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- Hacker News Guidelines
- Submissions
- What to submit
- Anything that good hackers would find interesting; not necessarily just hacking and startups.
- "Anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
- Things covered on TV news are probably off-topic.
- How to format the title
- Don't use all-caps, exclamation points, or parenthetical praise in the title.
- Append [video] or [pdf] to the title for those kinds of submissions.
- Submit the original source.
- Crop "10 Ways to (...)" titles to "How to (...)".
- Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.
- What to submit
- Comments
- Be civil.
- Avoid introducing flamewar topics. [NW: Like what?]
- Don't sign comments.
- Don't use all-caps for emphasis; use italics.
- Don't submit comments that duplicate the effect of the 'flag' feature.
- Don't comment about being downvoted, invite others to downvote you, or talk about expecting to be downvoted.
- Submissions
- Hacker News FAQ
How are stories ranked?
The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in comment threads are ranked the same way. Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which downweights overheated discussions, and moderator intervention.
How is a user's karma calculated?
Roughly, the number of upvotes on their stories and comments minus the number of downvotes. The numbers don't match up exactly, because some votes aren't counted to prevent abuse.
Can I ask people to upvote my submission?
No. Users should vote for a story because it's intellectually interesting, not because someone is promoting it. When the software detects a voting ring, it penalizes the post. Accounts that vote like this eventually get their votes ignored.
How to get a submission to the front page
- Articles / videos
- 2013(?) - Alex's Tech Thoughts - How To Get On The Frontpage of Hacker News
- Some things you need to know:
- You only get one upvote per IP address. Asking everyone in the office to upvote your post will result in 1 upvote.
- If someone upvotes your post after having arrived there via a direct link, that upvote will not be counted.
- How to get on the front page:
- Write something interesting.
- Your post should have a slant towards developers and technology.
- Put the name and the direct URL when submitting. Don’t use a URL shortener.
- As soon as you post you will be in http://news.ycombinator.com/newest
- Once you hit 5 or 6 upvotes, within the first five to ten minutes, you should get to the first or second page.
- Send the link http://news.ycombinator.com/newest to at least 20 people from different locations that you know will upvote or submit it. I’ve heard that people submitting or upvoting with a solid amount of karma helps (although I’m not sure how much really).
- Change the link that you're sending to people to http://news.ycombinator.com/news (the front page) and send that to people when asking to upvote going forward.
- I would try to send to another 10 people. All at different locations.
- At this point you are 20-30 minutes in and if you have written something interesting you will gain natural traction. If not, there is really nothing anyone can do for you.
- Write something interesting.
- In the comments:
- swizec: [NW: I've edited his comment below to make it easier for me to refer to in the future.]
Preface: I've been on the front page something like 30 or 40 times, often peaking at #1.
Write something genuinely interesting.
Submit your post.
It matters a bit when you post, this will be different depending on when your "fan base" is awake and running.
Once you get have enough highly-voted submissions, you will have to start asking others to submit for you. if you submit yourself, you will kill the submission.
The user who is submitting is only good for between 3 and ~20 submissions, depending on how often they interact on HN.
Get people to upvote it.
It doesn't matter so much whether your upvotes come from the same domain or not, it matters whether they come from a direct link.
It also matters that it's not always the same group of people upvoting.
After 6 upvotes you should gain natural traction, if you don't, give up.
Being on the front page becomes increasingly difficult once you've been there several times.
My blog, for instance, can no longer get there with just 6 upvotes, but needs more. In the beginning, just 3 were enough.
- Sylvain Gauchet
- Thanks for the great info, both in the post and in the comments. Our iOS App Marketing Guide made it to the frontpage and is gaining great traction :)
- swizec: [NW: I've edited his comment below to make it easier for me to refer to in the future.]
- Some things you need to know:
- 2013(?) - Alex's Tech Thoughts - How To Get On The Frontpage of Hacker News
- The step-by-step process / A combination of the advice in the articles
- Write something that will be 1) interesting and 2) useful to the people who read Hacker News.
- For example, your post may benefit from having a slant towards developers and technology.
- Prepare your submission.
- If you already have a bunch of highly-voted submissions:
- You may need to ask someone else to submit for you. If you submit yourself, you will kill the submission.
- A quick-and-dirty rule is to submit between 6am-9am Pacific.
- Decide when you will submit.
- It matters a bit when you post, this will be different depending on when your "fan base" is awake and running.
- Put the name and the direct URL when submitting. Don’t use a URL shortener.
- If you already have a bunch of highly-voted submissions:
As soon as you post you will be in http://news.ycombinator.com/newest
Once you hit 5 or 6 upvotes, within the first five to ten minutes, you should get to the first or second page.
- Ask people you have some relationship with to upvote it / help you.
- Send the link http://news.ycombinator.com/newest to at least 20 people from different locations that you know will upvote or submit it. I’ve heard that people submitting or upvoting with a solid amount of karma helps (although I’m not sure how much really).
- Change the link that you're sending to people to http://news.ycombinator.com/news (the front page) and send that to people when asking to upvote going forward.
- I would try to send to another 10 people. All at different locations.
- At some point your submission should gain natural traction: people you don't know will be upvoting it. If your submission doesn't get this natural traction, give up.
- Write something that will be 1) interesting and 2) useful to the people who read Hacker News.
How to gain karma by making individual comments that get a lot of upvotes
- Find a submission that:
- is relatively 'young' / new
- is likely to become heavily-upvoted / commented-on.
- is related to a topic that you know something about, where:
- you have something to say on the submitted article that the other users will find useful / interesting
- have uncommon knowledge about.
- Make a comment that is likely to end up towards the top of the thread.
- Respond quickly to rebuttals / replies, especially in the first 30-or-so minutes.
- Be You should almost always be polite and express your appreciation that the person took the time to reply to you and for any new information they have offered.
- It is common to have people point out parts of your comment in which your choice of words has resulted in a stronger claim than you can reasonably argue for with the evidence you've presented. Thank the person, and if they're correct, edit your comment to remove the inaccuracy.
- As the submission moves down the front page over time, you may notice the rate of upvotes on your comment decline. Once the submission is off the front page, the rate of new readers per minute will likely drop dramatically. You will likely may gain very few–if any–new upvotes from your comments on that submission.
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