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.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Ideological or political battle or talking points. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

In Submissions

Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or adding a parenthetical remark saying how great an article is. It's implicit in submitting something that you think it's important.

If you submit a link to a video or pdf, please warn us by appending [video] or [pdf] to the title.

Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter.

If the original title includes the name of the site, please take it out, because the site name will be displayed after the link.

If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."

Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.

Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something. Instead, please send it to [email protected]. Similarly, please don't use HN posts to ask YC-funded companies questions that you could ask by emailing them.

Please don't submit so many links at once that the new page is dominated by your submissions.

In Comments

Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.

Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.

Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."

Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put *asterisks* around it and it will get italicized.

Please don't accuse others of astroturfing or shillage. Email us instead and we'll look into it.

Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. When you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.

Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create them routinely. On HN, users need an identity that others can relate to.

We ban accounts that use Hacker News primarily for political or ideological battle, regardless of which politics they favor.