[andyn]

Presumably he's referring to the plethora of comments below from accounts created within the last hour whose only comment is a one or two word praise for this submission.

It smells of sock-puppetry, but odd considering this is exactly the submission that would appeal to this audience.

[redthrowaway]

I suspect more meatpupptetry, as in promoting on twitter/facebook and asking friends and followers to come and leave feedback and vote up the submission. Nothing wrong with that, really.

[getsat]

Thread upvotes from new accounts shouldn't count at all or should be significantly reduced in value to prevent this. Stories should be upvoted because they're interesting and relevant, not because the submitter has a social network upon which to draw.

[redthrowaway]

>Stories should be upvoted because they're interesting and relevant, not because the submitter has a social network upon which to draw.

That's only a concern if you consider yourself an HN'er first and entrepreneur second. If your goal in submitting is to provide high-quality material for HN, then you wouldn't use meatpuppetry. If, on the other hand, your goal is to drive traffic and you don't care about HN, then you use whatever means you can. It's the same for people who spam craigslist trying to get users. They're polluting craigslist and lowering it's quality, but they care about traffic, not craigslist. If it's acceptable to do that (and most startups do), then it's acceptable to game HN.

[getsat]

It's not acceptable to do that, it's just a really difficult problem to solve for CL.

[delinquentme]

the kid knows the system and uses the system ... this is more of an issue for HN itself