8 ms·

As a new user for sure I find it hard to get into the game - it would be nice if there was more information on how to do that.

dang 6y ago
By far the best way is to submit articles that the community will find interesting. Successful submissions are the way to karma riches. If you want to play that game, looking at past front pages (click 'past' in the top bar) is a good way to get a feel for what the community likes. From a quality point of view, the best submissions are on obscure topics that haven't been discussed much before. But quality and karma-earning aren't exactly the same thing!
- saagarjha 6y ago
  On the contrary, I think that commenting has shown itself to be a faster, easier, and more consistent way to gain karma.
  - dang 6y ago
    It wasn't the last time I looked at this but that was a long time ago. Actually the main thing I think karma measures is time spent on HN (at least among the minority who make posts).
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      As someone who spends far too long on the site, I would tend to agree.
  - jedberg 6y ago
    Anecdotally I'd say links are way better. 95%+ of my karma comes from comments, but one good link can net you 100's of karma points, whereas the very best comments ever might get you 60-70. Writing comments is easier, but links are definitely more bang for the buck if that's what you're going for.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      You can routinely get a hundred or so karma from a comment thread without much difficulty, if you happen to leave a top-level comment early on a post and that happens to make it reasonably high on the front page, and then go in to reply to the inevitable responses to it (excluding an outlier comment of mine, I know it's possible to get over a hundred on a single comment as well). Not only do links earn you karma at a reduced rate, they are also nontrivial to find: for any "news" you need to beat out the dozen other people who'll submit the same thing as fast as they can, and for other content you actually need to find things that interest Hacker News and that hasn't been shared too much before. Plus, if you exclusively post links you miss the discussion, which is the best part of Hacker News IMO. Twitter or Reddit or Slashdot do link aggregation too.
  - kick 6y ago
    I realize you probably said this as a joke because you've never submitted anything; that said... Commenting is a decent way! If you opportunistically roam threads, it's not that hard to get quite a bit on each thread. However, the stories are way quicker as long as you're not submitting them at the wrong time of day (if you check through the profiles of people who submit non-spam and non-political posts frequently, which stories of theirs made it to the front page can almost entirely be predicted by checking /past and seeing if anything submitted +/- 20 minutes from it made it there, outside of the case where they get manually boosted there). I think submissions could be improved with some simple fixes (famous last words), but it's definitely not terribly difficult to get decent amounts of karma that way if you've got your mind set on it.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      No, not joking at all. It's actually a fair amount of work to find good links. While I make a point to not submit stories, the people with the most karma on the site, and those who accumulate it the fastest, gain most of it from comments. Getting stories upvoted is fairly random in comparison; there are a couple (I a particular user in my mind right now) that make this work by submitting like a dozen stories a day, getting 1-2 points on most of them, and then a hundred or so about once a day, but that's not really any worse than commenting because stories don't map one-to-one with karma. (I should mention that if I don't actively optimize for karma; I exclusively skim threads on the front page for a while and leave comments, coming back a couple times to catch new additions and respond to replies. If you're really trying to rack up karma and can can string a couple of words together on a variety of topics, there's a number of more aggressive karma accumulation strategies you could employ. They're not nearly as enjoyable.)
      - kick 6y ago
        I may be an outlier in that I've always collected links that I find interesting and periodically revisit them, but I really don't think it's that much work to find links; curious exploring should get you far. Also, I just want to point out, as someone who plausibly had the fastest accumulation of karma during the first months of having an account,* that "and those who accumulate it the fastest" may not be quite accurate. * (I actually got called out for it by three different people; my first five thousand points were achieved within (-/+ 5) ninety days of making the account, and that was with fifteen days of not posting anything (my account was made on 91919, which is a palindrome I find nice); my first thousand was within thirty days of making the account.)
jwdunne 6y ago
Don’t worry about the karma. If you notice interesting stuff, submit it. If you notice a thread you can contribute something valuable, comment. My submission and comment history is sporadic because of that. Most of the time, I’m happy to soak up what’s being said by some really clever, experienced people (and HN has a lot of quality talk by lots of smart people). But sometimes there’s a question worth asking or a point worth making and that’s when best to comment. Karma goes up and down but if you’re polite, it’s mostly up - even if people don’t agree with you, they will appreciate a well thought out and respectable argument. Especially one that makes you think, regardless of how contrarian it is. Don’t feel compelled to submit or comment or build karma!

