A great take, and thanks for your all hard work dang.
Yesterday the top comment on two stories I went to discuss had deep and meaningful content, before the last line which was a "and I talk about this stuff all the time on my newsletter [link]", and I was conflicted. Same poster each time.
The poster had done the HN thing: responded with thoughtful examination of TFA, unique and interesting insight, and I don't feel it was AI generated.
And then they marred it. They pushed something just slightly out of context. Not entirely, just a smidge.
I hope we can keep an eye on that sort of thing around here, it feels like it could slide into something...
Yeah, this "btw I have a newsletter here" seems overly promotional. HN as a forum doesn't have support for "signatures", then it feels a bit off to end every post with something not really relevant.
The grey area is people constantly linking to their own blog, but the linked post is relevant (example [0]). Like, it's good when people post relevant links to diver deeper, but when it's constantly your own content, that irks me a bit.
[0]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Not a mod, but I do hope you flag comments like that. Dang is awesome, but it is user moderation that makes a giant difference.
I have a different take. If someone uses effort to post something genuinely interesting just so they can advertise their blog, good. You don't have to click the link, and it's better than nothing (assuming other comments here aren't as interesting).
> Yesterday the top comment on two stories I went to discuss had deep and meaningful content, before the last line which was a "and I talk about this stuff all the time on my newsletter [link]", and I was conflicted. Same poster each time.
In my opinion, if they put thought into a deep and meaningful answer, then I think that's fine. If they say "Oh yeah I talked about this in my blog [link]" that's totally different.
The appropriate place to link to your website, newsletter, whatever is on your bio page (which people have to actively click into, specifically because they want to know more about you and potentially find such links).
I agree that linking to your own work in comments is generally bad form.