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Best Time to Post on Hacker News: It's Irrelevant

nothrabannosir 11y ago
Here’s another example: Y-Combinator’s Hacker News, which has a solid community and transparent ranking algorithm. What? HN's ranking algorithm is notoriously opaque and manual. Or are other websites even more so?
- anton_tarasenko 11y ago
  Like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html "How are stories ranked? On the front page, by points divided by a power of the time since they were submitted. Comments in comment threads are ranked the same way. Stories on the new page and comments on the comments page are listed chronologically." Now, try to find a similar answer for the websites like Facebook or Quora.
  - steveklabnik 11y ago
    That's still only a hint. You can grab the source of HN, and it has a more precise equation, but pg said long ago that, for example, that doesn't have the anti-spam measures. And empiric observation shows that there are other factors at play, that come into and out of relevance. (I don't necessarily think that the algorithm SHOULD be open, but it's clearly not currently.)
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - zxcvcxz 11y ago
      Can you provide a link to HNs source? Last I heard it was closed (but open for a while before that). I checked the FAQ and didn't see any info.
      - steveklabnik 11y ago
        It comes with Arc: http://arclanguage.org/install http://arclanguage.org/install
- kens 11y ago
  I analyzed the algorithm in detail in 2013 and found multiple unexpected factors. For example, titles containing "NSA" were penalized (which is apparently no longer the case). Certain sources are penalized. Postings with more comments than upvotes are penalized by the "flame war detector". Flagging and voting ring detection also apply penalties. About 20% of front-page articles had one sort of penalty or another. http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-works.html http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
comrade1 11y ago
There's been so many data-wanking articles posted on HN lately I find it hard to believe that everyone wants to read yet another. Maybe they got this one through by posting at the optimal time? (sorry, I know humor is not allowed on HN. It's serious business here)
- hluska 11y ago
  I dunno, the comments on these 'data-wanking' articles make me a significantly more useful data consumer. Consider Minimaxir's comment on this thread. Where else could I get access to these kinds of brains????
tremendo 11y ago
Ha, relevant, since I was wondering about [1] going mostly unnoticed having been posted 8 hours prior to [2]. At first my assumption was that surely Nature is a better source than Yahoo for such an article, but after a quick read maybe not, Yahoo seems to provide more references to supporting articles even within Nature. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9423401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9423401 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9425070 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9425070
- shoyer 11y ago
  Most of this is luck. It takes a certain number of upvotes to make it to the front page and only links that happens to cross that magic threshold accumulate significant numbers of votes.
antoko 11y ago
TLDR oversimplifying article is overly simple and gets things wrong and doesn't consider others. The rules are simple: a user submits a link and title, the community upvote and downvote this submission. Yes the rules are simple (they're actually not but they can be simplified), but yet the article seems to have gotten them wrong, submissions don't have downvotes. I starting skimming after that, it appears the metric he's using is number of upvotes, this is NOT the relevant metric, posters are looking for exposure - what they want is a position on the front page. While those things are linked they're not the same. Would also probably want to take into account pageviews on weekends vs. weekdays as this affects exposure. Maybe it correlates to votes/no. of submissions, but maybe more people passively consume on weekends or weekdays.
- MasterScrat 11y ago
  > submissions don't have downvotes That's only because you don't have enough karma.
  - sp332 11y ago
    Nope. I have >29,000 karma and I can't downvote submissions (only comments). There is a "flag" feature but that's not the opposite of an upvote.
- anton_tarasenko 11y ago
  Thanks for the correction about downvotes. Fixed. As for the metrics, being on the front page seems to drive less motivated traffic. When a user upvotes the link, he cares. When the link gets to the front page, users click it because it's on the top, not because they're interested. Hence, sales or whatever, but one should be interested in upvotes as the indicator, not the front page.
  - antoko 11y ago
    I disagree, if you're wanting something to "go viral" or whatever 100 upvotes at a busy time, when there are 30 other submissions with over 100 in a similar timeframe is not nearly as useful as 100 upvotes on say Saturday morning when there are less submissions and less voting activity. This is why others have done analysis on the "best time to post" they're not trying to gather upvotes they're trying to be on the front page for as long as possible... actually maybe that's a bad assumption on my part, I figured this was about an eyeball funnel, perhaps people are karma gathering? if it is the latter then absolutely upvotes is the correct metric. Personally, I think the focus should be on creating something great and let that be what drives the upvotes, if its about getting internet points, umm I've already spent too much time discussing something I don't care about.
solve 11y ago
Lovely parody on how to do statistics to reach totally wrong conclusions.
- gedrap 11y ago
  Could you share your reasoning?
andrewstuart2 11y ago
Actually, I did some research on this that would indicate otherwise about a year ago after pulling all the articles from the API. Statistically, the best time to post for average score was Saturday Morning, around 8 GMT IIRC. It made sense, too. As most analyses will show, fewer articles are posted on the weekend and therefore new turnover is pretty low. (Just pulled the numbers again. The average jumps up 4 points at 11 GMT on Saturday and stays there until 3 GMT on Monday morning)
- anton_tarasenko 11y ago
  I'd gladly look at this research. The research I saw is missing the fact that time is endogenous and simple scheduling won't work.
- andrewstuart2 11y ago
  For those interested, here are the results for the query I ran. http://pastebin.com/wV0eQgq0 http://pastebin.com/wV0eQgq0 And for science, the query: select avg(points), std(points), weekday(created), hour(created) from stories group by weekday(created), hour(created) order by weekday(created), hour(created);
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
arnauddri 11y ago
looking at this stats here might be the wrong approach. 'How to get on the front page of HN?' is basically the same problem as 'How to jump from the 'newest''s section front page to the HN's front page before my post gets replaced by newer posts there?' To do so, you need to remain long enough on the 'newest''s section front page which happens when there is less 'posting competition'. So if you post around 8-9am EST (see here: [1]), your post will remains longer on the 'newest' front page which gives you more time to gather upvotes. At this time, the competition is such that it is easier to jump on the front page as there are less items posted. However, this happens right before a lot of traffic pours into the website which ensure you can enjoy a lot of visibility/upvotes once you are on the front page. [1] http://minimaxir.com/2014/02/hacking-hacker-news/ http://minimaxir.com/2014/02/hacking-hacker-news/
- iamcurious 11y ago
  >you need to remain long enough on the 'newest''s section front page Long enough to gather enough upvotes. The number of people upvoting matters, which changes during the day. It might change in direct proportion to the number of people submitting new posts. In that case all times would be equal.
  - arnauddri 11y ago
    Sure, but once you're past the 'newest' front page, I doubt that you get any upvote
minimaxir 11y ago
What is going on with that KDE chart? From the code, it seems like the X-axis is hour-of-submission, and density is determined by average points per DOW/hour combo. So all the chart shows is that the greatest proportion of points from votes on the weekend come from submissions a few hours later than the proportion of weekday votes, which doesn't answer the question "is it better to submit on a weekday or a weekend?" > Time-related variables explain less than 1% of variation—meaning, unsurprisingly, that the other 99% depend on something else. Where do you get the 1% figure from? That's not shown anywhere in the code. You could calculate a R^2 from a linear regression, sure, but the data violates all the rules that make linear regression valid.

