19 ms·

YC employees have boosted stats, it makes sense to me as this is their business

by djt 12y ago

tptacek 12y ago
By all means, just make stuff up. :)
- brymaster 12y ago
  Huh? By your own admission this was once happening. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5008267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5008267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5008829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5008829 So when did this change and stop happening?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - argonaut 12y ago
    Read those threads more carefully. The first only claims there are ways to boost OR identify YC alum posts (pg clarifies). The second implies you get a "boost" but does not say that HN itself gives that boost. As someone who tangentially interacted with YC founders, I can confirm that HN does not inherently boost posts, but HN does identify YC alum posts to other YC alums, which is probably the source of the "boost". In fact, HN on several occasions has penalized YC alum posts (upvote ring detection).
    - djt 12y ago
      this is exactly what I was referring to
      - argonaut 12y ago
        Saying YC employees have boosted stats implies that HN boosts those stats inherently. But that's not true. What happens is the same as what happens when people post their HN submissions on twitter/Facebook and tell all their friends about their HN post.
        djt 12y ago
        I guess it depends on if you think that things that boost behaviours inherently are included or if only software counts. I see it more akin to if some users submissions were automatically tweeted whereas others had to copy and paste. I didnt realise they had taken out the alerts on their dashboards that led to YC members being picked up by the vote ring detection.
joncalhoun 12y ago
I have no idea what you are referring to with boosted stats, and I don't believe they exist. I would say the biggest cause of this is likely the hundreds or thousands of people who applied to YC and are watching HN to see if any replies have gone out. This topic answers their question, so they upvoted it.
dang 12y ago
I'm responsible for that stuff with HN, and you have it backwards, both about this post and about the site in general. If anyone were "boosting" YC's "stats", I'd know: I look at the data obsessively. And I'm no stats-booster. As for this post, the votes on it look as genuine to me as on any popular story. Everyone here agrees that the way for HN to benefit YC's business is simply to have the best possible content. So we spend all our time working on the global optimum—how to get quality up—and zero time promoting this or that. While I'm at it, if any of you have ideas about how to get HN's quality up, please send them to hn@ycombinator.com.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- jacquesm 12y ago
  I believe you. At the same time, even if HN does not boost YC related threads I strongly suspect that you do occasionally penalize threads critical of YC backed companies.
  - dang 12y ago
    We—and I personally—go out of our way not to do that. I could cite several recent examples of critical threads about YC cos that were on the front page, which we might have penalized had they been about anybody else [1]. But I'm not going to list them because that wouldn't be fair. [1] We sometimes penalize posts castigating companies for something the poster didn't like, because the resulting threads tend to be indignation-fueled rather than substantive.
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      Again, I believe you, but this has happened in the past unless I'm very much mistaken. To date I've been very much impressed with your efforts to bring transparency to the moderation. Thanks for all the hard work. As for your caveat: that's a very fine line. And if selectively enforced it could still have the same effect. I know that YC owns HN and that's all fine and good until there is a conflict of interest. And I personally feel that HN is more important than YC (though, of course the YC founders & partners would probably disagree with that, as is their good right). edit: thanks, downvoter. edit2: by the way, how about this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7566069 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7566069 That seemed to drop off the frontpage suspiciously fast even though it had an incredible number of upvotes.
djt 12y ago
This is what I was talking about: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5025168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5025168 Their comments show up as Orange to other members, I would imagine that this would boost the amount of upvotes and assume that they would never get shadow banned etc. The fact that this comment got pretty much the most number of downvotes on my account may indicate that these posts do get attention. The fact that YC can see submitters voting history etc might also play into it.
- dang 12y ago
  YC founders' usernames do show up in orange to one another. This is one of two YC-specific privileges I know of (or at least remember at this late hour) on Hacker News. The other is that only YC companies are allowed to post job ads (and then only through /jobs). For a while, it was also the case that YC founders could see a list of submissions by other YC founders. But PG got rid of that over a year ago. It turned out to have voting-ring-like effects, which was never the intent behind it.

