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Ask HN: Why do “Show HN” posts rarely make it to the front page?
- blackdogie 7y agoBecause they don’t generate interest ?
- abhisuri97 7y agoBut they get a number of upvotes (which could be considered a proxy indicator of interest). In some instances the show page top submission has a higher up vote count than most of the front page but still does not show up.
- cottsak 7y agoIt's not for us mere mortals to try understand the HN home page algorithms .. but there are a couple of lines here https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
- Tomte 7y agoThere a few Ask HNs. You can see that the Ask HN page moves much slower. So the upvotes are spread out over a long time, and the ranking algorithm heavily discounts spread-out upvotes.
- caseyf7 7y agoMainly because they are unique so they are not automatically upvoted when duplicates are submitted the way articles are.
- gamechangr 7y agotwo reasons: 1) top stories are usually very unique or a good debate 2) if it worked, people would work together to game the system.
- random_comment 7y ago> very unique I once read a short article by a journal editor, on the theme of contributors describing their work as 'extremely unique'. Something is either unique or it's not. If anyone knows the article I'm referring to, I'd appreciate a link, I've been trying to find it again for a year or two.