> Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something (e.g. to ask us questions about Y Combinator, or to ask or complain about moderation). If you want to say something to us, please send it to hn@ycombinator.com.
How does this submission/question not fit the description of the news guidelines as you posted:
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
And seeing as it's gotten 86 points, I'd say there are at least some people that find it interesting.
It's obviously not the only rule. "What people find interesting" is like a minimum height requirement, not an "anything goes" rule, or else we would be 100% cats.
Many communities get taken down by meta-discussion. HN has been very hostile to it in the past, with some good reason, but also to detriment, as the readers and the moderators lose empathy for each other. 'dang comments are doing well to lessen that divide.
(FWIW, I think this topic is a good discussion. I didn't upvote but I'm very parsimonious with my story upvotes since I don't have a downvote button.)
Sure, perhaps to you, or people that have been here longer. However, I had absolutely no idea. I didn't even know that HN was taking paid advertisements for job postings, and putting them "somewhere" on the top.
"Perhaps the small mention of job advert posts in the faq should be expanded? It's not particularly clar at the moment."
That would be great, yes. At the very least, it'd remove speculation and second-hand information.
I already noticed and mailed dang about this before you posted but I don't think you did any harm. Bug reports should always be welcome no matter what route they take.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html