Here’s another example: Y-Combinator’s Hacker News, which has a solid community and transparent ranking algorithm. What? HN's ranking algorithm is notoriously opaque and manual. Or are other websites even more so?

anton_tarasenko 11y ago
Like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html "How are stories ranked? On the front page, by points divided by a power of the time since they were submitted. Comments in comment threads are ranked the same way. Stories on the new page and comments on the comments page are listed chronologically." Now, try to find a similar answer for the websites like Facebook or Quora.
- steveklabnik 11y ago
  That's still only a hint. You can grab the source of HN, and it has a more precise equation, but pg said long ago that, for example, that doesn't have the anti-spam measures. And empiric observation shows that there are other factors at play, that come into and out of relevance. (I don't necessarily think that the algorithm SHOULD be open, but it's clearly not currently.)
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - zxcvcxz 11y ago
    Can you provide a link to HNs source? Last I heard it was closed (but open for a while before that). I checked the FAQ and didn't see any info.
    - steveklabnik 11y ago
      It comes with Arc: http://arclanguage.org/install http://arclanguage.org/install
kens 11y ago
I analyzed the algorithm in detail in 2013 and found multiple unexpected factors. For example, titles containing "NSA" were penalized (which is apparently no longer the case). Certain sources are penalized. Postings with more comments than upvotes are penalized by the "flame war detector". Flagging and voting ring detection also apply penalties. About 20% of front-page articles had one sort of penalty or another. http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-works.html http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

comrade1 11y ago

There's been so many data-wanking articles posted on HN lately I find it hard to believe that everyone wants to read yet another. Maybe they got this one through by posting at the optimal time? (sorry, I know humor is not allowed on HN. It's serious business here)

hluska 11y ago
I dunno, the comments on these 'data-wanking' articles make me a significantly more useful data consumer. Consider Minimaxir's comment on this thread. Where else could I get access to these kinds of brains????

tremendo 11y ago

Ha, relevant, since I was wondering about [1] going mostly unnoticed having been posted 8 hours prior to [2]. At first my assumption was that surely Nature is a better source than Yahoo for such an article, but after a quick read maybe not, Yahoo seems to provide more references to supporting articles even within Nature. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9423401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9423401 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9425070 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9425070

shoyer 11y ago
Most of this is luck. It takes a certain number of upvotes to make it to the front page and only links that happens to cross that magic threshold accumulate significant numbers of votes.

