7 ms·
No upvotes on Hacker News: Still awesome to submit
- byoung2 14y agoI'm from the school where I read the article before deciding to upvote. Unfortunately, if the article is interesting, I read it all the way through and forget to come back and upvote it. In this case the subject of the article reminded me to upvote, but I think it would be a good idea to put the reminder at the end of the article as well.
- ante_annum 14y agoI'm in the same boat as him where I'll submit everything I write, watch 400 people read it on google analytics, and never get a comment of an upvote. It's sort of frustrating because I'm submitting my writing specifically to get feedback, but I also realize that if something is truly interesting to me, I'm more likely to hop straight to twitter to share it.
- username3 14y agoTry adding a link to comments on Hacker News on the bottom of the article.
- nkuttler 14y agoSeriously, you submit everything your write here? What is your goal? I want, you know, news relevant for hackers on this site. Not everything that was published on the internets in the last 24 hours. If I were you I'd try to find more relevant sites, or maybe some subreddit.
- pessimizer 14y agoYou didn't look at the submissions before complaining about them, right? http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=ante_annum http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=ante_annum They all seem perfectly appropriate to me.
- jeremyarussell 14y agoIt could also be that he only writes stuff he views is a fit for hacker news.
- incision 14y ago>It's sort of frustrating because I'm submitting my writing specifically to get feedback... Personally, I'm hesitant to give feedback or even comment unless I think I have something unique to offer or have an unusually strong feeling about the material. I think a large part of it is the generally combative stance many people seem to default into online. I quickly got tired of "So, what have you done better?" responses to what I think is polite, constructive criticism or a "What does this add to the discussion?" quip as a result of posting a simple show of appreciation. I'm theorizing it's an overcompensation from the transformation of certain aggregators into something like a backpatting / validation request line.
- ry0ohki 14y agoIt's also always amazing to me how few people upvote an article. Like something on the front page getting tens of thousands of votes, that people clearly like, and usually only a few hundred can be bothered to click a little arrow.
- lobotryas 14y agoI rarely upvote because doing so on HN automatically adds that article to your Saved section. I prefer to keep this section only for submissions to which I'd want to come back later (and I'm unsure if the "upvote to save" behavior can be changed). Either way, view this as a great lesson in why getting conversions can be so tough. A person better have a very persuasive case for a stranger to go out of their way and click a button.
- brudgers 14y agoThe saved section makes me more selective in terms of what merits an upvote. I will confess/admit/proclaim that the position of an article within the stack also influences my upvoting. In other words, my standard for upvoting is lower on the New page than the front page.
- rweba 14y agoI'm in the same boat : Just because I like an article doesn't mean I want it saved to my permanent list. I would be very interested if there is a way to change this behavior as I would then upvote far more articles.
- ry0ohki 14y agoI had no idea this section even existed, and I've been on here for years, literally never clicked that link!
- xijuan 14y agoI don't know about others. But I upvote a lot!! And I almost always remember to come back to upvote after reading the article.
- illuminate 14y ago
- jonheller 14y agoI'm very surprised, but excited, to see this is true. Thanks for sharing.
- RobotCaleb 14y agoFrom my sample size of one I show about 100 visits for each upvote for my one and only submission. 23390/247
- jncraton 14y agoSounds like the 1% rule: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)
- RobotCaleb 14y agoI should mention that was just while the post was on the front page. The numbers are still going up, but the votes seem to have stopped.
- jey 14y agoRead >100 times, or just clicked >100 times?
- lifeisstillgood 14y agoLoved the video of the landing with speech bubbles - it made a great deal of sense. Have an upvote :-)
- arcticfox 14y agoI ended up reading your article on to land an airplane, it was really good. My palms were sweating the whole time ! Should've gotten upvotes for that.
- eduardordm 14y agothanks! I still remember my first time I was sweating and shaking a lot, flying is awesome
- ianstormtaylor 14y agoYup that post was awesome! Almost didn't watch the video at the end, but glad I did. Although there is zero chance I'm going to remember any of that when I actually need to land a plane :p (Luckily the chance that I need to land a plane is probably much lower...)
- HunterV 14y agoI just hope it stays this way. There are few enough submits to HackerNews to ensure that every post gets viewed. If Hacker News gets over popular soon the reddit effect will happen.
- tomblomfield 14y agoVisits != readers - there are a lot of automated bots that scrape HN. If you get into the top 3 or 4 on the front page, you can expect around 20-30,000 hits on your site. But the number of people who stick around and read the articles is much lower - around 1,000 to 2,000 according to my blog's Google Analytics. Congrats on hitting the front page, by the way!
- ry0ohki 14y agoI would think most bots wouldn't have JavaScript and therefore not register on GA. I think a lot of people are bored and do click the articles on the New page. That said, even clicks from the front page are often not actual readers (as you can tell by many of the comments).
- tomblomfield 14y agoI wrote a post last year which stuck around on the front page for a while - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3554206 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3554206 It got 28,000 pageviews, but 92% of visitors stuck around for under 10 seconds, according to Google Analytics.
- ImprovedSilence 14y agoBut sometimes it's a short post. I usually read everything, and with this particularity short blog post, I'd be surprised if it took me longer than 20 seconds to read the entirety of his post and close it out. I imagine you can glean most everything you want from the less beefy ars or tech crunch articles in 10...
- smacktoward 14y agoI submitted stuff that never got upvotes for months and thought I had just become out of sync somehow with the interests of the rest of HN. Then I realized that my submissions had apparently been banned! I can see them when I'm logged in as myself, but when I hit the site without logging in they're nowhere to be found. Not quite a hell-ban, since people (apparently) still see my comments, but still frustrating.
