Comment by idlewords
10 years ago
I call shenanigans.
The way this experiment was presented, the Hacker News community would be allowed to select two YC Fellowship recipients. According to the announcement, "all the interviewing and evaluating will be done in regular HN threads."
But that's not what happened here. I won the voting by a yuuuge margin, and then the vote was nullified in a vape-filled room after it became clear that Hacker News might have its own agenda, separate from YC.
Accusations of soliciting votes by tweeting the HN threads would carry weight with me if there had been any published guidelines about what kind of publicity was allowed. But rules about "vote brigading" on HN are intentionally kept secret.
People have repeatedly accused me of trolling, but I don't think it's me who just trolled you all.
I want my twenty grand.
You're right to single out that sentence, or rather that word "all" in "All the interviewing and evaluating will be done in regular HN threads". We didn't stick to that, and I'm sorry. That's precisely what we changed, and yes we changed it at the last minute.
I didn't think of this experiment as having fixed rules, but rather as something we'd figure out as we went along. I tried to make that clear up front: "Note that word experiment! We'll start small and figure it out as we go. But here are the initial conditions." I can see why that wasn't enough.
It occurs to me only now that "figure it out as we go" and "changing the rules" are the same thing. So yes. We changed the rules, and I'm sorry.
The only catch with this is that "Note that word experiment! We'll start small and figure it out as we go. But here are the initial conditions." can very easily be taken to mean "we'll start small this time, and adjust things for the next time, figuring it out as we go." That's how I, and seemingly some others, interpreted it.
"We'll change things next time based on the results of this experiment" and "We'll change things this time as we see fit and appropriate" are very different, though your initial statement can be read as implying either.
I don't even think one is better than the other - I would just be more careful about communicating which it really is, next time. You guys are free to do what you want, heh. This entire "debacle," if you can even call it that, is actually a great case study in how and why clear communication is so important. The problem wasn't the decision that was made, but rather how it was communicated.
> can very easily be taken to mean "we'll start small this time, and adjust things for the next time, figuring it out as we go."
That's not what I meant at all. This is the first time this interpretation ever occurred to me.
If that's what people thought I meant, I can certainly understand some of this thread better. But it floors me that my intent would have failed so completely to come across.
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> That's precisely what we changed, and yes we changed it at the last minute.
no rule of law -> automatic bullshit.
I don't agree with that at all, and taken literally it would make adaptation impossible, which can't be right.
HN has never been a rule-driven, legalistic kind of place, and isn't going to get that way. But I've had to learn a lot about people who do feel this way and obviously have a lot to learn yet. My own temperament is very far from this; it's almost impossible for me not to read "we'll figure it out as we go" as a good, fine thing.
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According to the announcement, "all the interviewing and evaluating will be done in regular HN threads."
According to the same announcement, "We can talk about this in the comments, but to answer one question I know will come up: Upvotes are an important factor but they're too brittle to rely on exclusively; doing so would encourage the wrong kind of trying to game the system."
They said from the start that votes alone would not decide the results.
The overwhelming sentiment in the HN comments was that Pinboard deserved a slot.
We were specifically asked to be nice.
I certainly didn't think that saying "Please don't give money to Pinboard, I don't think Maciej will act appropriately and it will spoil any chances of following this process again" fitted into "nice". Now some people did post (generally more constructive) versions of that comment, but I refrained base on the stated policy.
There was no way to vote Pinboard down other than to just vote for the other options.
The process did not actually offer any way to determine the HN community's overall view, only that were was a large subset that wanted to fund Pinboard. That subset might be greater that the subset that specifically didn't want to fund Pinboard, but there's no evidence available to determine that.
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More because people thought it would be funny than because they thought it was a fit for the program. Many knew, and 'idlewords acknowledged several times, that it wasn't.
The original announcement said:
At the end of the month, we'll rank the startups and YC will fund two. The ranking will depend both on upvotes and on the quality of discussion, similar to how the ranking of stories works. We can talk about this in the comments, but to answer one question I know will come up: Upvotes are an important factor but they're too brittle to rely on exclusively; doing so would encourage the wrong kind of trying to game the system. So we're going to gauge community interest both by upvotes and comments, and in case of doubt I'll make the final call—or better, figure out a way to put the final call to the community.
All this says is that (a) upvotes and comments will be used to rank the startups, and that (b) YC will then fund two. It doesn't say they'll use the ranking as the sole criteria. It seems obvious that an organization giving away bags of $20k will exercise some kind of discretion beforehand.
I have the top comment on the runoff thread, and I was against Pinboard (due to doubts about whether Pinboard would do YCF in good faith - similar to what dang is saying here). So while I did notice a lot of people were in favor, it can hardly be called overwhelming.
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My feeling, (like Colin's, I think) is that even if the announcement could have been clearer on this point, it implies that votes & comments wouldn't be the only deciding factors.
Both Dan and Maciej are personal friends of mine, and it's uncomfortable to see them at odds.
But Maciej is right.
I think, in the spirit of the community, you should provide some argument for why you think that, rather than just state your judgement.
