While ycombinator does not have a policy of posting affiliate/referral links (that I know of), usually forums explicitly forbid this practice.
On the forums that do allow it, typical etiquette is to notify the reader of a posted referral link, and also give them the choice of a non-affiliate link - and then let them decide.
Here, we're capitalists - we believe in startups, and are not philosophically opposed to making money.
If someone is spamming this site with referral links, they should be dealt with harshly and kicked out. Otherwise, if you don't like a book recommendation you can downvote. I don't post books I don't think are interesting, and only where appropriate - a few cents are not worth it to me to appear coming across as a shill. But I do enjoy receiving a bit of money to reinvest in more books.
> Here, we're capitalists - we believe in startups, and are not philosophically opposed to making money.
You're conflating a bunch of disparate ideas with this sentence. HN is not a forum for making you money. That is not its purpose. You are being asked to not use it for that purpose. Taking offense at such a request is, in my opinion, a fairly black mark against your sincerity.
What the hell, man. This is ridiculous. Can you not see that davidw is not trying to squeeze another 5 cents from you? You and TezzellEnt just decided to impose your own moral views on the community, and what's worse - on behalf of the community. I don't care about affiliate links if they are not blatant spam, which david's post is clearly not. And I don't need this patronizing editorializing.
What I take offense at is this idea that making money is bad. It's not.
I'm providing something that some people find useful, and since in this particular instance, there happens to be a way to make a tiny bit off it to reinvest in more books, I'm not ashamed to do so.
Making money is obviously - very, very obviously - not my primary use of this site.
You know another thing people do here? We promote our own stuff that we worked hard to build. Other communities intensely dislike that, but we don't, as long as it's kept within reason.
I think you're taking this as much more ideological than it is. When someone honks their car's horn at you, it's not because they have taken time to construct a reasoned analysis of the legal status of your behaviour -- it's usually because you did something which they did not expect. In some sense this is 'always right' with cars: a lot of traffic safety rides on our ability to safely expect what others will do, so if your actions are unexpected they are often unsafe.
When TezzellEnt posted a new version of the link, he/she did so because that little referral token is a sort of egg on your shirt in precisely the same way; it's unexpected. It's not necessarily an "idea that making money is bad." Nobody has said anything like that (except you, to refute it, of course). Heck, part of why it's unclean has to do with domain separation: if the egg is on your fork, it is 'clean', but if it falls on your shirt then it magically becomes 'dirt'. The egg of course is chemically identical, but one of them appears in a domain where you don't expect it -- an otherwise blank shirt. Similarly rmrfrmrf's first complaint ("issues arise when the content you produce for this site is influenced by your desire to make money") is not a referendum on your contributions as a whole but a statement that "you're crossing two domains here, and if those domains cross too much then this site will not be a place which we enjoy frequenting."
Because I haven't actually engaged the ideological side yet I might as well do that too. You're not just "getting money from Amazon" but also being co-opted into "advertising for Amazon" -- and, as you say, you were bought in this way for only a few cents. What you think of as a strength -- that you only make a tiny amount off of it -- is in some sense actually a weakness. acjohnson55 put this above as being "thought of as a shill."
> I think you're taking this as much more ideological than it is.
I think for a lot of people, it's a fairly reflexive dislike of referral links, rather than something they think through deeply. But at heart lies this idea that "OMG, he made some money off it! Impure! Impure!", when it's pretty easy to judge, on a case by case basis, whether a person is contributing or spamming that on a site like this.
Also: any links I put probably would have been to Amazon anyway, out of convenience, although sometimes when Wikipedia has a good summary, I just link to that. So my behavior does not really change other than attaching the referral code.
Sometimes I mention that they are referral links. Today I was in a hurry, and it's pretty evident that it is a referral link, as it does not appear shortened. Basically, why should anyone care what it is unless the person posting them is overdoing it?
I don't get the impression that anyone is accusing you of something as bad as kicking puppies or punching nuns. It's just a bit nicer if you explicitly declare referral links every time you use them.
I'm surprised that someone who has been online for as long as you have is not aware of the antipathy there is towards referral links. Some people really don't like them.
> I'm surprised that someone who has been online for as long as you have is not aware of the antipathy there is towards referral links. Some people really don't like them.
Online, some people really don't like a lot of things! Pretty much anything out there has its detractors. I know they don't like referral links, but I think in the context of a community like this one where it's easy to check on the activity of others, it's a silly attitude, and I won't hesitate to say so.
It's actually very specifically a vector for YC-incubated startups to recruit talent. That is one of the main reasons HN exists. Most of everything else is purposed for contributing to that specific goal.
Near as I'm aware, davidw's Amazon affiliate links are not part of a YC-incubated startup.
> Except that issues arise when the content you produce for this site is influenced by your desire to make money.
It isn't. I could see it being a problem for some people, hypothetically. If that problem arises, we can deal with it.
> It's also ridiculous for you to complain when someone provides an alternative to your product -- that's what capitalism is all about!
The "alternative" link means that Jeff Bezos pockets the few cents I would have made. To the actual end user, it makes no difference at all. There is no way I'd post those links if they actually ended up costing people here money.
This problem has arised in nearly all the sites that I know that have ever tolerated it. Eventually, someone learns that it's allowed and exploits that. Actually, you're that person because that link sounded to me like a sales pitch, but I can't prove that this was your intention.
In all cases, I'd rather prevent it from happening by disapproving it than "dealing with it" after the deed is done.
>To the actual end user, it makes no difference at all.
Bullshiiiiit. It makes the difference that this shit gets spammed all over the Internet eventually. Boo.
(as a side note, you can't prove they'd have gone to Bezos rather than contribute to an Amazon commission decrease if no one used these referrals)
You make a very good point, and I apologise for my part in this meta-sub-thread.
Some off-site META discussion place would be useful. It needn't be just for HN, it could be for all online communities. Sort of like Meatball wiki was, but for everything. And not a wiki.
People have all sorts of ideas about moderation and karma and banning and etc.
In this case, "this shit" was a book I happened to read and enjoy and was highly relevant to the discussion at hand and decided to share with people here. They seem to have appreciated the link. I know I'm always on the lookout for good books to read myself, and have found more than a few via this site.
On the forums that do allow it, typical etiquette is to notify the reader of a posted referral link, and also give them the choice of a non-affiliate link - and then let them decide.