Ask HN - Should we flag blogspam?

17 pointsby btilly14 anni fa3 comments

Fairly often we see stories that link to a piece of useless blogspam rather than the original article. The guidelines say that these should never have been submitted. But are silent on what we should do if we notice the guideline being violated.

Is it helpful for us to flag those as we notice them so that editors can more easily find and kill them? Or would those flags just an annoyance for editors, and we should just ignore them in the belief that they will get deleted if they are a problem?

3 comments

tokenadult14 anni fa

Yes, what anigbrowl said. Flag them silently if you know for sure that they are blogspam. It is of course a courtesy to identify the original source, if you know that, or to identify the Hacker News thread where the original source was discussed (as Colin Wright and a few other users do from time to time), but in any event flag it if it violates the guidelines.

anigbrowl14 anni fa

Yes, flag them.

portiad14 anni fa

How do you check to see if an article you are sharing has been posted before? For example, if I have a guest blogger? How do I know that HN has not already seen the content?