[refibrillator]

Sometimes I wonder if anyone else feels there is a halo effect around certain personalities on this site. When I see someone ending nearly every comment with a link to their blog or pet project, it gives me bad vibes, as if they have ulterior motives. Especially if a majority of their blog posts are content lifted from elsewhere with minimal additions. Perhaps this is just hustle culture, and YC alum status confers immunity from these types of criticisms. Perhaps my only wish is that other voices would bubble to the top in some of these threads.

In any case I’m truly grateful for this site as a whole, the good and the bad.

[bakugo]

> When I see someone ending nearly every comment with a link to their blog or pet project

There is a rule specifically forbidding this, but it's been made quite clear that certain users are above this rule, to the point that the moderators themselves will show up to tell people off if they bring it up.

[ludicrousdispla]

yeah, it feels like tireless self-promotion and their comments have very low utility for me

[underdeserver]

It's a way to discover their content - content you might miss if you only go on HN once or twice a day.

HN is great for diversity of topics, tech news, random discussions with tech-celebs etc., but e.g. Simon's blog is the best content there is on what the latest LLM gizmo is and how well it works.

[rednafi]

Tireless promo works. 3 of the top 5 authors on this list tirelessly promotes themselves everywhere - not just in HN.

[llmslave2]

With some of these commentators, every single comment contains a link or two to their blog.

[_zagj]

The appetite HN has for this kind of naked self-promotion is really something. Get posted (even if by someone else) a few too many times to /g/ and you'll be regularly rebuked with "buy an ad" from then on, but HN just looks the other way, and the "haters" calling it out get flagged, at least until the pattern becomes conspicuous and obnoxious enough that even the more gullible lot of HNers start to notice.

[satvikpendem]

Well, it does stem from a VC firm, business first. That it has tech people is only incidental.

[adityaathalye]

Well, I link to my blog post(s) and/or github source(s) quite often.

"Why does he do that?" has a fairly charitable interpretation, if you choose to answer it that way.

In fact, here you go, I wrote about it and will quote myself...

From my "about" page https://www.evalapply.org/about.html

> Learn generously directs what I teach, speak, organise, code.

and the first blog post I published:

In the beginning, was the domain name https://www.evalapply.org/posts/hello-world/index.html#main

---

May I suggest the mantra "Take what is useful, discard the rest."?

[llmslave2]

I don't necessarily disagree, but to me the idea of self promotion like this is fascinating because it's not something I personally feel comfortable doing. Even if I know I'm only sharing a link because I genuinely think it would be useful, I would worry that in doing so there is an underlying self-serving reason. Idk.

I'm horrible at sales, selling myself, etc. Even if I believe that a product is genuinely useful, the act of selling feels like it undermines everything else.

Do not be like me if you want to make money lol

[adityaathalye]

I was there too, I get you.

In the aughts, I had a blog, which I hated re-reading. With the benefit of time and experience (growing up, they call it), I understood that cringe to be the consequence of trying to look smart and/or play to a gallery.

Your instinct is probably right, if you feel some comment of yours is "sleazy" or "obnoxiously self-serving". The jedi mind trick is to not stop there, but to use that cringe moment as a signal for some introspection.

Think about what sort of a share would make you happy to share? What would you like to see more of in the world? Try to be that person. Do you need to share it publicly right away? Or just bang something out in a markdown file and rant to a pal or two?

Only by doing it, did I properly grasp the fact that I just want to share stuff. And now, I tend to like what past-me shared. Even if he was dead wrong. Besides, I've caught myself re-reading a post from some years ago, because of course, I forgot what I was thinking back then. Or needed a reference from one of the copious footnotes / endnotes I habitually slap in there.

Appropriate framing---combined with action (speech, sharing, conversation) that flows from said framing---makes all the difference. For me, that framing is "learn generously": https://www.recurse.com/self-directives#learn-generously

Publishing one's mind can be a pretty vulnerable act.

It often feels like a confession of ignorance. Often it is a confession of ignorance. However, now I don't really care if I look stupid or am wrong on the Internet. Because being wrong, and then making it right is part of the deal! Thus it is, that my website's entire purpose is to help me live that value. To be available to anybody who might find use for it; including the source code.

In practice that materialises as this:

- Paradox! Above all, be entirely self-serving from an "audience" perspective... The posts are mainly long-form explanations written by me for me, while I tried to figure something out that was not obvious to me. No gallery involved. No analytics, in fact. I have no idea which pages are being read (or not).

- Not infrequently, it applies to so many other people facing the same questions / obstacles I grappled with. And here's the plot twist... Now when I see someone struggle, it behooves me to share my PoV. Not sharing is the "bad" act!

- Technologically, I try to remove all friction from the reader. The site is served as plain HTML and CSS, with excellent lighthouse scores, pleasant reading experience, anonymous RSS feed. Content is CC-licensed, site builder is MIT-licensed. (Screen reader accessibility can definitely use work, but the markup is definitely not a "soup of divs" abomination).

- Certainly not "make money", whatever that means. According to Cloudflare, my site consistently gets ~20K monthly unique visitors (supposedly human / non-bot). I don't even know what that means. It's just "internet number go up".

My real joy is getting the occasional email from some kindred spirit. Once a month someone lights up my life with a delightful conversation. Why? Because I openly welcome it! You can write me too :) https://www.evalapply.org/about.html#standing-invitation

(See, yet another self-share... which I feel fine about, even in a somewhat contentious sub-thread, because I really want to have a proper letter exchange, should you feel up for it!)

(edit: typos, clarification, formatting)