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You think @hn would be worse if it added three sentences about what the article is about?

If you do end up adding context, perhaps the best way to proceed would be to fully quote the top comment on HN?

For myself, one reason I don't often engage with the HN bot is that I don't think there will be anyone else who clicks in to the thread. Why do I think this? I guess because there's really no need to click in to a hn thread because almost everything important is visible without clicking in.

I do enjoy reading comment sections from HN, so maybe there is a way to port some of that to here?

This may be a horrible idea, but if we could figure out how to tie zaps such posts/comments get to an account that could only be accessed by the OP from Hacker News it might be a cool evangelization tool. But this sounds complicated.

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If you see something cool on HN... post it yourself and tell us why you think it is cool? Like you did here?

I'd take your recommendation over some RSS feed automation I could just subscribe to directly if I were interested in it. We've had prolific posters in the past that felt they were forced to race the bot (and sometimes lost that race) if they saw something cool on HN. Those left. I'd rather have those people back and the bot gone.

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254 sats \ 9 replies \ @ek 31 Aug

@hn waits for one hour before posting new top items to SN, and only if they haven't already been posted. I can increase this delay if you think that's too fast?

The idea behind @hn isn't to be the first; it's to guarantee that we don't miss stuff here that is obviously interesting to at least some people, but hasn't been posted yet.

I don't think stackers left because @hn was too fast.

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Yeah there's friction between our vision about what SN is in this, I think.

For me, I'd rather not have any bots creating posts and comments, unless they're utilitarian like what you did with @nitter, and maybe @sn for the "this day" posts - i.e services that either help stackers or put (presumably) good content in the spotlight with some 50% hit/miss rate. This is because I really value the community here and the bots are to me the most awful part of it. Automated content means SN is an RSS feed and for that I can just automate my own feeds. I actually have that and never use it.

To me, SN has content that is indicative of what people I respect have discovered and shared, or their original content. From that perspective, we cannot miss something that a human didn't post. What that also means is that if @ek wants to link cool stuff from HN, then I expect @ek to read what he posts, and do the effort like everyone else. Not: automate it; that's no different than all the other spam bots here that are zero effort. All noise, no signal.

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131 sats \ 5 replies \ @ek 31 Aug
then I expect @ek to read what he posts, and do the effort like everyone else

I get it. That's why @hn exists, so you can mute @hn (and not necessarily me) if it doesn't meet your expectations, as you did, so I see no problem here

there's friction between our vision about what SN is

you just summarized SN since inception

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So bottom line you're fine with all the slop bots on here?

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131 sats \ 3 replies \ @ek 31 Aug

If you want to compare @hn to slop bots, then I don't think this thread is going anywhere

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I think that you miss the point that the bot takes away content (and now is even filtered out) that you could have recommended us because you have an opinion about it or it inspired you or... any reason really. I would be super happy to at least read what YOU have to say, and maybe it triggers me too and then I read the article. The bot just registers that something exists. The value add of @hn is therefore totally insignificant to the value add of @ek, because the latter felt something more complex than stupid statistics when the post was made.

185 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 31 Aug
services that either help stackers or put (presumably) good content in the spotlight with some 50% hit/miss rate

This definition does not apply to @hn to you? If something is a top item for one hour on Hacker News, it cannot be presumed to be good content with some X% hit/miss rate? I assume X is negotiable?

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It doesn't, not even close. I think it has a hit rate of about 1 in 50 for me personally? This is because the source is HN which isn't a community I like, whereas for SN it is a community I like. So yeah, @sn > @hn, for me.

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6 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 31 Aug
If you do end up adding context, perhaps the best way to proceed would be to fully quote the top comment on HN?

Oh yes, very good idea, thanks!

This may be a horrible idea, but if we could figure out how to tie zaps such posts/comments get to an account that could only be accessed by the OP from Hacker News it might be a cool evangelization tool. But this sounds complicated.

This sounds like exactly the original idea of @hn but @hn got shadowbanned, see bio

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It can't really be worse than a snapshot of how many comments there were on HN at the time of crossposting, so no. But maybe human curation > automation? I have the bot muted since a while; less noise, more signal in new that way.

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