Hacker News Guidelines

Hacker News Guidelines

What to Submit

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes<br>more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence,<br>the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual<br>curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or<br>celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new<br>phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

In Submissions

Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase<br>or exclamation points, or saying how great an article is.

Please submit the original source. If a post reports on<br>something found on another site, submit the latter.

Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post<br>your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site<br>should be for curiosity.

If the title includes the name of the site, please take it out,<br>because the site name will be displayed after the link.

If the title contains a gratuitous number or number + adjective,<br>we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways<br>To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception:<br>when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."

Otherwise please use the original title, unless it<br>is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.

If you submit a video or pdf, please warn us by appending<br>[video] or [pdf] to the title.

Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something. Send it<br>to hn@ycombinator.com.

Please don't delete and repost. Deletion is for things<br>that shouldn't have been submitted in the first place.

Don't solicit upvotes, comments, or submissions. Users should vote and<br>comment when they run across something they personally find<br>interesting—not for promotion.

In Comments

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine.<br>Edit out swipes.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive,<br>not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling<br>names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1<br>is 2, not 3."

Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't<br>be rigidly or generically negative.

Don't post generated text or AI-edited text. HN is for conversation<br>between humans.

Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of<br>the community.

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what<br>someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good<br>faith.

Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.

Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's<br>work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It<br>tramples curiosity.

Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you<br>even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The<br>article mentions that".

Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to<br>complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to<br>instead.

Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't<br>create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an<br>identity that others can relate to.

Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. Instead, put *asterisks*<br>around it and it will get italicized. More formatting<br>info here.

Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling,<br>brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion<br>and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email<br>hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.

If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious<br>comments by replying; flag them<br>instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did.

Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g.<br>article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage.<br>They're too common to be interesting.

Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any<br>good, and it makes boring reading.

Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit.<br>It's<br>semi-noob<br>illusion,<br>as<br>old<br>as<br>the<br>hills.