I don't understand how Ycombinator News works sometime. We have written this article http://wind8apps.com/microsoft-stock-down-11-percent/ and it was the FIRST here, it got on the front page, it got REMOVED and then somebody submitted a simple link to the stock page.
I mean, don't we deserve a little credit for being quick enough? Or we ALWAYS have to be the primary source of something. In this case, the google stock page is only a tool.
Please explain on how this works because I have previously submitted stories that I discovered and further developed.
I just need to understand how this community works to make the most of it.
The guidelines and culture encourage submitting original sources: "Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter." In this case, raw stock market information from Google or another source would be the "original".
Also, the last time I saw one of your articles, a lot of people suggested running a basic spell check over your articles. I can tell that still isn't being done. More than "being first", your articles need to add meaningful insight and information. That isn't conveyed if you text hasn't been well-edited.
Why would we go to your link over the Google Finance link? Most of us are engineers here and don't want to sift through bs to find the info we need. The Google Finance link is straight to the point and gives us the info we need to have a discussion.
I just love it how you folks always give it to the "zero spelling mistakes" website and all. You're simply giving no chance to other websites to evolve. I gave that source because they were first, not because they were exclusive.
and it wasn't a reinterpretation of that source only.
> "I just love it how you folks always give it to the "zero spelling mistakes" website and all. You're simply giving no chance to other websites to evolve. I gave that source because they were first, not because they were exclusive."
I'm all for promoting smaller websites. In fact I manage a few myself. However I don't see why people should read an article that's just a rewording of someone else's article, where there's no individual research going on, and where it also manages to get the fundamental core of the article completely wrong (ie the scale of Microsoft's serving infrastructure). That's inexcusable given the whole point of news items is to inform / educate the readers.
I was happy to ignore how poorly written the content was as I assumed that either English isn't your first language or that you're dyslexic. As someone who's dyslexic myself - I completely sympathise with how hard formal writing can be. And if you are either of the aforementioned, then I think it's credit that you're not letting it hold you back. However it costs all of 2 minutes to run a spell checker and the improvement that has on the overall "feel" of the article is massive.
*> "and it wasn't a reinterpretation of that source only."
I labelled it as such because of the factual errors present in yours that didn't exist in the original. In essence, you read the original, then rewrote it as you interpreted it.
Indeed, the were some errors inside the piece that I almost never make
My mistake was to write and then submit it here, NOT KNOWING NOR EXPECTING that it would get so quickly picked up on the front page.
Quicker than I realized, I was confronted with the mistake I made, without having time to re-examine the article again.
And yes, I did research. Initially, I wanted to write something about Microsoft's focus on the cloud and then I found this piece - http://rcpmag.com/blogs/scott-bekker/2013/07/wpc-microsoft-1..., which is 3 days old, so, most likely, that is the initial source, but not Zdnet.
> "My mistake was to write and then submit it here, NOT KNOWING NOR EXPECTING that it would get so quickly picked up on the front page.
> "Quicker than I realized, I was confronted with the mistake I made, without having time to re-examine the article again."
I hate to say this, but the title drew a lot of attention because of it being inaccurate. eg I clicked the link because my thought was "wow - that can't be true. I wonder where all these data centres are and how big they are". I'd guess many others did the same - which is why someone accused the article as linkbait.
I think this is one of those occasions that need to be chalked down as "experience". And a good reminder to all of us to proof read the stuff we post online. :)
The last story I had on the front page was like 6 months ago so I said to become active again and thought timing was crucial with this one.
I got the timing right :D
What I want to ask is this, with the current title, would it have been as "baiting"? I mean, did it have a chance of getting on the front page with the actual title? Because if it did, then it's too bad :(
The original / incorrect title was definitely more interesting than the new / correct version. It's no surprise to me that Microsoft have a number of data centres and a million servers seems believable. But the original title was so far fetched that I was fascinated to read how the numbers were comprised.
But going back to your original question, I wouldn't like to say if you'd have made the front page or not. It would have been less likely - but there's still a possibility enough people might have been interested to up-vote it. If I'm honest, I wouldn't have - but then I didn't up-vote your incorrect title either as I read then vote; and once I spotted the issues, I was put off voting - sorry :(
I've never really understood what drives articles to the front page though. I've read some cracking news items that failed to gain more than a couple of votes but equally I've read some extremely dull articles (and even Twitter statuses) that have made it. I guess it just shows how individual we all are.
I understand you're getting a lot of criticism and I sympathize, but if you're going to make comments about what it means to be a journalist, you should probably have someone proofreading your articles. There are some pretty distracting errors in your writing, such as words missing from sentences, etc. Also, if you don't know the difference between a server and a datacenter you should be very careful when writing articles about the state of the industry. Spreading false information without doing due diligence to be informed is irresponsible. Again, I sympathize with all the criticism that's headed your way, but you would do well to not respond too defensively and to learn from this experience.
This is just a friendly warning, but I've noticed you've got an error on your about page[1] as well. You have the same paragraph posted twice inside itself (I'm guessing that's just a copy and paste error?).
I can see what you're trying to do - and genuinely wish you the best of luck for your site. But since sites such as those are very common already, you really cannot afford to make silly little mistakes like those as you'll risk putting off potential repeat visitors. So I'd recommend giving most of your site a re-read before posting future content.
It wasn't even a link bait. I understood the difference only now. I am not an expert in the field, I agree, I didn't even thought it'd get this quickly in the top. Again, I didn't intend this to be a link bait, apologies!
I mean, don't we deserve a little credit for being quick enough? Or we ALWAYS have to be the primary source of something. In this case, the google stock page is only a tool.
Please explain on how this works because I have previously submitted stories that I discovered and further developed.
I just need to understand how this community works to make the most of it.
thank you!