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How to Get Upvoted on Hacker News

56 points by RickJWagner 7y ago

fstopmick 7y ago
Relevant - Effects of title length on upvotes gained by a [Reddit] post: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/durndj/effects_of_title_length_oc/?limit=500 https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/durndj/eff...
- minimaxir 7y ago
  And the per-subreddit version: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/duub8p/average_reddit_submission_score_by_title_length/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/duub8p/ave...
gabia 7y ago
Seems to be working, congrats! :)
- chmaynard 7y ago
  I claim that pretty much any post with "Hacker News" in the title will attract attention. And after all, attention from others what we all want, right? (I'm too lazy to verify this, but at least it sounds plausible.)
  - blocks110 7y ago
    OP here, very true. There is a section on that towards the end of the (too lengthy) article. Posts referencing HN have an average 50% higher score.
sillysaurusx 7y ago
The easiest way is to just email and ask if a story is a good fit. I don’t think that will scale, but if a story is legitimately interesting and your email is short, you might find it’s given preference. The full-time goal of HN is to stay interesting at every timestep. A lot of the reason people’s interesting stories don’t get upvoted is that there are so many interesting stories to talk about each day, and there are 30 slots on the front page. Interesting discussions also take time to foster, so you have to give content a little bit of time to accumulate well-written comments, which necessarily appear 30 minutes to several hours after hitting the front page. Ultimately it’s an interesting intellectual exercise to analyze HN like this, but probably not too useful. The data hides the underlying fact that HN is fine-tuned to be interesting. Just be interesting, and eventually you’ll get a slot. It’s as easy and as hard as that.
- iudqnolq 7y ago
  Email who?
  - TheHunter 7y ago
    Exactly.
  - yorwba 7y ago
    There's a link in the footer.
    - iudqnolq 7y ago
      I didn't realize parent meant email the site admins. Thanks!
rolph 7y ago
There are times of high usage as evident from analysis of front page, and new page postings, let this read as "more users on the board make more votes possible for any one comment or submission". Be genuine. find things that are interesting to you, and are willing to discuss with others. HN is like the digital/intellectual version of walking into a fitness club and seeing the different levels of expertise and the specialty activities, with volunteer training coaches. Posts of tabloid-like prurient interest, or gratuitously illicit content usually dont do well on HN
- blocks110 7y ago
  Agree. Low quality stories won't make the front page, but as someone else commented, there are many competing high quality stories. And what I find really fascinating is the extent to which randomness impacts the success of a particular story. I may get to posting this at one point, but I have simulated and fitted that first distribution of scores in the article with only 3 parameters: rate of story posting, likelihood of upvote and number of readers.
carrozo 7y ago
Must we gameify everything? Reverse engineering serendipity is such a miserable way to think/exist.
- kempbellt 7y ago
  My gut reaction was: Please keep the karma farming to Reddit - if you must... Though, the article is actually pretty interesting and points people in the direction of the type of mindset that is appreciated and promoted on HackerNews - being a maker, and having a curious personality (and sharing it here). I think the info in this article could be gamified a bit, but really, it's usually pretty obvious if someone is sharing something out of genuine interest in it. It's pretty hard to pretend to be nerding out about a more efficient algorithm or how to hack together a programmable mirror.
  - m463 7y ago
    > being a maker, and having a curious personality aka "participate in the site" (via show and ask)
- drewcoo 7y ago
  Gamification works well for mundane, mindless, time-consuming tasks like flossing, taking the garbage out, and engaging in social media. So gamify everything? No.
- m463 7y ago
  I wonder if there's a way to modify things to prevent gaming?
zenlot 7y ago
Shorter answer: go with the flow, drop your personal opinion and if you disagree with someone - remain silent.
m463 7y ago
I note this was posted around noon pacific on a weekend.
Noxmiles 7y ago
What is karma even for? Why should anyone collect as many karma as possible?

56 points by RickJWagner 7y ago

Relevant - Effects of title length on upvotes gained by a [Reddit] post: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/durndj/effects_of_title_length_oc/?limit=500 https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/durndj/eff...

minimaxir 7y ago
And the per-subreddit version: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/duub8p/average_reddit_submission_score_by_title_length/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/duub8p/ave...

gabia 7y ago

Seems to be working, congrats! :)

chmaynard 7y ago
I claim that pretty much any post with "Hacker News" in the title will attract attention. And after all, attention from others what we all want, right? (I'm too lazy to verify this, but at least it sounds plausible.)
- blocks110 7y ago
  OP here, very true. There is a section on that towards the end of the (too lengthy) article. Posts referencing HN have an average 50% higher score.

sillysaurusx 7y ago

The easiest way is to just email and ask if a story is a good fit. I don’t think that will scale, but if a story is legitimately interesting and your email is short, you might find it’s given preference. The full-time goal of HN is to stay interesting at every timestep. A lot of the reason people’s interesting stories don’t get upvoted is that there are so many interesting stories to talk about each day, and there are 30 slots on the front page. Interesting discussions also take time to foster, so you have to give content a little bit of time to accumulate well-written comments, which necessarily appear 30 minutes to several hours after hitting the front page. Ultimately it’s an interesting intellectual exercise to analyze HN like this, but probably not too useful. The data hides the underlying fact that HN is fine-tuned to be interesting. Just be interesting, and eventually you’ll get a slot. It’s as easy and as hard as that.

iudqnolq 7y ago
Email who?
- TheHunter 7y ago
  Exactly.
- yorwba 7y ago
  There's a link in the footer.
  - iudqnolq 7y ago
    I didn't realize parent meant email the site admins. Thanks!

rolph 7y ago

There are times of high usage as evident from analysis of front page, and new page postings, let this read as "more users on the board make more votes possible for any one comment or submission". Be genuine. find things that are interesting to you, and are willing to discuss with others. HN is like the digital/intellectual version of walking into a fitness club and seeing the different levels of expertise and the specialty activities, with volunteer training coaches. Posts of tabloid-like prurient interest, or gratuitously illicit content usually dont do well on HN

blocks110 7y ago
Agree. Low quality stories won't make the front page, but as someone else commented, there are many competing high quality stories. And what I find really fascinating is the extent to which randomness impacts the success of a particular story. I may get to posting this at one point, but I have simulated and fitted that first distribution of scores in the article with only 3 parameters: rate of story posting, likelihood of upvote and number of readers.

carrozo 7y ago

Must we gameify everything? Reverse engineering serendipity is such a miserable way to think/exist.

kempbellt 7y ago
My gut reaction was: Please keep the karma farming to Reddit - if you must... Though, the article is actually pretty interesting and points people in the direction of the type of mindset that is appreciated and promoted on HackerNews - being a maker, and having a curious personality (and sharing it here). I think the info in this article could be gamified a bit, but really, it's usually pretty obvious if someone is sharing something out of genuine interest in it. It's pretty hard to pretend to be nerding out about a more efficient algorithm or how to hack together a programmable mirror.
- m463 7y ago
  > being a maker, and having a curious personality aka "participate in the site" (via show and ask)
drewcoo 7y ago
Gamification works well for mundane, mindless, time-consuming tasks like flossing, taking the garbage out, and engaging in social media. So gamify everything? No.
m463 7y ago
I wonder if there's a way to modify things to prevent gaming?

zenlot 7y ago

Shorter answer: go with the flow, drop your personal opinion and if you disagree with someone - remain silent.

m463 7y ago

I note this was posted around noon pacific on a weekend.

Noxmiles 7y ago

What is karma even for? Why should anyone collect as many karma as possible?