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Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

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Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#91

Post by PhasmaFelis »

bl4hblahblat wrote: post #63
gjm11 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never written a line of Go, and have only a casual acquaintance with Haskell. I'm not a Microsoft fan but spend approximately zero HN time bashing them. I would not attempt to write any sort of crypto anything in Javascript. I am not a libertarian. I am slightly interested in crypto-currency but have never owned any. I think Hayek is way overrated. My karma score is approaching 8000, and I promise it's enough…

Well congratulations on that, and I swear I'm not trying to be snide here, but you've been on HN for 6 years. If you are a new user and you actually want to communicate with people...and hold a minority opinion...you will be downvoted out of visibility.

I am none of the things you mentioned (well, I'm not really a Microsoft booster) and I got downvote privileges within 3 months of opening my account. I'm not sure what it is you've been doing to draw ire, but it's far from universal.

Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#92

Post by PhasmaFelis »

bl4hblahblat wrote: post #63
gjm11 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never written a line of Go, and have only a casual acquaintance with Haskell. I'm not a Microsoft fan but spend approximately zero HN time bashing them. I would not attempt to write any sort of crypto anything in Javascript. I am not a libertarian. I am slightly interested in crypto-currency but have never owned any. I think Hayek is way overrated. My karma score is approaching 8000, and I promise it's enough…

Well congratulations on that, and I swear I'm not trying to be snide here, but you've been on HN for 6 years. If you are a new user and you actually want to communicate with people...and hold a minority opinion...you will be downvoted out of visibility.

I am none of the things you mentioned (well, I'm not really a Microsoft booster) and I got downvote privileges within 3 months of opening my account. I'm not sure what it is you've been doing to draw ire, but it's far from universal.

Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#93

Post by kogir »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #87
kogir wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Job listings are the only promoted content. They're distinguished by the lack of vote arrows.

So contrary to the discussion YC companies don't get any preferential treatment on HN?

To the extent we're able to be objective, we try to be. YC founders and companies get their titles edited and suffer the same penalties as everyone else. The only advantage YC founders and companies might have is the ability to recognize each other from the orange names.

Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#94

Post by zt »

ggiaco wrote: post #71
zt wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than "jobs" we get no help promoting content. I actually think being a YC company can hurt you because all your YC buddies vote for you and then it appears that your cohort is a voting ring. I actually have to tell people NOT to vote for my posts sometimes, lest I trigger the HN Gods' wrath.

Do you really believe it's a disadvantage?

I guess I wouldn't call it a disadvantage because saying "boo hoo, my friend and I from YC up vote ourselves too much and we get hit by the voting ring detector" is obliviousness by omission. I assume my links do well on HN because I went through YC and have written about going through YC.

My real point is to highlight: (1) There is no advantage on HN to going through YC. The only changes are (a) You have access to the part of the site that lets you book office hours (b) You can see other YC users and (c) You can post jobs. I know of no other benefit. My co-founders can't, for example, down vote comments because they don't have the karma. (2) A significant percentage of active users are YC alums, YC alums that know me, or people who know me personally, so once something I post hits the front page I ask my co-workers and my friends to NOT up vote me. I do that because historically my items have gotten thrown off the home page and I write blog posts so people will read the posts.

Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#95

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #35
huhtenberg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Posting it here helps accumulating other people upvotes, which, presumably, Dan and Nick can see on their end. It also opens subject to a wider discussion, which is hardly a bad thing. Meta threads are pretty damn useful if you ask me.

I agree, and I actually like the meta-threads, but I've had much more success talking to Dan privately than I have in trying to motivate changes with public comments. I think if you're really serious about a suggestion, mailing Dan is the right way to go. If there's one consistent thing I've read from Dan in his tenure of publicly moderating the site, it's "please mail hn@ycombinator.com about this stuff". I'm just h…

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#96

Post by lisper »

jsnell wrote: post #89
lisper wrote: post #86

Some observations: 1. Almost no one reads the new page. For proof, go to the new page and count up the total number of votes that all the stories on the new page have received in the last hour. 2. There is a VERY short time window (typically about an hour nowadays) during which a story either gets enough votes to end up on the home page (half a dozen or so seems to be enough) or drops off the first new page, after wh…

Low vote counts on the new page don't prove nobody goes there. An alternative explanation is that 90% of the new page is crap that really doesn't deserve a single vote. (Just did this experiment, and only found one of the 30 submissions interesting enough to even click on). It is true that you need to get something like 5-6 votes in the first hour to get to the front page. But that's not a very large amount, and it's…

> Low vote counts on the new page don't prove nobody goes there.

