Related question: do up/downvotes from users with more karma count more than those from users with little karma?
[deleted]
Ask HN: Do posts by authors with more karma rank higher?
21–30 of 56 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do posts by authors with more karma rank higher?
#22No, but the only way to get a post to the front page of HN these days is to discreetly ask a bunch of your friends to upvote it. And people with high karma are probably people who tend to have other friends who are also HN readers and who they can ask for upvotes. As much as this probably isn't the fair system we all want, it's what the system's optimization encourages today. Try posting something SUPER interesting,…
HN has a pretty good voting ring detector. And while folks have emailed me and asked me to upvote their submissions, my response is always "I upvote things I think are interesting and bring something new to the discussion, period." I would gather other "high karma" individuals have similar positions.
Re: Ask HN: Do posts by authors with more karma rank higher?
#23FWIW, I just commented on the Ask HN about career advice and my comment landed about 2/3rds down the page. Seems like a data point for the "ranking of comments does not look at karma" point of view.
Re: Ask HN: Do posts by authors with more karma rank higher?
#24No, but the only way to get a post to the front page of HN these days is to discreetly ask a bunch of your friends to upvote it. And people with high karma are probably people who tend to have other friends who are also HN readers and who they can ask for upvotes. As much as this probably isn't the fair system we all want, it's what the system's optimization encourages today. Try posting something SUPER interesting,…
Not true. It has much more to do with timing - both time of day and submitting a post when the audience is receptive to it, not necessarily being the first to do so. I have been here a long and have relatively high karma; about 3/4 of my posts get no traction, some get a small amount of attention, some go to the front page and stay there all day. The posts that are most successful in terms of getting attention are often not the ones I think most deserving of it, eg scientific journal articles with the meatiest content usually fare poorly.
I've never asked anyone to boost a post and being a rather nati-social creature I don't have an audience of devoted fans, if anything the opposite. I could get more karma if I was selective about the time of day I posted (eg lunchtimes are usually good) but I just post stuff as I discover it.
Re: Ask HN: Do posts by authors with more karma rank higher?
#25The latter would create a bubble of some people’s submissions flooding the site over time and not allowing others’ submissions to come to the front page. The ranking is affected to a good extent by when a post is submitted because of the times (and time zones) when more HN voters are online and active.
Yeah this is really interesting. The "velocity" of upvotes/comments seems to be more important than the actual raw count.
Re: Ask HN: Do posts by authors with more karma rank higher?
#26No, but the only way to get a post to the front page of HN these days is to discreetly ask a bunch of your friends to upvote it. And people with high karma are probably people who tend to have other friends who are also HN readers and who they can ask for upvotes. As much as this probably isn't the fair system we all want, it's what the system's optimization encourages today. Try posting something SUPER interesting,…
> the only way to get a post to the front page of HN these days is to discreetly ask a bunch of your friends to upvote it
This is not true. I don't do this and 5/13 of my submissions hit the front page in the last 12 months.
The most important thing is to find an article that already has a suitable title so that you don't have to editorialize it against the site guidelines just to get the crucial first upvotes. It's a shame that often the best article on a topic doesn't have the best title (often when it is a primary source). Sometimes the mods change the link later.
Re: Ask HN: Do posts by authors with more karma rank higher?
#27I have moderately high karma, and I haven't noticed any evidence that my posts are treated favorably as a result. I'm less sure on comments. At times I have suspected that comments from high karma users may get bubbled up, but I certainly couldn't swear to it.
I‘m also quite certain that, with more karma, comments stay at the top longer. Cannot say much about submissions.
I have seen anecdotal evidence of this too. I have noticed some of my comments have not been upvoted and yet have stuck higher in the rankings than comments that I know have received upvotes because I upvoted them myself. Although dang has stated that account karma doesn't impact the ranking algorithm so who knows. Either way, it seems obvious there is something more complex than a simple formula based on upvotes and post age.
Re: Ask HN: Do posts by authors with more karma rank higher?
#28FWIW, I just commented on the Ask HN about career advice and my comment landed about 2/3rds down the page. Seems like a data point for the "ranking of comments does not look at karma" point of view.
With 90556 in karma you're pretty close to 100k! I guess you get to find out whether HN sends you a Silver Upvote Button in the mail.
Re: Ask HN: Do posts by authors with more karma rank higher?
#29https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented This might help answer some of your burning questions.
Even this doesn’t stress how heavily HN is moderated. You can see it occasionally when there is some news cycle and you look an HN and everything is “Rust is cool. How we raised a round for a product we don’t have (yet). Tips for thinking effectively while in the open office.” This basically tells you that dang decided enough is enough and cleaned up the front page.
Re: Ask HN: Do posts by authors with more karma rank higher?
#30I've sometimes submitted some of my own content here, usually without much happening. Then have someone else (not always with more karma) submit it again 1 to 24 hours later and it got to the front page. I've also had content do fairly well on e.g. Reddit or Lobsters be pretty much ignored here as well.
I call it the HN roulette. I think HN is just too large and a lot of good content (or at least, I'd like to think my own content is good, heh) gets missed. Quality of the content is definitely a factor, as are things like an enticing headline, but you also just need to be lucky.