on the original blog. (Sock puppets too??) In the future, I will disclose even a remote relation to an OP when I write a comment, just to be safe. But, please, don't go around making accusations based on loose facts and general suspicions. Witch-hunting is just as harmful to HN.