Re:The Best Books I Read in 2015
by tlrobinson on Monday December 07, 2015 @05:03PM
(#10693078)
Perhaps, but taking a famous person's list of books and reposting it with affiliate links and no disclaimer is definitely crossing the line in my book.
Don't think I might have upvoted it, but it does represent a minor convenience.
Re:The Best Books I Read in 2015
by manish_gill on Monday December 07, 2015 @08:23PM
(#10694154)
Why? I'm genuinely interesting in your line of reasoning.
Profiteering in comment sections pollutes the incentives for commenters. Sure the links were useful, but they were much less useful than a person providing a really insightful comment about a typical article that shows up here. I don't want one person making monetary gain over another.
If only there was a system where we could somehow crowdsource deciding which comments are "really insightful" and which are not...
> I don't want one person making monetary gain over another.
Seems like that shipped sailed a long time ago: there are a lot of people who link to their companies, offer jobs, and that kind of thing here. Making money is not a bad thing - spamming is.
If anyone's interested, I hereby offer to spend the entirety of my ill-gotten affiliate gains on beers if anyone ever visits Bend, Oregon.
Re:The Best Books I Read in 2015
by unethical_ban on Monday December 07, 2015 @04:18PM
(#10692788)
I suppose some think there is an opportunity for disingenuous posting if there is monetary gain to be had. That said, I agree with you, and knowing I have posted affiliate links without trying, I think any malice attributed to it is misplaced.
With affiliate links, I sometimes make upwards of 10 dollars every few months - enough for a free book once in a while. I'll let you guess how that compares to my salary...
I think it's pretty clear from people's posting/comment history whether they're adding them in good faith or not.
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=hullo seems to be the person who included some links. They have clearly been here a while, participates constructively, and doesn't seem to spew out a lot of affiliate links (any, actually, that I can see).