Re:Is ccraigIW a script that submits an rss feed every morning?
by yan on Wednesday February 11, 2009 @09:58AM
(#477055)
It wouldn't be a bad thing if these automated submissions were adding value. Currently, they add much more noise than value and pollute the "new" page.
Re:Is ccraigIW a script that submits an rss feed every morning?
by andreyf on Wednesday February 11, 2009 @10:04AM
(#477066)
That's actually an experiment I've been meaning to get around to coding up for quite awhile: create a user to submit every post from 37signals, Joel Spolsky, Seth Godin, etc. Also, factor in top stories from programming reddit, Slashdot with a lot of comments, etc. and see how well it does.
If anyone else wants to do it, I'd be really interested in the result.
Re:Is ccraigIW a script that submits an rss feed every morning?
by mixmax on Wednesday February 11, 2009 @10:19AM
(#477091)
Not to diss the idea, which is certainly interesting from an intelllectual standpoint, but I would flag your auto-generated user if I knew what it was.
Re:Is ccraigIW a script that submits an rss feed every morning?
by yan on Wednesday February 11, 2009 @10:33AM
(#477107)
I wouldn't be so hasty to call it noise, or more accurately call the manually-submitted articles from those sources signal. How much coverage would you say JoS, 37s blog, seth godin get here already? I wouldn't be surprised if more than 90% of all new posts from these blogs wind up here.
Re:Is ccraigIW a script that submits an rss feed every morning?
by Tichy on Wednesday February 11, 2009 @10:44AM
(#477127)
That used to be true for xkcd, too, but thankfully it seems to have disappeared. Same might happen to the other blogs you mention, if quality deteriorates. For example JoS lately has been writing more about his office woes and business travels than about software engineering in his blog.
Re:Is ccraigIW a script that submits an rss feed every morning?
by cstejerean on Wednesday February 11, 2009 @11:49AM
(#477201)
A post sent by a human indicates that a human has found that particular post interesting. Automatically submitting every article from a blog using a bot I think goes against the spirit of this site. If everyone agrees that every single article on that blog is interesting then they can subscribe to it using RSS and keep the articles out of HN.
I made an xkcd script and ran it for a week...it did decently well. The community consensus was that most people already have XKCD in their RSS feed, so it's just noise. Something more intelligent that posted stories based on popularity (startup idea anyone?) might fly, but I think people would be pissed if they found out it was a script.
Re:Is ccraigIW a script that submits an rss feed every morning?
by mtw on Wednesday February 11, 2009 @09:17AM
(#477007)
no, see the 3rd submission about cloud computing, it has a different title than the article.
it's most likely a person at infoworld which gets the list of infoworld articles in his/her inbox everyday at 9am, and then submits them dutifully one by one to HN
Re:Is ccraigIW a script that submits an rss feed every morning?
by pierrefar on Wednesday February 11, 2009 @09:40AM
(#477032)
The HN submission title is the tag line of the article, just below the headline.
I would imagine a script that randomly chooses at low probability to post here with the tag line instead of the main heading. You know, just to mix it up so that we don't suspect it's a bot.
Re:Is ccraigIW a script that submits an rss feed every morning?
by Xichekolas on Wednesday February 11, 2009 @11:54AM
(#477214)
If they were actively trying to pass a turing test, the least they could do is space out the submissions and throw in something that not from infoworld every now and then.
Having a handful posted all at once to the same domain at the same time each day is kind of flagrant.
Re:Is ccraigIW a script that submits an rss feed every morning?
by timf on Wednesday February 11, 2009 @10:40AM
(#477123)
It is expressly discouraged, it's just an entirely subjective thing:
"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
I have been watching the HN new queue turn into an "all tech news" feed, at some point it becomes a true firehose and there is not a chance at all of finding anything "thoughtfully submitted."
edited: perhaps this is
Caroline Craig Associate Editor Infoworld Media Group, Inc. 155 Bovet Road Suite 800 San Mateo, CA 94402-3115
I'll get it.
The titles are slightly different so it's either a human or some powerful AI. mtw is right. It's most likely an IW employee (note the username).
If anyone else wants to do it, I'd be really interested in the result.
There's enough noise on the new page already.
I made an xkcd script and ran it for a week...it did decently well. The community consensus was that most people already have XKCD in their RSS feed, so it's just noise. Something more intelligent that posted stories based on popularity (startup idea anyone?) might fly, but I think people would be pissed if they found out it was a script.
it's most likely a person at infoworld which gets the list of infoworld articles in his/her inbox everyday at 9am, and then submits them dutifully one by one to HN
I would imagine a script that randomly chooses at low probability to post here with the tag line instead of the main heading. You know, just to mix it up so that we don't suspect it's a bot.
Having a handful posted all at once to the same domain at the same time each day is kind of flagrant.
I don't read HN to read InfoWorld articles blindly submitted by an IW employee. If I wanted that I'd go to InfoWorld and subscribe to their RSS feed.
This type of submission behavior should be expressly discouraged on HN. It is selfish and not in the spirit of the site.
"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
I have been watching the HN new queue turn into an "all tech news" feed, at some point it becomes a true firehose and there is not a chance at all of finding anything "thoughtfully submitted."
PG doesn't seem to have an issue with this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=475779