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I Try to Up Vote Every ‘Show HN’ Post and You Should Too

I try to up vote every ‘Show HN:’ post I come across. Why? Because, even if I don’t like the project, or think it’s necessarily good, someone took a risk and put themselves out there for judgement. I feel that’s a brave step to take and should be rewarded with advice, criticism or congratulations. By up voting a ‘Show HN:’ post you’re helping getting the project in front of people’s eyes so the creator can get that feedback they need.

I often see ‘Show HN:’ posts disappear off the new submission page without ever even getting one up vote and it’s kind of sad. It’s kind of like approaching a group of peers and saying ‘Hey, check out this thing I’ve been working on!’ only to be met with crickets. I’ve had a ‘Show HN:’ post get a few votes and even spend a brief period on the front page and my ‘Show’ wasn’t nearly as cool as some of the other ones I see. 

I realize that an up vote probably isn’t as good as making a constructive comment on the submission but that takes more time then you might have, so at least giving it a vote will keep it alive long enough for others to see and hopefully comment.

Bottom line, this is a community. If someone reaches out to their peers and community looking for feedback we should oblige.

Update: My submission and it’s subsequent conversation disappeared frighteningly quickly from the front page along with all of the ‘Show HN’ posts that had been up voted even though it was continuing to get up votes. Not sure what happened. Even though the thread has died, hopefully the spirit will continue on.

You can still find the post and it’s conversation here.

Howdy, my name is Alex Ramadan and you can follow me on Twitter here. I tend to tweet about SEO, inbound marketing, and other interesting things I find on the internet (ranging from comics to technology).

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