I'm talking about the top level comments, that is to say, comments posted directly in reply to the post itself. At the time, of the six comments, 1 was the author, and two were his colleagues who created accounts <5 mins before the post was created.
Isn't it strange that 3 accounts were created moments before the post and then all happened to make their first and only comments on this post, each with strongly positive responses and not disclosing any link to the project?
I do understand that HN has voter ring detection which seeks to cluster groups of users who engage strongly in cooperative voting, but the accounts here are probably too new to establish a pattern strong enough to call a voting ring already.
Not at all! It's good to support your colleagues, but it's also considered good etiquette to state your relationship when creating new accounts to give praise like this.
While you're doing do innocently, because of the rewards of doing well on HN, it does happen there people create new accounts to illegitimately try to boost their ranking without saying so.
Being proactive in stating your interests is polite and transparent
It's all good—I understand the need to protect the legitimacy of what's trending here.
I think in this case, a lot of people who've been following me on other channels just wanted to show some support and weren't familiar with the etiquette here. No harm intended.
Isn't it strange that 3 accounts were created moments before the post and then all happened to make their first and only comments on this post, each with strongly positive responses and not disclosing any link to the project?
A further account has been created since then:
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=chucklarrieu
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=botcanics
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bcalderwood
I do understand that HN has voter ring detection which seeks to cluster groups of users who engage strongly in cooperative voting, but the accounts here are probably too new to establish a pattern strong enough to call a voting ring already.