Is asking your friends to vote your HN postings to the front page ok?
alain94040: We all agree that merit should be the ultimate judge. And I have experienced it myself: great posts I submit will rise on their own, not so good ones will linger.However: without the initial boost of making it to the home page, great posts tend to die off and don't even get a chance to win on merit.Some data to confirm my point: my submissions typically either get 1 vote (mine), no matter how good they are, or get from 10 to 30 votes, based on their merit. There is no middle ground.So I find it a little bit naive to believe that merit alone will win the day. On the other hand, as everyone else said, I don't want HN to turn into guild of ringers...