Irrespective of the relationship slideshare has to Ycombinator or HackerNews, the "buried" article simply didn't gain traction - it happens all the time.<p>200 visits is just a small slice of HN users and reflect a response to the title of the article, not the quality of the article itself.<p>Anecdote is not evidence, but the article wasn't compelling enough that I would be likely to upvote it - upvotes are the only thing that keeps new stories from being buried and flagging only comes into play once a recent story gets upvotes.<p>New articles get just one point all the time - indeed I've seen cases where a story had no votes or comments the first time it was posted only to make the front page and generate lively discussion when reposted later with a slightly different URL.<p>Odds are that any new article will be ignored. A conspiracy is not necessary - and since the article was buried by a lack of points and the weight of time, it's hard to believe that there was one.<p>Consider it editorial feedback in regards to style, timing and relevance.
As a founder -- I'm fairly sure that if I hadn't started reading HN in 2007, it's unlikely I'd have had the temerity to leave a company that was screwing me over and just start my own thing. Entrepreneurship was never in my blood, but HN made it easier to take the leap by making it seem normal when in hindsight it seems somewhat rare.<p>Reading this site exposed me to a lot of writing about entrepreneurship that was new to me. As the site has grown there has been more and more self-promotional linkbait spam, but some is pure gold and the best bits are often buried in the discussions rather than the articles. The last few years have been a financial and emotional struggle, but it's been tremendously helpful to see other people go through the same ups and downs and often be so open about what works and doesn't work for them. So I'm grateful to Paul and many of the other regular commenters here. Answering this question is a no brainer.
The author seems to be under the impression that 200 visits from a link he posted to Hacker News automatically means "people were discussing my article and engaging", and there was a "lively discussion" about it.<p>Discussion about a posted story is not a given, even if you get many visits from the site. Personally, I've often visited the posted links, and not been bothered to up-vote the story, let alone comment. And I've often seen stories on the front page with many up votes and no comments.<p>I think the OP is jumping to conclusions when he says that "Hacker News had buried my submission, precisely because it was getting rapid traction." That's a pretty strong accusation. I didn't read the post the author is referring to, but I think it's more likely that the post was just not that interesting to Hacker News readers.
Umm. That slideshare post has one upvote. And that is from your submission. It didn't have significant traction and then get buried... it just didn't move once you posted it.<p>I posted something yesterday not exactly critiquing YC, but presenting an alternate idea to how they should run housing for batches... that post didn't get buried because it had a different viewpoint. PG even commented in it.<p>Also... any reason to link "Hacker News" 12 times in your post to your old thread? IMHO it makes it looks a bit SEO spammy.
The author seems to be talking about this submission:<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3644751" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3644751</a><p>It got a couple hundred visits from HN and, if I've found the correct submission, no votes or comments - so he's assuming there <i>was</i> an active discussion and it was removed and buried because of the content.<p>There's a simpler explanation, of course.
From my own experience with posts to Hacker News from my own blog I can tell you 200 visits is about what you'll get from time a post lasts on the front of the "new" page. Then, if no one is interested in the story, it drops off that page and so do the visits.<p>I don't understand the basis here for any accusation.
If you look at the HN ranking formula, it's (p - 1) / (t + 2)^1.5 where p = points, t = age in hours. The older your article is, the smaller the rank. Done to ensure the freshness of links.
The bottom line is, as far as I gather, stories published here need to be non-conflicting with YC startups in so much as they don't set out with the single intention to trash the credibility of a startup.<p>Submitting an objective, or factual story is fine, but when the sole intention is to tarnish the reputation, then the "bury hatchet" comes out. I've even seen high karma members get completely banned because of submissions about Curebit and AirBnB.<p>When you come to one persons house, you can't argue if some ground rules are set.
200 visits is not really much of anything...I think I've averaged about 100 visits per point...so 10,000 visits for a story that manages 100 votes. HN does from time to time bury submissions that break a rule (dupes, for example) but getting votes seems to be a combination of good content and traffic conditions.