I'd like to remind everyone of a rule related to this: please don't submit your YC application to HN. The reason is simply that if everyone did this, they'd drown out the ordinary content: if you divide the number of applications we get by the number of days between now and Oct 26, the result is many per day.
I left this one alive because it's arguably just over the line. It's really more of an essay that mentions they're applying for winter 2010. But I took the ref to YC out of the title.
Is that the only reason? If so, would it be possible to offer a public place to view apps that was separate from the main page? Judging by the popularity of the "review my startup" posts, I bet tons of people would be interested in reading them.
Honestly, I don't know. That problem was bad enough that I didn't think further about what other bad (or good) consequences there might be of letting people make applications public.
My gut tells me it would be a bad idea. I sure wouldn't have done it as a founder, and if only lame groups did this, there would be no upside, only downside. But I could be wrong; I haven't thought more about it than what I just wrote.
I think 1k is too high. > 100 would probably be enough to get rid of trolls. It's not hard to get to that point, but you have to put in legitimate effort to do so.
I left this one alive because it's arguably just over the line. It's really more of an essay that mentions they're applying for winter 2010. But I took the ref to YC out of the title.