From a fairly outsider perspective, Maciej/idlewords seems to dislike SV & VC culture (for lots of reasonable reasons) and YC by extension, and is trying to joke/troll here as a form of protest or publicity; OK.
On the other side, the YC/HN guys are actually trying to do something innovative, with YC fellows which is more accessible than vanilla YC (can do remotely), and now with a community choice, which is a step in a more innovative/accessible direction again.
Surely this is a step in the right direction? If not, could someone explain why? If they are trying to make good faith steps in the right direction, and someone is trolling them (by which I mean for humor/protest, not bad intentions), isn't it fair enough to exclude that application?
Did Kevin Hale have special phone conversations with the other three founders to ensure that they would be able to work together with YC?
Meanwhile, look at the the post Kevin Hale just wrote. It says, "We ran a poll for the top applications and the voting was so close that we decided to fund one extra startup. Here are the winners." But that's not true at all. The fact that Pinboard took more than 3x the number of votes as the 2nd place vote-getter is mentioned nowhere in Hale's message.
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Right about what exactly? The deal was not "we'll give $20k to whoever gets the most upvotes." It was about participating in a YC program, which this person doesn't seem to have any interest in, or at least wants to feign complete disinterest. I'm glad a spot was not wasted on him based on his attitude alone.
Could you be a little bit more careful in minting new truths about people's psychology, especially if you don't know those people, to score points in Internet arguments? The Maciej I know was definitely not disinterested in winning that YCF spot.
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>Accusations of soliciting votes by tweeting the HN threads would carry weight with me if there had been any published guidelines about what kind of publicity was allowed.
Sure: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11442647
P.S. I voted for Pinboard.
That's the problem with with this. You know and I know that posting a Twitter message about your HN post is against the rules, but that's because we're HN nerds. Maciej isn't.
I understand completely why the complete rulebook on how you can't and can't promote your posts isn't posted clearly on the site. Voting ring suppression is an arms race, and posting the current rules helps the vote-ringers.
But a general statement about not soliciting support for applications could have been made clearer. And, more importantly, the vote ring really had nothing to do with this. Kevin Hale didn't want Maciej in the program. That's all there was to it.
I agree with you on everything. But also with Kevin and Dang.
Getting into YCF even with 100 more votes than the next 3 combined is not a right. If YC doesn't feel comfortable working with him and think that he'll negatively affect the batch and the alumni network, that's their call. (Just take this thread for example, what was supposed to be a post mortem of the contest and a place to give suggestions and feedback has turned into a complaint fest).
I did somethings which the mods didn't approve of in their judgement and my application itself was disqualified (it was ranked at 5 by upvotes) but I don't feel entitled so I'm not complaining.
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> posting a Twitter message about your HN post is against the rules
Questions:
1. where are these rules published?
2. why would someone (except in this one case involving money for votes) solicit upvotes for a post?
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Your reply to Kevin in the cited conversation (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11441978) was 3 sentences long, where you graciously accepted praise for being compared to Berkshire Hathaway -- arguably one of the big corporate success stories of our generation. Are you willing to share the details of your subsequent good-faith conversation....?
I voted for pinboard... and I'm curious why Kevin decided that it wasn't in the spirit of the program.
I have no bone in this fight, since I did not apply nor would we apply for YCF (I think it's a great idea, but my company doesn't fit the criteria). And, if it matters, I do not use Pinboard and have never spoken a word to 'idlewords.
I respect 'dang and 'kevin both, a ton. Have always had nothing but pleasant interactions with them, and the amount of care they put towards managing this community is seemingly boundless.
With all of that said, 'idlewords is absolutely right here. The HN mods and/or YCF made a choice here not to fund Pinboard, regardless of whether HN wanted to or not. It's not really OK to say that it's an experiment where HN gets to make choices and then not support them, unless there were explicitly some bad blood or trolling occurring. Based on everything 'idlewords has posted, it would appear that he is not trolling. Sure, perhaps he has a bit of a 'let's watch the world burn' attitude, but it's not entirely clear to the rest of us that that isn't just a persona.
If I had applied for the "Apply HN" experiment, there is no way in hell I wouldn't have tweeted or asked customers to upvote - of course you would! Sure, perhaps this doesn't reflect the true nature of HN's vote, since these may or may not be regular HN users, but unless you only count users that have some age or karma, you can't prevent that. Alternatively, you can make it a stated rule that this isn't a popularity contest and thus you should not ask for votes elsewhere. That was not made clear at all - it was implied, or at least I perceived, that this was intended to be 'an experiment in democracy,' for better or worse.
I do think, if 'idlewords is truly interested in the fellowship and all of the requirements therein (Skype meetings or whatever else), that it would be good to stand by the original rules. With that said, these are investment decisions and aren't intended to be taken lightly, and obviously you guys have the final decision anyway (this was always true, no matter what HN said - you're the ones putting up the money and time).
I just think it's more 'right' if you follow along with the original plan of the experiment. Hell, maybe 'idlewords ends up getting so much value out of YCF that he becomes even more serious about Pinboard and it's the next Pinterest (no pun intended). If nothing else, YC/HN may learn something from it.
Have you not got more than $20,000 out of all the publicity? It is not better for you to have been “kicked out” than actually selected?