dang 6y ago

By far the best way is to submit articles that the community will find interesting. Successful submissions are the way to karma riches. If you want to play that game, looking at past front pages (click 'past' in the top bar) is a good way to get a feel for what the community likes. From a quality point of view, the best submissions are on obscure topics that haven't been discussed much before. But quality and karma-earning aren't exactly the same thing!

saagarjha 6y ago
On the contrary, I think that commenting has shown itself to be a faster, easier, and more consistent way to gain karma.
- dang 6y ago
  It wasn't the last time I looked at this but that was a long time ago. Actually the main thing I think karma measures is time spent on HN (at least among the minority who make posts).
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    As someone who spends far too long on the site, I would tend to agree.
- jedberg 6y ago
  Anecdotally I'd say links are way better. 95%+ of my karma comes from comments, but one good link can net you 100's of karma points, whereas the very best comments ever might get you 60-70. Writing comments is easier, but links are definitely more bang for the buck if that's what you're going for.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    You can routinely get a hundred or so karma from a comment thread without much difficulty, if you happen to leave a top-level comment early on a post and that happens to make it reasonably high on the front page, and then go in to reply to the inevitable responses to it (excluding an outlier comment of mine, I know it's possible to get over a hundred on a single comment as well). Not only do links earn you karma at a reduced rate, they are also nontrivial to find: for any "news" you need to beat out the dozen other people who'll submit the same thing as fast as they can, and for other content you actually need to find things that interest Hacker News and that hasn't been shared too much before. Plus, if you exclusively post links you miss the discussion, which is the best part of Hacker News IMO. Twitter or Reddit or Slashdot do link aggregation too.
- kick 6y ago
  I realize you probably said this as a joke because you've never submitted anything; that said... Commenting is a decent way! If you opportunistically roam threads, it's not that hard to get quite a bit on each thread. However, the stories are way quicker as long as you're not submitting them at the wrong time of day (if you check through the profiles of people who submit non-spam and non-political posts frequently, which stories of theirs made it to the front page can almost entirely be predicted by checking /past and seeing if anything submitted +/- 20 minutes from it made it there, outside of the case where they get manually boosted there). I think submissions could be improved with some simple fixes (famous last words), but it's definitely not terribly difficult to get decent amounts of karma that way if you've got your mind set on it.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    No, not joking at all. It's actually a fair amount of work to find good links. While I make a point to not submit stories, the people with the most karma on the site, and those who accumulate it the fastest, gain most of it from comments. Getting stories upvoted is fairly random in comparison; there are a couple (I a particular user in my mind right now) that make this work by submitting like a dozen stories a day, getting 1-2 points on most of them, and then a hundred or so about once a day, but that's not really any worse than commenting because stories don't map one-to-one with karma. (I should mention that if I don't actively optimize for karma; I exclusively skim threads on the front page for a while and leave comments, coming back a couple times to catch new additions and respond to replies. If you're really trying to rack up karma and can can string a couple of words together on a variety of topics, there's a number of more aggressive karma accumulation strategies you could employ. They're not nearly as enjoyable.)
    - kick 6y ago
      I may be an outlier in that I've always collected links that I find interesting and periodically revisit them, but I really don't think it's that much work to find links; curious exploring should get you far. Also, I just want to point out, as someone who plausibly had the fastest accumulation of karma during the first months of having an account,* that "and those who accumulate it the fastest" may not be quite accurate. * (I actually got called out for it by three different people; my first five thousand points were achieved within (-/+ 5) ninety days of making the account, and that was with fifteen days of not posting anything (my account was made on 91919, which is a palindrome I find nice); my first thousand was within thirty days of making the account.)

jwdunne 6y ago

Don’t worry about the karma. If you notice interesting stuff, submit it. If you notice a thread you can contribute something valuable, comment. My submission and comment history is sporadic because of that. Most of the time, I’m happy to soak up what’s being said by some really clever, experienced people (and HN has a lot of quality talk by lots of smart people). But sometimes there’s a question worth asking or a point worth making and that’s when best to comment. Karma goes up and down but if you’re polite, it’s mostly up - even if people don’t agree with you, they will appreciate a well thought out and respectable argument. Especially one that makes you think, regardless of how contrarian it is. Don’t feel compelled to submit or comment or build karma!