4 ms·

Sometimes getting voted on is not enough. Posted a Show HN for BitBalloon yesterday (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6285205 https://news.ycombinator.com/i

by bobfunk 13y ago

Sometimes getting voted on is not enough. Posted a Show HN for BitBalloon yesterday (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6285205 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6285205). Got up-votes enough to go on the front-page, but a few minutes after it hit front-page, it suddenly got booted way down to page 3, and that was the end of it. Still got some more votes, but nothing could bring it up above #50. Here's a screen of the ranking weirdness: http://hn-voting-weirdness.bitballoon.com/ http://hn-voting-weirdness.bitballoon.com/ Don't know what it got penalized for...

bhauer 13y ago
Your submission was probably flagged, possibly by multiple people. An HN pet peeve of mine is that flagging does not require even a modicum of rationale. I can flag any submission without even the slightest justification. When my own submissions have been flagged, I've also been left wondering "Why?" I understand why many of my submissions have not been upvoted. Many are simply not of upvote-quality. But not upvoting is quite different from flagging. You may be interested in the HN Slapdown user script [1] which provides insight into articles' scores versus their rank order. With this installed, I tend to look especially at those with red scores because I am interested in counteracting what I believe to be an overzealous application of flagging. Even right now, this very article has a yellow score indicating that it may be flagged (or something else is affecting its rank order versus its point score). I personally have only ever flagged one or two articles, and only when I felt that the subject matter had utterly nothing to do with my understanding of the purpose of this site. When I did so, I was shocked at the magnitude of the penalty: if I recall correctly, the article I flagged was instantly dropped from the front page to the third page. It really gave me appreciation for how sparingly one should apply flags. When I don't find a submission interesting, I just don't upvote it. [1] http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/150452 http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/150452
- bobfunk 13y ago
  Thanks, that script is really neat. Installed now.
bobfunk 13y ago
So, Tara from YC told me that the problem was that the post set off the voting ring detector. We don't have anything like a voting ring, but we obviously did tell people about launching BitBalloon in a Show HN. Seems we shouldn't have done that. This might be a reason ShowHN posts seem to be penalized in general, I imagine it's the norm to tell your friends when you launch a whole new product...
- yo-mf 13y ago
  Problems may arise when you send out a direct link to an article. When friends go directly to that article from the URL you provided, that could possible be setting off triggers. Better to just have people search for the post string or just direct to the "New" submissions and scroll down to article. This is only my suspicion, but it seems to be the case based on observations with submission behavior and article ranking.

by bobfunk 13y ago

bhauer 13y ago

Your submission was probably flagged, possibly by multiple people. An HN pet peeve of mine is that flagging does not require even a modicum of rationale. I can flag any submission without even the slightest justification. When my own submissions have been flagged, I've also been left wondering "Why?" I understand why many of my submissions have not been upvoted. Many are simply not of upvote-quality. But not upvoting is quite different from flagging. You may be interested in the HN Slapdown user script [1] which provides insight into articles' scores versus their rank order. With this installed, I tend to look especially at those with red scores because I am interested in counteracting what I believe to be an overzealous application of flagging. Even right now, this very article has a yellow score indicating that it may be flagged (or something else is affecting its rank order versus its point score). I personally have only ever flagged one or two articles, and only when I felt that the subject matter had utterly nothing to do with my understanding of the purpose of this site. When I did so, I was shocked at the magnitude of the penalty: if I recall correctly, the article I flagged was instantly dropped from the front page to the third page. It really gave me appreciation for how sparingly one should apply flags. When I don't find a submission interesting, I just don't upvote it. [1] http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/150452 http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/150452

bobfunk 13y ago
Thanks, that script is really neat. Installed now.

bobfunk 13y ago

So, Tara from YC told me that the problem was that the post set off the voting ring detector. We don't have anything like a voting ring, but we obviously did tell people about launching BitBalloon in a Show HN. Seems we shouldn't have done that. This might be a reason ShowHN posts seem to be penalized in general, I imagine it's the norm to tell your friends when you launch a whole new product...

yo-mf 13y ago
Problems may arise when you send out a direct link to an article. When friends go directly to that article from the URL you provided, that could possible be setting off triggers. Better to just have people search for the post string or just direct to the "New" submissions and scroll down to article. This is only my suspicion, but it seems to be the case based on observations with submission behavior and article ranking.