[dang]

There's nothing wrong with authors submitting their own articles to HN. On the contrary, authors honor HN by sharing their work here and engaging with the community about it.

As for the Amazon links, if it's actually true that they were just links, not referrals, then you owe him an apology for more than just being rude.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11014139 and marked it off-topic.

[herbig]

I find it to be garbage self promotion when an article with little and/or poor content is submitted by the author and immediately gets 10+ upvotes without any comments, sending it straight to the front page.

In this case, straight to the front page despite many negative comments about the content.

If the article is not an Amazon link farm, it sure as hell reads exactly like one. So much so that my assumption is that the author intended to add in referral codes at a later date when reaching peak audience.

[bdcravens]

As author has since removed links, this should address your concern. Being wary of Amazon links is probably smart, but referring to something as "garbage" just makes you a jerk.

[herbig]

No no. My main concern is authors gaming HN to promote terrible content.

[dang]

I've looked at the data and there is zero evidence that the author gamed HN.

You need to stop slinging accusations at people. Gaming HN is bad. We greatly appreciate your and other users' concern about that, and believe me we share it. But undermining civility on HN is also bad, and that's the bad thing that actually is happening here. Please don't do it anymore, regardless of how weak you think an article is.

[snow_mac]

I only submitted this as a link to Hacker News, Echo JS and Reddit. Not gaming any system, just sharing what I wrote. Isn't that the point of a blog?

[dang]

Yes, and it's ok. (I'm a moderator here, btw, so it really is ok.)

The 'gaming' in question was about getting people to upvote one's stuff. That's against the rules, but we saw no evidence you did it. This is why I chided the user who made that accusation. It's corrosive of the civility we strive for here when people make accusations without real grounds for them.

[snow_mac]

I have a great idea, since my content is so terrible, lets see what content you can produce and see what the feedback is on it. I bet there will be plenty of people who will say your content is 'terrible'.