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An alternative to Show HN

4 points by karjaluoto 11y ago

I realize that HN has grown in popularity over the years, and this is a good thing (mostly). Unfortunately, the high volume of posts means that getting a Show HN post to reach the homepage is difficult/impossible. Frankly, I’m not sure it can be done without asking all your friends to upvote (which I absolutely hate doing). The feedback you can get through Show HN is so beneficial, though. As such, I hate for anyone (including myself) to miss out on it. So, I created a couple of channels on Chapp for this. Could be that no one even bothers with these, but they might be useful to some of you. :-) Got something ready to show, post here: http://chapp.is/ShowChapp Getting ready to launch, post here: http://chapp.is/prelaunch That’s it!

karjaluoto 11y ago
Just realized that the links don’t work in the text above, so I’ve duplicated them, here: Launched: http://chapp.is/ShowChapp http://chapp.is/ShowChapp Pre-launch: http://chapp.is/prelaunch http://chapp.is/prelaunch
minimaxir 11y ago
> Unfortunately, the high volume of posts means that getting a Show HN post to reach the homepage is difficult/impossible. Not more than any other submission to Hacker News. It's about luck. > Frankly, I’m not sure it can be done without asking all your friends to upvote (which I absolutely hate doing). People shouldn't be doing this anyways because it doesn't work.
- karjaluoto 11y ago
  > Not more than any other submission to Hacker News. It's about luck. I agree with your first point. I think it’s about more than just luck, though. > People shouldn't be doing this anyways because it doesn't work. Actually, it does work—but you have to do it a certain way—and it sucks.
  - krapp 11y ago
    >Actually, it does work—but you have to do it a certain way—and it sucks. That will get you banned... so if you're getting away with it, it's probably against your interests to admit to it, much less complain about it.
    - karjaluoto 11y ago
      I think you’re sort of putting words in my mouth. I didn’t say that I’m doing that. Nor, do I think it’s something anyone here should be doing. That said, thinking that it doesn’t happen seems somewhat naïve.
  - dang 11y ago
    > Actually, it does work—but you have to do it a certain way I'd be curious to see links to such posts. If you know what some are, would you email them to hn@ycombinator.com?
    - karjaluoto 11y ago
      I don’t have any links. That’s not the sort of thing I keep track of. That said, I’ve spoken with a batch of folks who’ve explained their tricks for getting their stories bumped up. Just from a quick search, though, it doesn’t seem like such discussion is hidden: http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-works.html http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...
      - dang 11y ago
        I don't think that article discussed voting rings? Also, not all the info there is accurate, and things have changed a lot since then. It's pretty important to HN that "tricks for getting stories bumped up" end up costing more than they benefit. Since I'm one of the people who've worked on this, the engineer in me is eager to see counterexamples, so everybody please email us if you think you see one.
        karjaluoto 11y ago
        I just skimmed the post I linked to—didn’t read it in depth. (That said, I did bookmark it, to read more thoroughly when I have a moment.) Most of the things I’ve heard have been in personal discussions, so I haven’t seen the actual links. I’m curious: do you see a lot of folks running workarounds/tricks to get to the homepage? Is it something that’s difficult to stop?
        dang 11y ago
        Yes, we see a lot of that and yes it's difficult to stop, but we've put a lot of work into the software and it currently has the upper hand. It's a bit of an arms race though.
gus_massa 11y ago
Have you tried with a ShowHN? Many people read the /newest page and if the project is interesting they will drop a comment. I submitted a few post with 5-10 upvotes, that's not enough to get to the front page, but it get about a hundred visits. Others were more lucky/better and reached the front page and they got much more visits. But I think that an important part of the value of a ShowHN is the feedback. Some comments: * In IE11 I get in most pages a "No posts yet" message. Supporting every browsers is difficult, but you can try to change the message. * Are you sorting the post by age? I really like some variant of points/age like in HN or Reddit.
- karjaluoto 11y ago
  Yes—we’ve posted a few things over the years. A couple got some traction, even hitting the home page. That said, even staying listed in New for more than an hour seems pretty tough these days. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. As the community grows, the threshold to reach the homepage simply gets higher. That said, I figure if there’s another way to get folks some visibility, why not? (And preparing those channels took me all of 10 minutes.) And—yes—the feedback is the best part! I love new site visits, but user input is so incredibly helpful. :-) I haven’t seen the “No posts yet” message, but it could be something we’ve just overlooked. We’ve been so busy with client work and building Officehours that we haven’t given Chapp any love in a good long while. Posts will be sorted by age, for now. If this sees a little interest, we could sort by nods (the Chapp equivalent of likes/points).
krapp 11y ago
The link is right there - right at the top of the page. It's not hard to find, and honestly, if most of the traffic on /show are from people actively looking to comment on projects and mvps, then all the better. A section of the site with a narrower focus should have less traffic than the frontpage. It's unfortunate if most users act like those thirty links on the frontpage are the entirety of HN but trying to siphon traffic to chapp.is as an "alternative" is probably doomed to failure, because the network effect and the culture keep people here.
- karjaluoto 11y ago
  I didn’t mean this as an affront to the HN community, or as a criticism of Show HN. That said, after you work on a startup for a while, getting traffic/feedback on it is important. I check HN daily, mostly by skimming the homepage. This happens on the toilet, before I start my day—and, while laying in bed with my son at night, while he falls asleep. I find a lot of good reading here. But, I have to admit that I found it more useful (personally) 8 years ago. I’m not quite sure why. There seems to be an ebb and flow of content from one season to the next. Sometimes it’s overly technical for me (I’m not a developer), or it’s so unrelated that I don’t feel compelled to read. My hunch is that this is representative of a community that has simply reached a certain size. I don’t mean that HN was better when it was smaller, but I certainly found more pleasure in it then. Back to the point though, I don’t want to devalue anything that YC, or the community, is doing here (nor do I mean to take anything away). Instead, I just had a thought pop into my head that maybe there should be other ways to get founders feedback on what they’re doing. As we’d already built Chapp, I figured it couldn’t hurt to toss it out there.

