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HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

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Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#131

Post by stonemetal »

lhorie wrote: post #101

Maybe I'm just missing something, but what does one get by "cheating" the HN ranking algorithm? Just some karma points? IMHO, it's rare to see obviously gamed submissions, and the quality of front page articles has been pretty decent for something that rises out of hive behavior (although it's not as well targeted to my own interests as scanning-and-hand-picking-what-I-like, obviously). My own theory is that with the…

You get to steer the content of the website, and put your ideas\agenda in front of several thousand people.

Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#133

Post by smoyer »

petercooper wrote: post #95
pajju wrote: post #20

Good that someone raised this topic. 1. Many good articles & posts don't get upvoted. 2. There are pre-formed HN groups who game the system often. My Feedback 1. Some special users can be given special Front-Page-Post Button permission. Say, 3 Top Users have voted this Post for FP(Front Page) 2. Frontpage should not be the highlighting part of HN. At least it looks like that as of now. The other good parts of HN: new…

Many good articles & posts don't get upvoted. As someone involved in news delivery, I find this to be an opportunity. I frequently dig up stuff with only 1 or 2 votes here that I can share on and look like I found it - ha! :) As a long timer HNer, I think the main problem is there's little reason or motivation to monitor /newest so it's mostly visited by people being asked to vote up other people's posts. It'd be ver…

A minor point but I'd rather see the newest stories at the top ... and I'd even say you could reserve the top 5 (or so) positions for new stories. That way, every story starts on the front page but has to work to stay there. Once you throw out the stories marked dead, I suspect each of the new stories would get a few minutes even during the busiest periods (gut feeling ... no data analysis).

Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#134

Post by minimaxir »

I've done a LOT of analysis into the voting patterns behind Hacker News stories (http://minimaxir.com/2014/02/hacking-hacker-news/) and Hacker News comments (http://minimaxir.com/2014/10/hn-comments-about-comments/). Here are a few thought regarding comments made in the thread.

1) Yes, submissions are manipulated, but due to the flagging mechanic, any bad submission with vote manipulation will be shot down. It's worth noting that public vote manipulation on HN (https://twitter.com/search?q=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator....) is far, far less worse than the meritocracy known as Product Hunt (https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=product%20hunt%20upv...), which doesn't penalize spamming people for upvotes.

2) Using startup-esque techniques like Recommended Articles and Verified users won't work, as it will kill the simplicity of HN (note that Reddit has tried similar systems not too much success). Content is the most important factor to determining upvotes.

3) Yes, there are a few articles by YC alumni over the years which receive suspicious amounts of upvotes, and I'm disappointed by that. (case in point, see the cofounder of ReelSurfer's submission history: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=njoglekar)

Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#135

Post by simonsarris »

Topics like these crop up from time to time: 279 days ago Sama posted asking people to read newest as a solution[1], and I wrote:

---

Sam I think you have great power to give /newest more views if you'd consider minor redesigns.

Perhaps you could dither stories so the front-page list goes top/new/top/new/top/new, etc, but that is potentially very messy.

Or perhaps instead, the front-page can show 30 top stories, then a line break, then 30 new stories, all on the front page. Long-scrolling pages are in fashion, after all.

These aren't well-developed ideas, but the point remains that the inertia of being one click away means that a huge percentage of people will never even look at /newest, never-mind up-vote interesting stories.

Please consider changes to modify the median behavior. It's within your power and would do us all good. It's worth an experiment, isn't it?

---

Sam replied: "good ideas here and in the responses. we will consider", but I guess they never got around to testing any of them, or nixed the idea, or mere inertia, etcetc.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7972941

Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#136

Post by Varcht »

DanBC wrote: post #67
bootload wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I don't feel anything has changed over that time." Approaching 3000 days on HN. The things I notice most: * increase in users has increased the churn rate of new submissions. * the new page is dead because of the submission rate. good stories disappear off the stack quickly. * the up-click is not a good indicator of story quality. I now see stories with up to 80 votes sans one comment. I used to read the comments BE…

There are a few people who make very many submissions. Some people submit more than 2 stories per day, every day. And those are often duplicates-but-different source of other articles already on HN. Better enforcement of the deeply interesting guideline would help but stories that are intensely interesting get many upvotes so it's unlikely to change.

Perhaps it would work to have users earn posting tokens by upvoting new stories. Need to find a balance of upvotes to token for a good flow. Would foster attention to the new articles and reduce the rate of new submissions.

Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#137

Post by xai3luGi »

I've experienced the same thing which made me wonder whether there are any control by the admins deciding which stories that should end up in the front page.

For example a magic button for admins or moderators that will boost a story to the front page irrespective of the votes or time the stories have been submitted.

Because some older stories with little number of votes come up to the front page where new stories with same number of votes doesn't end up in the front page.

What do you guys think can there be a power for a selected few?

Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#138

Post by nhayden »

minimaxir wrote: post #134

I've done a LOT of analysis into the voting patterns behind Hacker News stories ( http://minimaxir.com/2014/02/hacking-hacker-news/ ) and Hacker News comments ( http://minimaxir.com/2014/10/hn-comments-about-comments/ ). Here are a few thought regarding comments made in the thread. 1) Yes, submissions are manipulated, but due to the flagging mechanic, any bad submission with vote manipulation will be shot down. It's…

Any thoughts on why getmagicnow got such an insane amount of upvotes? Especially when there was so much negativity in the comments.

Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#139

Post by minimaxir »

nhayden wrote: post #138
minimaxir wrote: post #134

I've done a LOT of analysis into the voting patterns behind Hacker News stories ( http://minimaxir.com/2014/02/hacking-hacker-news/ ) and Hacker News comments ( http://minimaxir.com/2014/10/hn-comments-about-comments/ ). Here are a few thought regarding comments made in the thread. 1) Yes, submissions are manipulated, but due to the flagging mechanic, any bad submission with vote manipulation will be shot down. It's…

Any thoughts on why getmagicnow got such an insane amount of upvotes? Especially when there was so much negativity in the comments.

That was submitted on a weekend, which always results in atypical voting behavior.

Also, there's no correlation between negativity-in-comments and the number of upvotes an article receives.

Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#140

Post by lettergram »

pajju wrote: post #20

Good that someone raised this topic. 1. Many good articles & posts don't get upvoted. 2. There are pre-formed HN groups who game the system often. My Feedback 1. Some special users can be given special Front-Page-Post Button permission. Say, 3 Top Users have voted this Post for FP(Front Page) 2. Frontpage should not be the highlighting part of HN. At least it looks like that as of now. The other good parts of HN: new…

They could interlace new, Ask, and Show articles with the top page at random. This would definitely increase overall votes on new stuff, while at the same time reducing the power of voting circles.
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