No, I'm determined to normalize it. I would like a LOT more people to have personal websites where they write at length about things, and then share links to what they have already written where it is relevant to the conversation.
I'm actively pushing back against the "don't promote your site, don't link to it, restate your content in the comments instead" thing.
I am willing to take on risk to my personal reputation and credibility in support of my goal here.
Well, that's your choice. You can do whatever you want with your reputation, but you can't change human nature and that's essentially what you're trying to do. People don't want HN to turn into another LinkedIn style feed full of AI slop, spam and self promotion. That's exactly what your attempt to "normalize" this behavior would encourage (and I'm confident it won't catch on, sorry).
If everyone starts dropping their "relevant content" in the comments, most of it won't be relevant, and a lot of it will be spam. People don't have time to sift through hundreds of links in the comments and tens of thousands of words when the whole point of HN is that discussion and curation work in the opposite direction.
If your content is good, someone else will submit it as a story. Your blog is probably already read by thousands of people from HN, if they think a particular post belongs in the discussion in some comment, they'll link it. That's why other popular HN users who blog don't constantly promote or link their own content here, unlike you. They know that you don't need to do it yourself, and doing it repeatedly sends the wrong signal (which is obvious and plenty of socially aware people have already pointed out to you in multiple threads).
Trying to normalize that kind of self promoting is like normalizing an annoying mosquito buzz, most people simply don't want it and no amount of "normalizing" will change that.
This is simonw though. I look forward to his thoughts on a topic and would find it annoying if he was forced to summarize his research in a HN thread and then not link to it.
The difference between LinkedIn slop and good content is not the presence or absence of a link to one’s own writing, but the substance and quality of the writing.
If simonw followed these rules you want him to follow, he would be forced to make obscure references to a blog post that I would then need to Google or hope that his blog post surfaces on HN in the next few days. It seems terribly inefficient.
I agree with you that self-promotion is off-putting, and when people post their competing project on a Show HN post, I don’t click those links. But it’s not because they are linking to something they wrote. It’s because they are engaged in “self-promotion”, usually in an attempt to ride someone else’s coattails or directly compete.
If simonw plugged datasette every chance he got, I’d be rolling my eyes too, but linking to his related experiments and demos isn’t that.
There might be a bit of growth-hacking resistance here, and maybe some StackOverflow culture as well. Neither should be leveled at you, IMHO. I've followed and admired your work since Datasette launched, and I think you're exhibiting remarkably good judgment in how you discuss topics with links to deeper discussion, and it's in keeping with a long tradition of good practices for the web. Thanks for working to normalize the practice.