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Ask HN: Do posts by authors with more karma rank higher?

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Re: Ask HN: Do posts by authors with more karma rank higher?

#41

Post by majewsky »

mindcrime wrote: post #12

I 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 less sure on comments.

Is your perception based on comments appearing near the top right after you post them? Because that's a feature. New comments are always at the top for a few minutes to get their initial set of votes before they move to their natural position in the stack.

Re: Ask HN: Do posts by authors with more karma rank higher?

#42

Post by oblib »

I have had a few of my post make the front page and I don't have a lot of karma and don't personally know anyone else who has a user account here.

I've also posted a link that got buried without anyone looking at it, then came back later in the day to see someone else posted the same thing from a different source and it made the front page.

If there are others gaming their posts here to get karma points they can have them. As far as I know there's no place to cash them in so it doesn't cost me anything.

It's nice to see others find what I've submitted interesting and "karma" gives us a measure of that, but the reason I check into HN is to find things that interest me.

Re: Ask HN: Do posts by authors with more karma rank higher?

#43

Post by Priem19 »

I'm new here, but my limited experience so far has been good. I've only submitted a handful of things, of which I initially thought "this deserves much more up votes," but in retrospect I came about and acknowledged my bias because I'm the author or it fits my worldview. I don't think all my posts merit their current karma, but most do.

Also, somehow I find myself being disincentivized to post unhelpful comments. As a matter of fact, every time I share an article I found on Hacker News I recommend people reading the comments. This site definitely has the highest helpful to unhelpful comment ratio.

Re: Ask HN: Do posts by authors with more karma rank higher?

#44

Post by reitanqild »

majewsky wrote: post #40
vl wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> when there is some news cycle and [the front page does not reflect it] Political news is discouraged by the site guidelines and quickly flagged by users without mods' intervention (source: I'm one of these users). If I want the latest Trump nonsense, I can go to MSNBC or Fox News or Colbert or whatever. I'd rather have more stuff on the front page which we can have a (mostly) constructive conversation about.

Some of us actually want to discuss politics with sane, smart people so I rarely flag thise stories (but I understand why you do.)

Re: Ask HN: Do posts by authors with more karma rank higher?

#45

Post by hckr_news »

vl wrote: post #29
jimbob45 wrote: post #5

https://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.

I use the hckrnews client which is better for seeing comments, and time of posting

Re: Ask HN: Do posts by authors with more karma rank higher?

#46

Post by ykevinator »

reitanqild wrote: post #44
majewsky wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when there is some news cycle and [the front page does not reflect it] Political news is discouraged by the site guidelines and quickly flagged by users without mods' intervention (source: I'm one of these users). If I want the latest Trump nonsense, I can go to MSNBC or Fox News or Colbert or whatever. I'd rather have more stuff on the front page which we can have a (mostly) constructive conversation about.

Some of us actually want to discuss politics with sane, smart people so I rarely flag thise stories (but I understand why you do.)

Agreed

Re: Ask HN: Do posts by authors with more karma rank higher?

#48

Post by simonblack »

Karma is a meaningless number. It depends more on luck than good management. I've put well-written posts out there with no karma given. I've also written throw-away lines that gain oodles of karma. Go figure.

20 million karma points and five bucks will buy you a coffee.

Re: Ask HN: Do posts by authors with more karma rank higher?

#49

Post by dheera »

dang wrote: post #36
dheera wrote: post #11

No, 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,…

Why do you say these things? I'd be fascinated to know. Almost everything here is wrong. HN's anti-abuse software isn't perfect, but if you ask friends to upvote your article, there's a high chance it won't help and you'll get your (and their) accounts penalized in the process. We actually go through the penalized posts looking for things to rescue because people tank their own good work in this way so reliably. The…

Thanks! This is helpful to know.

I've seen lots of friends (including dozens of YC founders) ask for upvotes, usually via FB in ways that wouldn't necessarily constitute a ring (e.g. asking strangers in founder-friendly facebook groups), and they're usually of things worthy of publicity, and they do make it to the front page pretty quickly after the upvote requests.

I've also seen a lot of instances where posting once didn't do anything, and then posting a second time with an equivalent but different URL + asking a few friends to help upvote made it to the front page pretty quickly.

For example, I posted https://github.com/dheera/rosshow on 2019-Mar-27 -- no dice.

Then posted it again with a "www.", i.e. https://www.github.com/dheera/rosshow -- then asked a couple friends to upvote -- and then BAM front page (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19519165).

So the only thing I did differently between trial A and B was asked people to upvote, and trial B succeeded.

Re: Ask HN: Do posts by authors with more karma rank higher?

#50

Post by dang »

dheera wrote: post #49
dang wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say these things? I'd be fascinated to know. Almost everything here is wrong. HN's anti-abuse software isn't perfect, but if you ask friends to upvote your article, there's a high chance it won't help and you'll get your (and their) accounts penalized in the process. We actually go through the penalized posts looking for things to rescue because people tank their own good work in this way so reliably. The…

Thanks! This is helpful to know. I've seen lots of friends (including dozens of YC founders) ask for upvotes, usually via FB in ways that wouldn't necessarily constitute a ring (e.g. asking strangers in founder-friendly facebook groups), and they're usually of things worthy of publicity, and they do make it to the front page pretty quickly after the upvote requests. I've also seen a lot of instances where posting onc…

Assuming I'm reading the data correctly, your friends' votes were rejected by HN's software on that second submission. Randomness is the biggest factor on /newest, which is why we allow a small number of reposts to begin with: to give good submissions multiple cracks at the bat.
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