antoko 11y ago

TLDR oversimplifying article is overly simple and gets things wrong and doesn't consider others. The rules are simple: a user submits a link and title, the community upvote and downvote this submission. Yes the rules are simple (they're actually not but they can be simplified), but yet the article seems to have gotten them wrong, submissions don't have downvotes. I starting skimming after that, it appears the metric he's using is number of upvotes, this is NOT the relevant metric, posters are looking for exposure - what they want is a position on the front page. While those things are linked they're not the same. Would also probably want to take into account pageviews on weekends vs. weekdays as this affects exposure. Maybe it correlates to votes/no. of submissions, but maybe more people passively consume on weekends or weekdays.

MasterScrat 11y ago
> submissions don't have downvotes That's only because you don't have enough karma.
- sp332 11y ago
  Nope. I have >29,000 karma and I can't downvote submissions (only comments). There is a "flag" feature but that's not the opposite of an upvote.
anton_tarasenko 11y ago
Thanks for the correction about downvotes. Fixed. As for the metrics, being on the front page seems to drive less motivated traffic. When a user upvotes the link, he cares. When the link gets to the front page, users click it because it's on the top, not because they're interested. Hence, sales or whatever, but one should be interested in upvotes as the indicator, not the front page.
- antoko 11y ago
  I disagree, if you're wanting something to "go viral" or whatever 100 upvotes at a busy time, when there are 30 other submissions with over 100 in a similar timeframe is not nearly as useful as 100 upvotes on say Saturday morning when there are less submissions and less voting activity. This is why others have done analysis on the "best time to post" they're not trying to gather upvotes they're trying to be on the front page for as long as possible... actually maybe that's a bad assumption on my part, I figured this was about an eyeball funnel, perhaps people are karma gathering? if it is the latter then absolutely upvotes is the correct metric. Personally, I think the focus should be on creating something great and let that be what drives the upvotes, if its about getting internet points, umm I've already spent too much time discussing something I don't care about.

solve 11y ago

Lovely parody on how to do statistics to reach totally wrong conclusions.

gedrap 11y ago
Could you share your reasoning?

andrewstuart2 11y ago

Actually, I did some research on this that would indicate otherwise about a year ago after pulling all the articles from the API. Statistically, the best time to post for average score was Saturday Morning, around 8 GMT IIRC. It made sense, too. As most analyses will show, fewer articles are posted on the weekend and therefore new turnover is pretty low. (Just pulled the numbers again. The average jumps up 4 points at 11 GMT on Saturday and stays there until 3 GMT on Monday morning)

anton_tarasenko 11y ago
I'd gladly look at this research. The research I saw is missing the fact that time is endogenous and simple scheduling won't work.
andrewstuart2 11y ago
For those interested, here are the results for the query I ran. http://pastebin.com/wV0eQgq0 http://pastebin.com/wV0eQgq0 And for science, the query: select avg(points), std(points), weekday(created), hour(created) from stories group by weekday(created), hour(created) order by weekday(created), hour(created);

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

arnauddri 11y ago

looking at this stats here might be the wrong approach. 'How to get on the front page of HN?' is basically the same problem as 'How to jump from the 'newest''s section front page to the HN's front page before my post gets replaced by newer posts there?' To do so, you need to remain long enough on the 'newest''s section front page which happens when there is less 'posting competition'. So if you post around 8-9am EST (see here: [1]), your post will remains longer on the 'newest' front page which gives you more time to gather upvotes. At this time, the competition is such that it is easier to jump on the front page as there are less items posted. However, this happens right before a lot of traffic pours into the website which ensure you can enjoy a lot of visibility/upvotes once you are on the front page. [1] http://minimaxir.com/2014/02/hacking-hacker-news/ http://minimaxir.com/2014/02/hacking-hacker-news/

iamcurious 11y ago
>you need to remain long enough on the 'newest''s section front page Long enough to gather enough upvotes. The number of people upvoting matters, which changes during the day. It might change in direct proportion to the number of people submitting new posts. In that case all times would be equal.
- arnauddri 11y ago
  Sure, but once you're past the 'newest' front page, I doubt that you get any upvote

minimaxir 11y ago

What is going on with that KDE chart? From the code, it seems like the X-axis is hour-of-submission, and density is determined by average points per DOW/hour combo. So all the chart shows is that the greatest proportion of points from votes on the weekend come from submissions a few hours later than the proportion of weekday votes, which doesn't answer the question "is it better to submit on a weekday or a weekend?" > Time-related variables explain less than 1% of variation—meaning, unsurprisingly, that the other 99% depend on something else. Where do you get the 1% figure from? That's not shown anywhere in the code. You could calculate a R^2 from a linear regression, sure, but the data violates all the rules that make linear regression valid.