Except that he's inventing rules ("whoever gets the most votes wins $20,000!") which were explicitly not there, while ignoring other rules ("Can I ask people to upvote my submission? No.").
But like someone said re: raising money from VC (was it PG?) don't listen to the reason, listen to the answer.
Kevin is uncomfortable with Maciej and took his decision based on that. As it would not seem politically connect to give that as his reason, he began looking for "good reasons" to justify it.
Is this conflict that can keep dividing us worth the 20k to YC? I would guess no.
They could and should sort this out. Kevin should understand that these HN YCF coys "belong to the community". If Maciej goes in and try to mess it up the community will (as my people say) "treat his fuck up".
My interpretation of events is rather different: Maciej cheated and got caught, but Dan and/or Kevin were concerned about the reaction if the submission which received the most votes was excluded based on the vote-rigging alone; so they went out of their way to try to find a way to include him anyway.
I got increasingly irritated with his faux innocence as the evening progressed. I should probably have stopped around midnight.
you know this isn't true
My turn to be surprised. Which part isn't true? It seemed true to me when I wrote it at 2 AM, and it seems true to me when I'm reading it again now at 8 AM (curse these early morning meetings!).
Please look up confirmation bias. And (please) do not lecture me about my lack of awareness of the situation due to my newbie status.
It has more to do with the fact that he called pg a "weenis" years ago, and openly criticizes YC and SV culture in general.
The rejection was basically "sry, but you aren't quite the culture fit we're looking for". Which is fine, YCF can fund whomever they want, it's their money and their prerogative.
But here's the rub.
The way I see it, the biggest irony of the whole experiment is that it was probably meant to draw non-traditional founders, because of the pseudonymous nature of HN. But in the end, biases still prevailed. Which is why hiring/funding in SV is beyond broken, as this experiment has proven empirically.
This thread is the embodiment of all the diversity problems that tech has, the root node if you will. When the decision comes down to arbitrary "gut feeling" vs. the best (candidate|founder), then you know there's a problem.
If you can't see that, then...I'm not exactly sure what to tell you. Spend more time in the Valley?
The /specific/ rule here should have been made clearer.
I think the biggest shame is that under the guise of an experiment they had the opportunity to "really disrupt" themselves and "change the face of" ...money.. giving...
What hashtag should I use to support the twitter campaign to get Maciej into a program that he probably shouldn't be under which we're discussing on a message board... UGH! crashing under the meta-overload...
But this was not just another HN submission. This had nothing to do with 'keeping the front page interesting'. This had to do with allowing HN to "democratically" elect companies they thought were best to fund. A candidate company asking its supporters to...support them does not only seem obvious, but very different from HN trying to keep the front page clean.
If you disagree that they are different forms of using HN and not the same spirit of submission, I'm not sure we'll be able to agree here, which is also totally fine, of course. :)
Exactly the same reasoning applied to deciding what's interesting and gets funded. I'm surprised this is even a question. If we had changed that rule, HN users would have skinned us alive.
Saying that "interviewing and evaluating will be done in regular HN threads" meant that the regular HN thread rules applied. We did change one of those—from "be civil" to "be nice", which by the way people did a pretty good job of—and I explained that change at length in the original post.
If you read through the comments in that original thread you'll see that a lot of them had to do with people's concerns about gaming of the voting system, which is one of the most common things that comes up here, and my answers were all about reassuring them that we'd watch for it and disqualify applications if we found it.
I don't think this brouhaha is worth it. Let the community send one of theirs in there. If he takes the money and bails (I doubt) the community takes the blame and deals with it.
If he takes the money and does a gimmick (I suspect) the community will also deal with it.
Remember, this is an EXPERIMENT. It is theoretically not to work. It is similar to the "come with no idea" thig YC did years back
I didn't vote for Pinboard [1] however, truing to justify the silencing of 700+ votes will be hard.
You and Kelvin, take a deep breath and let the EXPERIMENT run its course.
For Kevin, due to the "trollish" behavior of Maciej during this competition, Kevin was (validly) very suspicious of Maciej's intention for participating in the program. Of course previous history of Maciej rallying against all YC stands for did not help assuage the fears :)
For Maciej, the rules are the rules. he (fairly) believes you do not have to like someone to keep your end of an agreement.
Here's my position. As this is an EXPERIMENT, YC should have taken the risk. Worst case, they would have had to kick him out of the program. But everyone will see they have been fair. Seen to be fair is a quite important.
I have "clashed" with Maciej before [1] however, i see him as some one who only has a hard bark and will be quite cook in person or once you know him. Dont't be too worried Kevin.
Of course, your house your rules. But still..
I hope YC can rescind and take Pinboard in (I know... I know..:).
[1] http://oonwoye.com/2011/03/09/maciej-of-pinboard-in-nigerian...