[matsemann]

Yeah, this "btw I have a newsletter here" seems overly promotional. HN as a forum doesn't have support for "signatures", then it feels a bit off to end every post with something not really relevant.

The grey area is people constantly linking to their own blog, but the linked post is relevant (example [0]). Like, it's good when people post relevant links to diver deeper, but when it's constantly your own content, that irks me a bit.

[0]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[darkwater]

> [0]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

simonw is a smart guy, definitely an HN darling for anything LLM related nowadays but at the same time he is constantly pushing for his personal brand, IMO. Maybe unconsciously and just because he is very prolific but still, I get that feeling.

[tptacek]

He writes because he loves writing. People can tell, and thus like reading it. If that creates a "brand", there's not much he can do about it. He's an active, valuable, good-faith participant here, has a subject matter expertise in something HN obviously cares very deeply about, and isn't going anywhere.

[nickthegreek]

Agreed. Simonw comments and posts are always on discussion and insightful. Never once have they come off as some sort of linkedin influencer bs.

[darkwater]

I'm not denying that, in fact I think it's basically because he writes a lot and participates a lot. But yet, it can give the feeling that he is curating his own brand. But probably it's just an organic thing, not a fabricated one.

[tptacek]

It's an extraordinarily rude thing to say about an HN regular with a long track record of constructive participation.

[darkwater]

I don't think I have been rude at all, and also seniority does not give any special authority over opinions.

My point was that the "creating the personal brand" part - which can seem something intentional - is just a byproduct of posting, writing and contributing. And he contributes because he has knowledge, opinions and things to say.

It's like writing your own blog with good content and getting organic traffic from search engines vs writing SEO content to get traffic and get noted.

Maybe I initially expressed myself not the way I really wanted.

[nsagent]

I'll be honest and blunt: I try to avoid his blog posts and comments as much as possible because I do find his contributions to be super spammy. It's about the frequency of his self-promotion (as a researcher in NLP it's tiresome to constantly see his self-promotion on nearly all posts on HN related to LLMs). Seems I'm not the only one.

If he posted on the ML subreddit while I was still a mod there (left after the API kerfuffle) I would have messaged him and asked him politely to tone it down.

[tptacek]

Where by "self promotion" you mean "sharing his thoughts"?

[gus_massa]

Looking at the examples, each one goes to a different post that is relevant to the discussion. For me that's fine.

I'd be unhappy if it's always the same link, for example to the top of his blog. Or different post to slightly related topics.