Many of us don't have influential networks. We consider HN as the de facto community for hackers and entrepreneurs. Submitting a Show HN is not an exploit. It is a proud move to showcase ones hard work to a fellow audience. I personally think that the community is healthy enough to balance between all types of submissions: articles, Ask HNs and Show HNs in terms of both the people submitting and the people consuming and upvoting. What I agree with you is the need for a separate Shown HN tab similar to Ask HN. There are third party crawlers that do that but we spend all out time here; might as well have the "Show HN" tab here as well.
Nope. I think we are on the same page overall. I just wanted to reassure the new users on this thread that the general practice of submitting a "Show HN" under "Ask HN" is not considered as an exploit. Add to that your point that it should not be abused and I think we have a solid rule of thumb.
