When to post to Hacker News and how many points to make it to the front page

readcodelearn wrote: post #4

Artemis2 wrote: post #2

Is the time zone for your measurements Pacific Time?

Ah sorry, it should be EST, updated the article to say that :)

Great stuff, but please normalise to UTC in future. Everyone (reading this) knows their own offset from UTC and can probably makes sense of the data directly in that format. For anything else I have to go and lookup the offset between that timezone and mine.

Re: When to post to Hacker News and how many points to make it to the front page

#6

Post by qrv3w » Sun, Apr 17, 2016, 4:52 PM UTC

I was just searching this exact thing last week, and couldn't find any analysis. This is a terrific, thanks!

Re: When to post to Hacker News and how many points to make it to the front page

#7

Post by scoppini » Sun, Apr 17, 2016, 4:53 PM UTC

fredley wrote: post #5

readcodelearn wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah sorry, it should be EST, updated the article to say that :)

Great stuff, but please normalise to UTC in future. Everyone (reading this) knows their own offset from UTC and can probably makes sense of the data directly in that format. For anything else I have to go and lookup the offset between that timezone and mine.

Not everyone knows the difference between their timezone and UTC. I always end up looking up the difference, and it really doesn't matter to me what timezone people use, so long as they state it.

Re: When to post to Hacker News and how many points to make it to the front page

#8

Post by EGreg » Sun, Apr 17, 2016, 4:53 PM UTC

My early submissions to HN all hit the front page and were upvoted quite a bit, sometimes reaching #2 overall. But in the past couple years, nothing I submit ever hits the front page, even if it gets more points initially than the submissions before. Not only that, it doesn't appear even on pages 2-20. I wonder if there is a way to check if I'm being suppressed somehow as a contributor on HN.

Source: see my past submissions.

Re: When to post to Hacker News and how many points to make it to the front page

#9

Post by minimaxir » Sun, Apr 17, 2016, 4:54 PM UTC

As someone who has looked into this area for Reddit and HN data, here are a few additional notes before everyone starts submitting their blog posts and marketing pieces to HN on weekday mornings:

1) After everything, the analysis is probabilistic. You are not guaranteed to get onto the front page just by submitting on at a high-probability time.

2) There are game-theoric implications; the more people submitting at a time (weekday mornings), the less likely people will see your post on /new before it is pushed off the first page, and it is highly unlikely to get upvotes once it has fallen off the top 30 slots. (hence the repost/second chance rules)

3) For obvious reasons, don't submit if there is important news occuring. (e.g. Apple/Google/Microsoft event)

4) Above all, if your submission does not get any upvotes, don't interpret it as your post being low quality. The median score of all submissions is 1-2 points regardless of time submitted. (http://i.imgur.com/SN5BuAJ.png)

The OP is impressively throrough regardless, especially since working with ranking data-over-time is much better than working with raw data.

Re: When to post to Hacker News and how many points to make it to the front page

#10

Post by minimaxir » Sun, Apr 17, 2016, 4:56 PM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #8

My early submissions to HN all hit the front page and were upvoted quite a bit, sometimes reaching #2 overall. But in the past couple years, nothing I submit ever hits the front page, even if it gets more points initially than the submissions before. Not only that, it doesn't appear even on pages 2-20. I wonder if there is a way to check if I'm being suppressed somehow as a contributor on HN. Source: see my past subm…

Note that the ranking algorithm has changed over time; which is why it's a good thing the OP's analysis is limited to a year.