True, which is why I did that experiment. The odds of getting the results I did by accident are one in 64, which counts as a statistically significant result.

Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#97

Post by dang »

yesimahuman wrote: post #4

I'd be curious to hear more about how YC companies handle voting so they get their content on the front page. From what I've heard, they get a lot of help to promote content. Totally makes sense seeing as HN is built around YC, but in that light makes it a bit disingenuous to ask the community to not solicit help from their group to promote content.

> From what I've heard, they get a lot of help to promote content.

They don't from us (the people running HN). The only help HN gives YC cos are (a) being able to post job ads and (b) YC founders' names appear in orange to other YC founders.

YC startups routinely get hit hard by HN's ring detector.

Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#98

Post by jfoster »

bl4hblahblat wrote: post #54
jfoster wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is downvoting other people an important part of HN, though? It's important that someone is doing it responsibly to keep things clean, but upvoting gems and adding value to discussion through intelligent comments seem like they would be far more valuable activities for HN.

Well, that's kind of my point. You are at the mercy of people who disagree with you if you are in the minority. If you disagree with the consensus you will be downvoted to the point that you can't be seen anymore. I think that differing views add value. Having contrary opinions just disappear so that everyone can keep restating the same thing to each other is really frustrating. EDIT: Clarification...

Fair enough. I see the theory of that. Does it happen in practice? Are there comments that were intelligent, adding to the discussion, not being mean, and so on... which were then downvoted to the point where they couldn't be seen?

I don't think I've seen it happen on HN, but I have seen it on other sites. I hypothesize that there is actually a craving for intelligent but unusual viewpoints on HN.

Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#99

Post by dang »

volaski wrote: post #77
sama wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YC companies complain the most often because they trigger the voting ring when they ask their batchmates to votes them up :)

As a counter argument, I haven't seen any ycombinator company NOT make it on the front page. I am not saying this is a collusion or anything but wanted to point out that there are people with knowledge who do this all the time and can get away with it because they know how it works. They would send a message like "Please go to HN and look for such and such title and vote it up. I can't post the link because of voting…

I realize you may discount this, coming from HN staff, but I'd like to try to ease your worries a little.

> there are people with knowledge who do this all the time and can get away with it because they know how it works.

I believe you that people say they know, but unless I'm extremely mistaken, most really don't. We see evidence all the time of people trying (but failing) to sneak around HN's anti-ring systems. That's not to say some don't succeed. Some probably do. I'd like very much to get better at catching them.

> And I see these people always show up on the front page.

When you see that, we'd like to know about it. There is a lot that we can (and will) do to investigate those cases. Don't forget that even when the ring detector misses something, there's still a lot of data we can look at if we know to. So please, everyone, email hn@ycombinator.com when someone is gaming HN.

Our goal is to have the best stories on the front page [1]. We don't all agree about what the best stories are, but I think we can agree that they're usually not ones that are only here because someone is promoting something. When we say we want people to vote for things they're interested in, that's not the kind of interest we're talking about.

> Do you just let their posts stay buried or do you give them a second chance?

Good question. We occasionally override the ring penalty when a story has clear merit for HN. (I've commented to that effect in perhaps a dozen of those threads.) But that goes for any story, not just a YC co's. And we're pretty stingy about it.

[1] That's also, by the way, our primary idea of how HN as a forum can help YC's business interests. If HN has the best quality content, the best quality people will want to be here, and some of them will start startups that YC funds. I'm not saying we do have the best quality content—there's a lot to be desired. I'm saying that this is HN's global optimum and we're not interested in trading that away for something less.

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