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I think it's possible to abuse HN by submitting any crap, voting up with a few other accounts and earn karma this way. There's some software that would start t

by pg 17y ago

I think it's possible to abuse HN by submitting any crap, voting up with a few other accounts and earn karma this way. There's some software that would start to notice this.

davidw 17y ago
If someone were purely after karma, I think the best way to do it would be to submit not just any old crap, but a broad selection of mainly "off topic" stories from relatively high quality sites like economist.com, ft.com, wsj.com, nytimes.com and maybe some stuff like reason.com, which is bound to get some votes from the libertarian crowd prior to being killed. If you were steady about submitting lots of these links, a few would be winners, and the rest cost you nothing. This is essentially the strategy followed here: http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=robg http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=robg Lots of material, much of it good. Although plenty of it might be considered off topic by some, most of it's interesting, and gathers at least a few votes. And it's certainly not spam.
- robg 17y ago
  I take offense! I follow no "strategy". That's what I read daily outside of research and coding. I post the most interesting stuff because: a) I follow a lot of great links and discussions here. b) I've learned a ton in doing so. c) I'm trying to give back in some way. d) To me, that's karma but it has nothing to do with points. Now, I do feel bad about not contributing to many discussions here. In general, I don't have much patience for that kind of back and forth. Furthermore I don't think I have much to add. But I'm certainly not worried about the "cost". I'd love to know how many stories I've had killed as compared to other people and some site average and standard deviation. I see 7 out of my last 120 submissions (one was self-killed) or 6%. That seems okay and certainly not an outlier. Still, even those fall within my primary interests: brains, education, business and technology with some cultural stuff. Those interests may be overly broad to you, but they're simply who I am. If my failure rate here is only 6% then I have to conclude plenty are interesting (as in the guidelines) to folks here.
  - davidw 17y ago
    I didn't mean any offense, just that posting a lot of interesting material with a broad scope is a successful strategy. I tend to take a narrow view of what's hacker news, but that doesn't make your links uninteresting. If I had to categorize them, I'd say some were definitely on topic, a lot of them are fuzzy, and some of them definitely aren't, centered around anything with politics in it.
    - robg 17y ago
      I didn't really think you did. But again, I'm just posting what I read and what I find especially interesting. Yeah, sometimes that includes politics (like you posting FT's endorsement of Obama). That's where I'm thankful for the community, and editors, killing things. Fuzzy is okay because, if necessary, it becomes categorical. Still, just disagreeing on the facts, I find a 6% failure rate to be acceptable and much less than "some" or "plenty" imply. It's a small minority if you recognize your own solipsism. The community says me and my interests belong!

by pg 17y ago

I think it's possible to abuse HN by submitting any crap, voting up with a few other accounts and earn karma this way. There's some software that would start to notice this.

davidw 17y ago

If someone were purely after karma, I think the best way to do it would be to submit not just any old crap, but a broad selection of mainly "off topic" stories from relatively high quality sites like economist.com, ft.com, wsj.com, nytimes.com and maybe some stuff like reason.com, which is bound to get some votes from the libertarian crowd prior to being killed. If you were steady about submitting lots of these links, a few would be winners, and the rest cost you nothing. This is essentially the strategy followed here: http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=robg http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=robg Lots of material, much of it good. Although plenty of it might be considered off topic by some, most of it's interesting, and gathers at least a few votes. And it's certainly not spam.

robg 17y ago
I take offense! I follow no "strategy". That's what I read daily outside of research and coding. I post the most interesting stuff because: a) I follow a lot of great links and discussions here. b) I've learned a ton in doing so. c) I'm trying to give back in some way. d) To me, that's karma but it has nothing to do with points. Now, I do feel bad about not contributing to many discussions here. In general, I don't have much patience for that kind of back and forth. Furthermore I don't think I have much to add. But I'm certainly not worried about the "cost". I'd love to know how many stories I've had killed as compared to other people and some site average and standard deviation. I see 7 out of my last 120 submissions (one was self-killed) or 6%. That seems okay and certainly not an outlier. Still, even those fall within my primary interests: brains, education, business and technology with some cultural stuff. Those interests may be overly broad to you, but they're simply who I am. If my failure rate here is only 6% then I have to conclude plenty are interesting (as in the guidelines) to folks here.
- davidw 17y ago
  I didn't mean any offense, just that posting a lot of interesting material with a broad scope is a successful strategy. I tend to take a narrow view of what's hacker news, but that doesn't make your links uninteresting. If I had to categorize them, I'd say some were definitely on topic, a lot of them are fuzzy, and some of them definitely aren't, centered around anything with politics in it.
  - robg 17y ago
    I didn't really think you did. But again, I'm just posting what I read and what I find especially interesting. Yeah, sometimes that includes politics (like you posting FT's endorsement of Obama). That's where I'm thankful for the community, and editors, killing things. Fuzzy is okay because, if necessary, it becomes categorical. Still, just disagreeing on the facts, I find a 6% failure rate to be acceptable and much less than "some" or "plenty" imply. It's a small minority if you recognize your own solipsism. The community says me and my interests belong!