4 points by karjaluoto 11y ago

karjaluoto 11y ago

Just realized that the links don’t work in the text above, so I’ve duplicated them, here: Launched: http://chapp.is/ShowChapp http://chapp.is/ShowChapp Pre-launch: http://chapp.is/prelaunch http://chapp.is/prelaunch

minimaxir 11y ago

> Unfortunately, the high volume of posts means that getting a Show HN post to reach the homepage is difficult/impossible. Not more than any other submission to Hacker News. It's about luck. > Frankly, I’m not sure it can be done without asking all your friends to upvote (which I absolutely hate doing). People shouldn't be doing this anyways because it doesn't work.

karjaluoto 11y ago
> Not more than any other submission to Hacker News. It's about luck. I agree with your first point. I think it’s about more than just luck, though. > People shouldn't be doing this anyways because it doesn't work. Actually, it does work—but you have to do it a certain way—and it sucks.
- krapp 11y ago
  >Actually, it does work—but you have to do it a certain way—and it sucks. That will get you banned... so if you're getting away with it, it's probably against your interests to admit to it, much less complain about it.
  - karjaluoto 11y ago
    I think you’re sort of putting words in my mouth. I didn’t say that I’m doing that. Nor, do I think it’s something anyone here should be doing. That said, thinking that it doesn’t happen seems somewhat naïve.
- dang 11y ago
  > Actually, it does work—but you have to do it a certain way I'd be curious to see links to such posts. If you know what some are, would you email them to hn@ycombinator.com?
  - karjaluoto 11y ago
    I don’t have any links. That’s not the sort of thing I keep track of. That said, I’ve spoken with a batch of folks who’ve explained their tricks for getting their stories bumped up. Just from a quick search, though, it doesn’t seem like such discussion is hidden: http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-works.html http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...
    - dang 11y ago
      I don't think that article discussed voting rings? Also, not all the info there is accurate, and things have changed a lot since then. It's pretty important to HN that "tricks for getting stories bumped up" end up costing more than they benefit. Since I'm one of the people who've worked on this, the engineer in me is eager to see counterexamples, so everybody please email us if you think you see one.
      - karjaluoto 11y ago
        I just skimmed the post I linked to—didn’t read it in depth. (That said, I did bookmark it, to read more thoroughly when I have a moment.) Most of the things I’ve heard have been in personal discussions, so I haven’t seen the actual links. I’m curious: do you see a lot of folks running workarounds/tricks to get to the homepage? Is it something that’s difficult to stop?
        dang 11y ago
        Yes, we see a lot of that and yes it's difficult to stop, but we've put a lot of work into the software and it currently has the upper hand. It's a bit of an arms race though.

gus_massa 11y ago

Have you tried with a ShowHN? Many people read the /newest page and if the project is interesting they will drop a comment. I submitted a few post with 5-10 upvotes, that's not enough to get to the front page, but it get about a hundred visits. Others were more lucky/better and reached the front page and they got much more visits. But I think that an important part of the value of a ShowHN is the feedback. Some comments: * In IE11 I get in most pages a "No posts yet" message. Supporting every browsers is difficult, but you can try to change the message. * Are you sorting the post by age? I really like some variant of points/age like in HN or Reddit.

karjaluoto 11y ago
Yes—we’ve posted a few things over the years. A couple got some traction, even hitting the home page. That said, even staying listed in New for more than an hour seems pretty tough these days. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. As the community grows, the threshold to reach the homepage simply gets higher. That said, I figure if there’s another way to get folks some visibility, why not? (And preparing those channels took me all of 10 minutes.) And—yes—the feedback is the best part! I love new site visits, but user input is so incredibly helpful. :-) I haven’t seen the “No posts yet” message, but it could be something we’ve just overlooked. We’ve been so busy with client work and building Officehours that we haven’t given Chapp any love in a good long while. Posts will be sorted by age, for now. If this sees a little interest, we could sort by nods (the Chapp equivalent of likes/points).

krapp 11y ago

The link is right there - right at the top of the page. It's not hard to find, and honestly, if most of the traffic on /show are from people actively looking to comment on projects and mvps, then all the better. A section of the site with a narrower focus should have less traffic than the frontpage. It's unfortunate if most users act like those thirty links on the frontpage are the entirety of HN but trying to siphon traffic to chapp.is as an "alternative" is probably doomed to failure, because the network effect and the culture keep people here.

karjaluoto 11y ago
I didn’t mean this as an affront to the HN community, or as a criticism of Show HN. That said, after you work on a startup for a while, getting traffic/feedback on it is important. I check HN daily, mostly by skimming the homepage. This happens on the toilet, before I start my day—and, while laying in bed with my son at night, while he falls asleep. I find a lot of good reading here. But, I have to admit that I found it more useful (personally) 8 years ago. I’m not quite sure why. There seems to be an ebb and flow of content from one season to the next. Sometimes it’s overly technical for me (I’m not a developer), or it’s so unrelated that I don’t feel compelled to read. My hunch is that this is representative of a community that has simply reached a certain size. I don’t mean that HN was better when it was smaller, but I certainly found more pleasure in it then. Back to the point though, I don’t want to devalue anything that YC, or the community, is doing here (nor do I mean to take anything away). Instead, I just had a thought pop into my head that maybe there should be other ways to get founders feedback on what they’re doing. As we’d already built Chapp, I figured it couldn’t hurt to toss it out there.