- brudgers 14y agoThere are many blocked IP's when it comes to submissions. PG commented on within the past several months. Having a link immediately go dead isn't related to one's karma - or at least that's my impression. In any event, such links don't really disappear. If "Show Dead" is selected as a preference they can still be seen.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- slouch 14y agoIt's still a bummer, though. What part of my account history means I shouldn't be able to submit anymore?
- praptak 14y agoFrom my limited experience this has less to do with the poster's history than with the site being linked. Some of the sites just seem to turn false positives wrt being spam.
- kmfrk 14y agoI for one have plenty of dead BuzzFeed submissions to my name. That's entirely based on the site and not me - fortunately.
- jamesbritt 14y agoSome sites are only allowed from special users. I've had submissions go insta-dead on me, only to see the exact same link show up later, from someone else, and appparently approved.
- bjhoops1 14y agoI've had the same experience. My blog posts not getting any upvotes, but still quite a few page views. However, GA tells me the views from HN have an atrociously high bounce rate and an average time on page of like 8 seconds. :P
- danso 14y ago> So, next time you write something, make sure you submit to Hacker News, even if you don't get upvotes, people will still read it. Sorry, I have to disagree. It is not "awesome" to get pageviews for the sake of getting pageviews. What is awesome is if 1 out of those 100 people who gave you the benefit of the doubt gives you an upvote because you gave them something interesting to read. Instead of "Still awesome to submit", it should be "Still awesome to write/create". Don't tie the point of your writing to some nominal number of random readers.
- mapgrep 14y agoYou're putting words in OP's mouth he never said. He wrote these articles because he thought they'd be useful, submitted them to HN, and was happy to learn later that, even with zero upvotes, they'd been read by dozens of people. He explains this in the second sentence (!) of the post: "I try to write some useful info like How to land an airplane if you are not a pilot or This is why you should never use Oracle DB those are not very interesting topics but, anyway, I always submit my post to Hacker News hoping at least 10 individuals would read it." There's a world of difference between writing something to get attention versus writing something you truly believe and being heartened when it gets attention. He never suggests people should engage in the former, he just says to submit to HN when you do the latter.
- danso 14y agoI didn't put words in the OP's mouth, I used a direct quote, and I don't think I took it out of context. > So, next time you write something, make sure you submit to Hacker News, even if you don't get upvotes, people will still read it. "something" not "something worthwhile" or "something you care about". Is it a far stretch to think that OP is saying, "Who cares if no one actually affirms your work, at least you'll get pageviews?" And while that's probably a true statement, I think it's not overall a net positive for HN. I'll give the benefit of the doubt to the OP that what he actually means is: "Even if you don't get any upvotes, your content will still get read, and at least a few people will benefit from it" But I can't, as you say, put words in the OP's mouth.
- petewarden 14y agoI look through the 'new' page archives every few days, and reblog interesting posts. They're usually so old that upvotes wouldn't matter, but the signal-to-noise ratio for submissions is high enough that I can usually find some neglected gems.
- jere 14y agoThat's somewhat encouraging. I have not had good results with either ask or submit.
- mappum 14y agoIronically, this DID get upvotes.
- delinka 14y agoLet me suggest, after reading this post and the one on reasons not to use Oracle, that readership (and upvotes) may follow if you improve your grammar. It's not terrible, but it lacks 'quality.' If English is not your primary language, it shouldn't be difficult to get someone you know to help you proofread and edit your work. Also, while I'm here, I also suggest spending a bit more time reflecting on your blog post before publishing. Is the message clear? Does the post flow well? Just a little extra polish can make your articles much more appealing.
- eduardordm 14y agoThanks a lot! English is not my first language, I've been gradually getting better, but certainly a proofread from someone else would help me a lot. I would pay for a english teacher to proofread and provide writing tips. I tried wordy.com but they just do some basic checking, really.
- jcamenisch 14y agoI think @LorenPaulsson would do this. I can vouch for his language, communication, and editing skills—and his work ethic.
- mladenkovacevic 14y agoI wouldn't submit anything of mine to HN out of fear that the traffic might bring down my site (Webfaction hosted Django/Nginx blog)... and also because at the moment I wouldn't have anything to gain from the traffic besides a temporary ego boost. EDIT: Speaking of which, is there a service out there that can test how much load your site can handle at one time?
- spyder 14y agoIt's sad that you would submit something only if you can gain something and not to help the community. BTW First results in google for "website load testing": http://loadimpact.com/ http://loadimpact.com/ For example you could try this service out and write a post about your experience and submit it to HN so you could help the community with useful information.
- mladenkovacevic 14y agoThanks for the suggestion. I will try it out and maybe find other services I can compare this one with. My experience with programming/product launching is also so junior/non-existent that I doubt anyone on HN would be interested in hearing about it. So the only other reason I might post (at this time at least) is if I were selling something (and I'm not). I was just being honest about what I feel I can contribute to HN at this time. Which is very little, hence why I stick to merely commenting.
- ErrantX 14y agoHN is so popular that really good stuff disappears (and ironically, relatively "humdrum" stuff such as this gets to the front page :D). His article on "how to land a plane" is a brilliant read, for example: http://eduardo.intermeta.com.br/posts/2013/1/25/how-to-land-a-plane-if-you-are-not-a-pilot http://eduardo.intermeta.com.br/posts/2013/1/25/how-to-land-...
- petercooper 14y agoA lot of good stuff doesn't "take off" here until it's been submitted several times. It's just the nature of the beast when the shop window doesn't expand to fit the increased number of products on sale. I do find it funny when several of the items on the front page are things I had in my weekly newsletters earlier in the day though (as happened today) given all the people who said weekly e-mails would be a "slow" way to get news ;-)