YC employees have boosted stats, it makes sense to me as this is their business

by djt 12y ago

YC employees have boosted stats, it makes sense to me as this is their business

tptacek 12y ago

By all means, just make stuff up. :)

brymaster 12y ago
Huh? By your own admission this was once happening. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5008267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5008267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5008829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5008829 So when did this change and stop happening?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- argonaut 12y ago
  Read those threads more carefully. The first only claims there are ways to boost OR identify YC alum posts (pg clarifies). The second implies you get a "boost" but does not say that HN itself gives that boost. As someone who tangentially interacted with YC founders, I can confirm that HN does not inherently boost posts, but HN does identify YC alum posts to other YC alums, which is probably the source of the "boost". In fact, HN on several occasions has penalized YC alum posts (upvote ring detection).
  - djt 12y ago
    this is exactly what I was referring to
    - argonaut 12y ago
      Saying YC employees have boosted stats implies that HN boosts those stats inherently. But that's not true. What happens is the same as what happens when people post their HN submissions on twitter/Facebook and tell all their friends about their HN post.
      - djt 12y ago
        I guess it depends on if you think that things that boost behaviours inherently are included or if only software counts. I see it more akin to if some users submissions were automatically tweeted whereas others had to copy and paste. I didnt realise they had taken out the alerts on their dashboards that led to YC members being picked up by the vote ring detection.

joncalhoun 12y ago

I have no idea what you are referring to with boosted stats, and I don't believe they exist. I would say the biggest cause of this is likely the hundreds or thousands of people who applied to YC and are watching HN to see if any replies have gone out. This topic answers their question, so they upvoted it.

dang 12y ago

I'm responsible for that stuff with HN, and you have it backwards, both about this post and about the site in general. If anyone were "boosting" YC's "stats", I'd know: I look at the data obsessively. And I'm no stats-booster. As for this post, the votes on it look as genuine to me as on any popular story. Everyone here agrees that the way for HN to benefit YC's business is simply to have the best possible content. So we spend all our time working on the global optimum—how to get quality up—and zero time promoting this or that. While I'm at it, if any of you have ideas about how to get HN's quality up, please send them to hn@ycombinator.com.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jacquesm 12y ago
I believe you. At the same time, even if HN does not boost YC related threads I strongly suspect that you do occasionally penalize threads critical of YC backed companies.
- dang 12y ago
  We—and I personally—go out of our way not to do that. I could cite several recent examples of critical threads about YC cos that were on the front page, which we might have penalized had they been about anybody else [1]. But I'm not going to list them because that wouldn't be fair. [1] We sometimes penalize posts castigating companies for something the poster didn't like, because the resulting threads tend to be indignation-fueled rather than substantive.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    Again, I believe you, but this has happened in the past unless I'm very much mistaken. To date I've been very much impressed with your efforts to bring transparency to the moderation. Thanks for all the hard work. As for your caveat: that's a very fine line. And if selectively enforced it could still have the same effect. I know that YC owns HN and that's all fine and good until there is a conflict of interest. And I personally feel that HN is more important than YC (though, of course the YC founders & partners would probably disagree with that, as is their good right). edit: thanks, downvoter. edit2: by the way, how about this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7566069 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7566069 That seemed to drop off the frontpage suspiciously fast even though it had an incredible number of upvotes.

djt 12y ago

This is what I was talking about: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5025168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5025168 Their comments show up as Orange to other members, I would imagine that this would boost the amount of upvotes and assume that they would never get shadow banned etc. The fact that this comment got pretty much the most number of downvotes on my account may indicate that these posts do get attention. The fact that YC can see submitters voting history etc might also play into it.

dang 12y ago
YC founders' usernames do show up in orange to one another. This is one of two YC-specific privileges I know of (or at least remember at this late hour) on Hacker News. The other is that only YC companies are allowed to post job ads (and then only through /jobs). For a while, it was also the case that YC founders could see a list of submissions by other YC founders. But PG got rid of that over a year ago. It turned out to have voting-ring-like effects, which was never the intent behind it.