I'm new and want to contributed but don't really understand the community dynamics and product.<p>I realize the basics around voting and the fact you shouldn't ask for or compel people to vote for content.<p>1.) Looks like all ASK posts don't have a link, is that a community agreed requirement<p>2.) When do people downvote?<p>3.) Are there moderators and who are they?<p>4.) Is sharing your own work viewed negatively?<p>5.) Linking vs re-posting text to HN. What do you prefer?<p>If people would share what they know, I'd be happy to summarize it and re-share.<p>Thanks! Sorry for being a noob =) But I've been waiting for someone else to ask these and haven't seen it.
Read the FAQ: <a href="http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html" rel="nofollow">http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html</a><p>Read the guidelines: <a href="http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html" rel="nofollow">http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html</a><p>Hang around for a while and read the comments and see what the style is here.
1) I wouldn't say community agreed so much as set by PG. But yes, it's a requirement.<p>2) They exercise their own judgement. The capability becomes available once you pass a deliberately non-public karma threshold that I honestly couldn't remember if I wanted to.<p>3) There are. I don't believe their identities are public.<p>4) No. At least not in general. Sharing non-interesting posts is viewed negatively.<p>5) For anything that exists on its own page or is longer than a paragraph or two, definitely link. I guess you can make a case for inline quoting when you just want a very short excerpt that can only be found on a long webpage.