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Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?

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Re: Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?

#191

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

bombcar wrote: post #179
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #6

> " When working on my projects and talking to investors, I often hear: 'Just post it on Hacker News or Reddit and show that people love it.' " ... " If so, what are the real levers, and what do people consistently misunderstand? " There are no "levers". People come to HN to discuss nerdy topics and those that have come to HN to help make those discussions more informed and interesting are welcome. Anyone who comes t…

> There are no "levers". There are never "no levers" - the best you can do is make sure that the levers you know about are aligned with the purpose of the site. And that works pretty well. Don't SEO-post, write a blog about some technical aspect of SEO-posting, and you'll do better. HN-posting successfully can't really be done "at scale" - by design. Here's a successful formula, but takes some time. Participate, read…

> "Here's a successful formula, but takes some time."

Have you looked at the very first sentence of the OP's submission? Their investors are not going to wait around for any of that. The OP all but outright says they want a "lever" that they can use repeatedly that pops a marketing submission to the HN front page as a gauge of interest to satisfy investors and secure funding. That isn't reliably possible even for longtime HN users with a solid posting history and high karma (and thank heavens for that or HN would be a very different place).

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?

#192

Post by dang »

noosphr wrote: post #107
jacquesm wrote: post #47

HN is hard to game on purpose. So stop looking for the levers and participate , that's all there is to it. I've made friends here, have been helped by people on projects that I was busy with, did the reverse, found friends and business partners and spend way too much time. HN is a very interesting slice of the online world, a place that is unlike the rest, sometimes a bit dry but always interesting and extremely usef…

Hacker news is there to promote ycombinator companies. So long as you know and avoid this it's surprisingly high quality. But that's there to lend more ligitimacy to ycombinator. Its also the currently last man standing in the continual growth and death of tech sites - Slashdot, digg, reddit - and the most surprising one to make it big. You know a tech site is useful when you write about a bug and the maintainer come…

> Hacker news is there to promote ycombinator companies

I should probably clarify this a bit.

It's true that HN sponsors Launch HNs (and Show HNs) by YC startups. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. However, YC would not be funding HN if that were the only reason for it. It's a secondary factor.

Far more important than promoting existing startups is attracting founders who might start new startups. This requires an entirely different strategy than promotion: it requires being interesting enough to attract the right kind of users. That's why the site is organized around curiosity, as I explained elsewhere in the current thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46309399).

For more on this, here are past explanations:

optimizing for curiosity - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

relationship between HN and YC's business interests - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?

#193

Post by bombcar »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #191
bombcar wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are no "levers". There are never "no levers" - the best you can do is make sure that the levers you know about are aligned with the purpose of the site. And that works pretty well. Don't SEO-post, write a blog about some technical aspect of SEO-posting, and you'll do better. HN-posting successfully can't really be done "at scale" - by design. Here's a successful formula, but takes some time. Participate, read…

> " Here's a successful formula, but takes some time. " Have you looked at the very first sentence of the OP's submission? Their investors are not going to wait around for any of that. The OP all but outright says they want a "lever" that they can use repeatedly that pops a marketing submission to the HN front page as a gauge of interest to satisfy investors and secure funding. That isn't reliably possible even for l…

Exactly. My response was the polite version of "your investors are using HN as a gating factor, and the gate isn't really gameable."

And if it did become a game, it would become pretty worthless (liked LinkedIn).

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?

#194

Post by dang »

gabrielsroka wrote: post #187
AbstractH24 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (I'm a mod here) Are there any other mods besides you? Also it just occured to me, is dang one person or a account the represents all mods?

There are other mods. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43558671

Mods have never shared an account - that never felt right to me. But Tom was working on HN for years before he started posting publicly as a mod. That change happened with the announcement you linked to.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?

#195

Post by dang »

robin_reala wrote: post #113
dang wrote: post #8

(I'm a mod here) It's true that this place can be cryptic, and that has downsides—specifically, it can be confusing to newcomers, even to some newcomers who would make ideal HN users. That sucks. But there's a key that unlocks most of the puzzles. That is to understand that we're optimizing for exactly one thing: curiosity. (Specifically, intellectual curiosity, since there are other kinds of curiosity too.) Here are…

Would you be open to making changes that improve the accessibility, without changing the fundamental setup of HN? I’m not proposing a redesign, but for example the textarea I’m typing in has no label (visible or invisible) and the table layout structure could be at least marked as presentational. Unfortunately, regardless of their curiosity, groups of people are finding it harder than necessary to gratify it at HN.

Yes. It's just a matter of finding the cycles to work on it, or even to process other people's generous contributions. I've got so many posts backed up in the inbox about that, staring reproachfully at me. One of these days (er, years) we'll do some serious work on that level.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?

#196

Post by dang »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #57
dang wrote: post #8

(I'm a mod here) It's true that this place can be cryptic, and that has downsides—specifically, it can be confusing to newcomers, even to some newcomers who would make ideal HN users. That sucks. But there's a key that unlocks most of the puzzles. That is to understand that we're optimizing for exactly one thing: curiosity. (Specifically, intellectual curiosity, since there are other kinds of curiosity too.) Here are…

> If you ( "The royal you"

I've used that construct a lot over the years and it seems to help:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?

#197

Post by dang »

jesusofsuburbia wrote: post #116
dang wrote: post #8

(I'm a mod here) It's true that this place can be cryptic, and that has downsides—specifically, it can be confusing to newcomers, even to some newcomers who would make ideal HN users. That sucks. But there's a key that unlocks most of the puzzles. That is to understand that we're optimizing for exactly one thing: curiosity. (Specifically, intellectual curiosity, since there are other kinds of curiosity too.) Here are…

Honest question: was an LLM involved in writing this comment? The em-dash style stood out to me

Show HN: Hacker News em dash user leaderboard pre-ChatGPT - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45071722 - Aug 2025 (266 comments)

+ honorary mentions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45053933 (Aug 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27787448 (July 2021)

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?

#198

Post by dang »

miki123211 wrote: post #143
dang wrote: post #8

(I'm a mod here) It's true that this place can be cryptic, and that has downsides—specifically, it can be confusing to newcomers, even to some newcomers who would make ideal HN users. That sucks. But there's a key that unlocks most of the puzzles. That is to understand that we're optimizing for exactly one thing: curiosity. (Specifically, intellectual curiosity, since there are other kinds of curiosity too.) Here are…

Hey Dang, I really appreciate all the work you guys are doing. However, I feel like there's a lot more repetition, indignation, sensationalism, and promotion on HN in the last few months than there has ever been. I feel like every other thread on here devolves into an unhinged rant about AI, enshittification, privacy, or crazy conspiracy theories about age restrictions on social media and the politicians passing them…

I'll give you my take on this but it's just my personal take: I think you're right and wrong—right because HN does go through these waves, but wrong because it's a fluctuation process that stays fairly steady in the long run. (At least we're determined to keep it so, if we can - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...)

That's why people have been experiencing this "HN has gotten a lot more $BAD-QUALITY recently" since pretty much the origin of the site.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?

#199

Post by wltr »

Have you considered that what you could hear from others, some of those people can be not smart? I know that’s not the reply you seek. But still an input. Sometimes, I think overanalysing something stupid makes quite little sense.

Answering the question directly, I think I understand how news.ycombinator works. It is affiliated with the parent domain, and hence it serves their agenda. As simple as that. It’s not some non-profit entity that owes you something. While I have issues with things like censoring, I understand they owe me nothing. Basically, they _allow_ me to be part of the community, if I behave.

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