We just banned 50 accounts that were created to vote for this story. That's so egregious that we're also banning the site and the submitter, at least until we get a promise that this will never happen again.
All: it's not in your interests to do this. Your votes probably won't count (none of those 50 did). Your story will probably get penalized (that's why this one went nowhere, long before any moderator saw it). You risk getting your account and site banned.
The software catches most of this. Moderators see the rest. And if all that fails, your fellow users will probably sniff it out. Half the emails we've gotten lately are about astroturfing and sockpuppetry. HN users really hate those things.
There was no need for this perfectly on-topic post to walk and talk like spam.
Comments
We just banned 50 accounts that were created to vote for this story. That's so egregious that we're also banning the site and the submitter, at least until we get a promise that this will never happen again.
All: it's not in your interests to do this. Your votes probably won't count (none of those 50 did). Your story will probably get penalized (that's why this one went nowhere, long before any moderator saw it). You risk getting your account and site banned.
The software catches most of this. Moderators see the rest. And if all that fails, your fellow users will probably sniff it out. Half the emails we've gotten lately are about astroturfing and sockpuppetry. HN users really hate those things.
There was no need for this perfectly on-topic post to walk and talk like spam.