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by bmelton
4134 days ago
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> Rhetorically speaking, how do I distinguish between someone who was asked to re-post, and someone who is making multiple submissions for, say, self-promotional reason? Not trying to be crass, but why would we care? I upvote interesting content, and ignore uninteresting content. Is there a reason that we should be concerned whether the submitter is benefitting in some way from his submission? |
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There are 232 links to questions in travel.stackexchange . Over 90% of them have an affiliation tracker id of /101 , although coming from different HN accounts. The questions include "Does condition 8115 mean you can't check your work email while travelling?" and "Can travel agents match automated ITA Travel Matrix prices?". These are only slightly less off topic than a carpet cleaning service advertisement.
For a while it seemed like I was seeing those links every day, to the point of annoyance. Just reading the travel-related title often meant that I knew that the topic would be uninteresting, and with the /101 at the end of the URL. My interpretation was that the operator of the account was more interested in the reputation gain on stackexchange rather than posting interesting links, and would switch accounts in order to get around HN flags.
There was another account a few years back which linked to an inane math trivia blog, perhaps several times per day. (I can't find examples now, but they were like "What's interesting about the number 120?") It wasn't really appropriate for HN, and not something I wanted to wade through every day. I assumed it was either to drive traffic, or a sort of way to spread a parent's love, metaphorically speaking.
For posts like that I usually point out in the comments that the topic isn't really that interesting, before bringing in the flag. I don't recall any responses, which leads me to think it's more to drive traffic than to find out what others might find interesting.
If submissions aren't flagged, and there are no mechanism put into place to remove off-topic or almost-off-topic posts, then there will be a lot more uninteresting content to ignore, like Photoshop Experts For Hire: Cheap!
Do you want that?