Rather than using an identifiable person for my example I'll use non-existent Bob. Suppose Bob has been here for the last 3 years and has a bazillion karma and is well known to everyone as The Freaking Man on the subject of email marketing. (Sidenote: Do we have a Bob here? We could really use a Bob here. Show yourself, Bob!)
Anyhow, suppose some random email startup convinces Bob that their thingee is worthwhile enough to post about. Yes, I would trust that endorsement more than I'd trust randomHacker123's post. That is because Bob's endorsement matters to me, because I can use it as a filter for things I am likely to enjoy.
I understand they're using Bob's endorsement to maximize their exposure. I'm just not troubled by that. Bob's endorsement matters to me, at least on the subject of email marketing. He's doing the work sifting through the email marketing pitches so I don't have to. Yay! Bully for Bob.
I've found it hard to find a convincing argument why posts should be anonymous, most of them seemed pretty contrived, but I think you may have just found one.
I must admit I hadn't considered people actually pay attention to who submits stuff. I don't. The HN interface makes it too painful to do so.. no avatars for quick visual scanning, etc. It sounds like work.
Nobody who is an expert on e-mail marketing would ever wander in here. They'd be too busy driving their Ferrari. I came in here by accident and came away with a prime example of why Hacker Newspaper doesn't link to comment threads. For every one intelligent comment by you, Patrick, there's a hundred by a bunch of people getting into bicker-y little soap operas about who voted for who. I study the Bobs and I can tell you they're all too busy for that shit. :-) I'm a little too busy for it myself.
Anyway, for the record, I will happily get any story on the front page of Hacker News for the right price. I'm not kidding, I've done it before, on purpose. I once set out to teabag Hacker News and get a story about my own balls on the front page. It only took me two attempts. My e-mail is gilesb@gmail.com and I am more than happy to take your ducats.
I'm glad you've finally stated outright that this community means nothing to you other than being a great place to advertise. I think it was already fairly obvious... but thanks for clearing up any doubt. You realize that paid upvote rings are a large part of what killed digg, and are killing reddit? And they will kill HN, if they become common enough. It may seem innocent and fun while you personally do it, but before long the front page is nothing but posts about balls, and who wants to read that?
Feel free to rag on all the "drama" it creates, but that's because people here actually care about the quality of this site. Is that stupid? Naive? To you, clearly. But I think it's perfectly reasonable to desire that your favorite stomping ground not become just another place where the almighty dollar trumps all.
I'm well aware of the possibility that he could be trolling, but I also don't doubt that he'd do all he could to push an article to the front page for money. Obviously I can't control his actions, but what do you suggest we do? If we all just ignore him, it might work, but it also might suggest to people on the fence about the issues that the HN community doesn't care about that kind of behavior.
So what does that mean exactly? That because he's "always trolling," any attempt to argue with him is a waste of time? It seems like an easy cop-out, like declaring "I'm an asshole," before being a dick, and somehow thinking that excuses the behavior.
Obviously "nothing but posts about balls" was an exaggeration, but I don't think it's an impossible scenario. When digg first started, it wasn't all that different from HN, and reddit was very similar. Today digg has the 12 lost photos of Christie Brinkley on the front page. No, the change won't take place over night, but it has happened other places, and I have no reason to doubt it could happen here.
As for conflating a community with a site, I fail to see the problem. This site does have a community, and I'd hate to see that community change dramatically. I suppose the community could just meet somewhere else if this site goes down the drain, but I'd much rather avoid an exodus if possible.
And I'm not conflating attention-seeking with profit-seeking, actually. You just presented an offer to all of HN (and the entire internet, really) that you'll get their post to the front page for the right dollar amount. Seems pretty profit-seeking to me. Were you kidding? Trying to get a rise out of us? Maybe, I don't know. But even if it was a joke, I didn't find it particularly funny, because that behavior has ruined sites before.
You can subscribe to Patrick's HN comment feed on searchyc. I highly recommend doing that (for a couple different people); that's how I read comments here for the most part.
Anyhow, suppose some random email startup convinces Bob that their thingee is worthwhile enough to post about. Yes, I would trust that endorsement more than I'd trust randomHacker123's post. That is because Bob's endorsement matters to me, because I can use it as a filter for things I am likely to enjoy.
I understand they're using Bob's endorsement to maximize their exposure. I'm just not troubled by that. Bob's endorsement matters to me, at least on the subject of email marketing. He's doing the work sifting through the email marketing pitches so I don't have to. Yay! Bully for Bob.