Ask HN: Is it frowned upon to post things on HN that I’ve written?

andrewseanryan · 2022-01-28T02:00:01.000Z

I’m a product manager who frequents hacker news. I typically write about non-tech issues in my free time. Is it bad form to post my writings here? If it isn’t, is there a convention (such as “show HN”) that I should use?

ipnon 4 years ago |

From the guidelines[0]:

"Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff occasionally, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity."

If you're going to post your own stuff, it should be as interesting as the articles you would normally read and upvote on HN. You should be thinking "they'll probably like this cool thing I've been working on," not "I hope this gets my project more attention."

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

PaulHoule 4 years ago |

It is no problem if you participate in HN as a real person.

That is, if you post comments and submit articles from a variety of sites that get some upvotes and slip in a few links from a site of your own that is great.

If you sign up for a new account and start spamming links from your blog that will get you in trouble.

andrewseanryan 4 years ago | |

Thanks. I’m on here quite a lot for the past few years. Do you think the “show HN” is appropriate for things I’ve written? It seems it is typically used for products.

mooreds 4 years ago | | |

Show HN is more for something "you've made that people can play with".

Here are the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

If it is something you've written (blog post, etc) then you want to just treat it as a normal link.

PaulHoule 4 years ago | | |

"Show HN" would not be appropriate for the blog postings that you've submitted in the past.

andrewseanryan 4 years ago | | |

I suppose just throwing it up there is the way? I guess I’d like to be transparent that I am the author and looking for feedback.

PaulHoule 4 years ago | | |

Yes. Frankly putting it in any kind of frame is like wearing a "kick me" sign on your back. For instance, people try starting a discussion and put a url in the text and then get surprised that the link didn't get turned into a hyperlink.

To offer some tough love I don't like the posts you've written about COVID-19. The problems are: (1) there is no value in armchair quarterbacking if you're not an expert, (2) the articles are way too long giving that the content is speculative, (3) anything you say about COVID-19 (even if you are an expert!) could be proved totally wrong in a few months... Last summer I shared a lot of speculations with friends and family about how the pandemic would develop and it was all wrong because I had no idea about delta and omicron.

So find your voice and look for something to say that is unique, that you can say better than anyone else. My favorite blog these days is

https://www.righto.com/

the author of that blog started out blogging about very ordinary Arduino projects he did and he grew to write articles that, at first glance, might seem to be about obscure topics but that catch people in various ways and invite everyone to understand and appreciate the world of electronics a little more.

andrewseanryan 4 years ago | | |

I appreciate the criticism and tend to mostly agree. I do have much more knowledge than your average Joe on the topic (MPH plus worked full time/still part time on pandemic response for an international NGO) but I’m no expert. But nonetheless, my writing on COVID for them (much different than my writing I posted here) is presented to all of their donors/other international agencies.

I’m more focused on psychology/philosophy at the moment, and intend to stay in that arena for the most part.

mindcrime 4 years ago |

I mostly agree with @PaulHoule... if you post some of your own stuff here and there, that's probably going to be fine. If you post nothing but your own stuff, and you post it all. the. freaking. time., then yeah, people are going to get annoyed and I wouldn't be surprised if you wind up shadow-banned or something.

HN has always had a culture of accepting a certain level of self-promotion, but on the other hand, HN is not your personal platform for pitching/espousing/proselytizing/whatever.

the_only_law 4 years ago | |

This is even noted in the guidelines.

> Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff occasionally, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity.

artpi 4 years ago |

If you write something that we would love, or sparks an awesome discussion - it is your DUTY to submit it :D. The goal here is to find interesting stories, not get "white knight points" for refusing to post your own content.

I submitted many of my own articles here and they have trended. Frankly, it constitutes most of my submissions.

Since HN is the way I get information, it is hard for me to pitch anything novel since whenever I come with content that I want to share, I search and somebody already submitted it :/. It is a new years resolution of mine do post more of the "other" stuff

I rounded up my thoughts on what made my previous articles "successful":

https://piszek.com/2021/10/07/hacker-news-tips/

Gustomaximus 4 years ago |

I tend do the reverse. On occasion I write a more detailed comment/answer here, I copy it across to my blog and update it to be an article there.

I figure if I spent the time writing something more detailed than typical of my comments I may as well leave it on my site too.

More generally I try to treat HN with more care than I would a reddit type site. Its such a great community and I dont like the increasing one liner jokes and glib/low benefit comments coming through. We really need to protect that.

I think posting to your own writings is fine as long as its openly what you're doing, not the majority of you 'contribution' and done for genuine interest vs trying to drive attention/traffic/work etc back to yourself as part motivation to why you doing it.

GianFabien 4 years ago |

As an alternative, can't you post your writings on a personal blog and then submit to HN? As long as you are not spamming and blogging about topics that HN readers like to read, and submitting no more than once a week or fortnight - then perhaps it is OK?

lmilcin 4 years ago |

HN is for interesting content. If you can make something interesting, then it is welcome.

tomlockwood 4 years ago |

I've posted several of my own articles and they've sometimes performed pretty well. I wrote some emotive anti-adtech stuff, some game of life stuff, a CLI journal, and recently a wordle solver!

Personally I think your writing should be interesting and novel, but I've not received any negative comments due to posting my own.

throwaway81523 4 years ago |

Yes it's frowned upon, but there is another guy who does it all the time, and once I commented on it and I got downvoted to oblivion for that, so shrug.

burnished 4 years ago | |

It is frowned on to do it for publicity, or because you need eyeballs. If you genuinely wrote something very interesting that you think should be shared it seems reasonable to do so. But I'm basically paraphrasing the rules at this point.

throwaway81523 4 years ago | | |

The guy I mentioned seems to do it to attract views to his blog. It's on an interesting topic and is not icky/commercial and people who read it through here seem to like it, so ok, whatever. It's stuff you can already read about in books though.