4 ms·
> ShowHN posts almost never make the front page (<2%) Based on other details of analysis, I believe this means 2% of front pages posts are ShowHN. Not that 98%
by reaperman 3y ago
> ShowHN posts almost never make the front page (<2%)
Based on other details of analysis, I believe this means 2% of front pages posts are ShowHN. Not that 98% of ShowHN posts fail to reach front page. But the author doubles down on this confusion with flawed methodology:
> Second, and perhaps more importantly, the dataset doesn’t record the attempts made to get to the front page, i.e. all posts on Hacker News in a given day. It’s possible that there are orders of magnitude more blog posts posted but fewer that make the FP, whereas 95% of any academic paper submitted makes the front page (extreme figures used for illustrative purposes). So for simplicity, I’ll say “the likelihood of making the FP” which assumes a constant rate of conversion from post to FP across different categories.
and also doubles down on the logical fallacy in their conclusion:
> ShowHN is very valuable, but is not likely to land your product on the front page.
- sxg 3y agoExactly. This is an analysis of what the front page is composed of rather than what gets to the front page.
- acover 3y agoFor curiosity's sake I wanted to estimate the probability of getting to the front page with a show hn. The easy but terrible way is to just look at a few new show hn from yesterday and look at how many got more than 50 points. The answer ~4% (3/79). Please expect gigantic error bars. Links checked: 2/30 from https://news.ycombinator.com/shownew?next=36572237&n=61 https://news.ycombinator.com/shownew?next=36572237&n=61 1/30 from https://news.ycombinator.com/shownew?next=36564410&n=91 https://news.ycombinator.com/shownew?next=36564410&n=91 0/19 from https://news.ycombinator.com/shownew?next=36556170&n=121 https://news.ycombinator.com/shownew?next=36556170&n=121
- Aachen 3y ago#3 currently has 25 points, #8 has 14, and #12 has 9 points. Not sure that 50 points is a good measure of whether it has been on the front page. What does that mean anyway, does being on #25 for three minutes count?
- acover 3y agoYou are right "on the front page" is not a good question. The question I wanted to answer is "succeeded in getting significant attention". 50 votes is arbitrary but represents about 5000 views and often means there was some discussion.
- SoftTalker 3y agoSo typically, 1% of readers will vote on a post? It would not surprise me. I occasionally vote on comments, but almost never vote on posts.
- acover 3y agoIt's just a rule of thumb and varies alot between communities. https://old.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/1fd2tu/data_showing_the_relationship_between_a_posts/ https://old.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/1fd2tu/data...
- wahahah 3y agoYou just (poorly) measured the same thing the article did. I'm still curious to know what % of Show HNs make the front page.
- itunpredictable 3y agoThis is the analysis I wanted to do, but for the entire group of categories would have been time prohibitive (it's easy for ShowHN because that is filterable). Interesting results here
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]