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Ask HN: How come my submissions drop so fast?
Just wondering, I submitted a couple of articles and one question. The submissions were barely on the first page for a couple of seconds. Is there some automation built in that's doing it? really hoping this question will an answer before it drops too
- sid6376 15y agoAre you looking at the newest page (http://news.ycombinator.com/newest http://news.ycombinator.com/newest)? From what you say, it seems you are.
- Killah911 15y agoActually, I'm not looking at the new page. I was just looking on the main hacker news page or the AskHN page. I was more perplexed by the AskHN dropping so quickly. It was literally there for 2 seconds and as soon as I hit refresh, it was gone. Maybe my question was too long... Thanks for replying though, I really appreciate it :)
- pilom 15y ago4pm eastern time to 7pm pacific is peak time for submissions b/c everyone gets to the end of their day and starts browsing the web.
- wbhart 15y agoThere's an article somewhere about how the HN algorithm works. I think it ranks articles roughly speaking according to how many upvotes they received over a given time period. So you need sustained and concentrated interest to keep them up on the first page. I think I have also seen references to some topics which are made to "fall" faster than others because otherwise there is a tendency for them to get upvoted to such a degree that they clog up the main page (but someone may correct me if that is not the case). But it sounds as if you might not be even seeing the front page. Click on "Hacker News" not "new". The latter is just a list of all articles that get submitted, many of which haven't made it to the front page yet. To get it to the front page it should be on topic, it must have a catchy enough title that people will want to click on it, and the article itself has to be interesting enough that people will upvote it. I think there is a slight disadvantage for articles that are really interesting and take a long time to read, as by the time people have finished reading them, they will have already fallen off the edge of the world. But no one ever claimed the world was fair (I believe it is almost universally accepted that it is not flat though).
- Killah911 15y agoThanks for the info. I was actually referring to the AskHN and the main HN page. In both instances, they were there for just an instance (1 page refresh long). I thought maybe my submission hadn't made it thru. I'd really appreciate it if you'd post a link to the page you were talking about. I looked thru the "Guidelines" page and I wasn't really violating any of the rules/guidelines there. Thanks!
- tokenadult 15y agoSee this: http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html