Cynical or skeptical? Or both? Does the fact that his worldview is either of these remove the possibility that it's true, at least in some cases? Does the risk of a drop in overall quality of HN as a result of promoting 'offers' outweigh it's potential benefit? Who knows, but I'm with swombat and can't help be a little skeptical. Personally I'd like to hear some ideas for how one might minimize disingenuous posts before plunging into this thing.
It's possible, but I think such criticism should be leveled at those specific cases where it is applicable, preferably clear cut cases.
To take a general stance like this against a whole class of submissions many of which were clearly done from an altruistic point of view is just not very friendly at all.
Whether they're all 100% altruistically motivated or not, if they are providing legitimately useful help for free as offered, I don't see a problem with it. As a possibly familiar example, speakers come to users groups/meetups to talk about things -- there are obvious benefits to the speaker, but we certainly don't vilify them for that.
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>That's a pretty cynical worldview.
Cynical or skeptical? Or both? Does the fact that his worldview is either of these remove the possibility that it's true, at least in some cases? Does the risk of a drop in overall quality of HN as a result of promoting 'offers' outweigh it's potential benefit? Who knows, but I'm with swombat and can't help be a little skeptical. Personally I'd like to hear some ideas for how one might minimize disingenuous posts before plunging into this thing.
It's possible, but I think such criticism should be leveled at those specific cases where it is applicable, preferably clear cut cases.
To take a general stance like this against a whole class of submissions many of which were clearly done from an altruistic point of view is just not very friendly at all.
Whether they're all 100% altruistically motivated or not, if they are providing legitimately useful help for free as offered, I don't see a problem with it. As a possibly familiar example, speakers come to users groups/meetups to talk about things -- there are obvious benefits to the speaker, but we certainly don't vilify them for that.