The author didn't submit this to HN. I read his blog but I'm not on X so I do like when he covers things there. He's submitted 10 times in last 62 days.
Now check how many times he links to his blog in comments.
Actually, here, I'll do it for you: He has made 13209 comments in total, and 1422 of those contain a link to his blog[0]. An objectively ridiculous number, and anyone else would've likely been banned or at least told off for self-promotion long before reaching that number.
I like being able to follow tangents and related topics outside the main comment thread so generally I appreciate when people do that via a link along with some context.
But this isn't my site and I don't get to pick the rules.
How many clicks out from HN, and much time on page on average (on his site), and much subsequent pro-social discussion on HN, did those links generate versus the average linkout here? Wouldn’t change the rules but I do suspect[0] it would repaint self-promotion as something more genuine.
You're bringing up essentially the same non-argument that dang himself used when he recently personally told off someone else for pointing out the same rule breaking behavior. It boils down to "People upvote it and comment on it so it must be good content regardless of which rules it breaks" which is a harmful way of thinking, the social media version of "laws are only for the poor".
If getting enough upvotes and replies elevates one above the rules, it should be clearly stated in said rules, but I have a feeling it never will be because it's obviously not a good look.
"What if everybody in this room decided to come together and agree with what I'm saying? Let's look at a picture of the planet again. That is a world I want to live in."
So about 1 in 10? Doesn’t seem that terrible to me. Especially when many of them are in response to questions about his work, and he’s answering with a link to a different post.
