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Is this a bug? Is "Ask" something completely different? In "Show" there is a link to guidelines at the top. "Ask" seems not to have those. So what is "Ask HN"?
>"Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something (e.g. to ask us questions about Y Combinator, or to ask or complain about moderation). If you want to say something to us, please send it to hn@ycombinator.com."
If you want to ask a question about HN or how it works, the guidelines linked and quoted above ask us to use email. With that said, there are two types of "story" posts on HN, url-based stories (i.e. filling in the title and URL fields) and text-based stories (filling in the title and textbox fields). All of the text-based stories are, by default, sorted under the "ask" list/link (a.k.a. "Ask HN:") in the top menu. Of course, there is an exception, namely text-based stories where the title starts with "Show HN" and these get sorted under the "show" list/link in the top menu.
As for junk getting submitted as either text-based or url-based stories, this kind of abuse happens constantly. When a HN user reaches a karma threshold, they gain the ability to "flag" stories. Flagging the junk stories helps the moderators find and delete it. If enough "known good" users flag something, it will get "flag killed" automatically. Some flag-killed stories are due to the stories being spam or junk, but it also happens when a story is a dupe of something that was recently submitted and discussed (I always use Algolia HN Search on the bottom of the page to find dupes before submitting new stories).
Historically, "Ask HN:" stories are for asking a question to the whole HN user community, but they're also occasionally used to announce things (you'll sometimes see those marked as "Tell HN:").