4 ms·

You're probably not going to get good answers here in the comments, I think people are rightly worried about hn-frontpage being seo-d / reddified / propagandize

You're probably not going to get good answers here in the comments, I think people are rightly worried about hn-frontpage being seo-d / reddified / propagandized, not a good end result for hn regardless.

krapp 5y ago
This is actually the correct answer. While the code for the original Arc forums does exist, it differs from what HN actually deploys. And the mods have mentioned that they don't want to give details because they don't want the system to be gamed.
- gus_massa 5y ago
  Some user have compared the front page order with the published algorithm, and they almost agree. For example "How Hacker News ranking really works: scoring, controversy, and penalties" (righto.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799854 (920 points | Nov 26, 2013 | 190 comments) "How Hacker News ranking algorithm works" (amix.dk) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781013 (311 points | Oct 11, 2010 | 76 comments) "Reverse Engineering the Hacker News Ranking Algorithm" (sangaline.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13867739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13867739 (349 points | March 14, 2017 | 49 comments) Some values may change, for example I think "gravity" changed from 1.6 to 1.8 or vice versa, or perhaps it changed more times, I'm not tracking it. The secret part is more related to other things. For example how many post can you make in a day before the system mark you automatically as a spammer or how many before they manually mark you as a spammer. Perhaps the automatic threshold is 100 because if you make 100 submission you are obviously a spammer, insane or an idiot. If they publish that, someone will make a bot to post 99 daily, every single day and claim that it's fair. But they may decide to ban the account manually with a much lower threshold. Also, the total number is not the only criteria, it's probably important if you are submitting your stuff or other people stuff, how interesting they are, how on-topic they are, ... My guess is that twenty on-topic interesting posts are fine, but five v14gr4 post are more than enough to get banned.

krapp 5y ago

This is actually the correct answer. While the code for the original Arc forums does exist, it differs from what HN actually deploys. And the mods have mentioned that they don't want to give details because they don't want the system to be gamed.

gus_massa 5y ago
Some user have compared the front page order with the published algorithm, and they almost agree. For example "How Hacker News ranking really works: scoring, controversy, and penalties" (righto.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799854 (920 points | Nov 26, 2013 | 190 comments) "How Hacker News ranking algorithm works" (amix.dk) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781013 (311 points | Oct 11, 2010 | 76 comments) "Reverse Engineering the Hacker News Ranking Algorithm" (sangaline.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13867739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13867739 (349 points | March 14, 2017 | 49 comments) Some values may change, for example I think "gravity" changed from 1.6 to 1.8 or vice versa, or perhaps it changed more times, I'm not tracking it. The secret part is more related to other things. For example how many post can you make in a day before the system mark you automatically as a spammer or how many before they manually mark you as a spammer. Perhaps the automatic threshold is 100 because if you make 100 submission you are obviously a spammer, insane or an idiot. If they publish that, someone will make a bot to post 99 daily, every single day and claim that it's fair. But they may decide to ban the account manually with a much lower threshold. Also, the total number is not the only criteria, it's probably important if you are submitting your stuff or other people stuff, how interesting they are, how on-topic they are, ... My guess is that twenty on-topic interesting posts are fine, but five v14gr4 post are more than enough to get banned.