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Hacker News / HN

Owned by Nathan Wailes
Last updated: Jun 27, 2023
9 min read

How To's

Official guides

  • 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.
    • 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.
  • 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 orchestrate a successful submission (one that stays at the top of the front page for hours)

  • The step-by-step process / A combination of the advice in the articles
    1. Write something that will be 1) interesting and 2) useful to the people who read Hacker News.
      1. For example, your post may benefit from having a slant towards developers and technology.
    2. Prepare your submission.
      1. If you already have a bunch of highly-voted submissions:
        1. You may need to ask someone else to submit for you. If you submit yourself, you will kill the submission.
        2. A quick-and-dirty rule is to submit between 6am-9am Pacific.
      2. Decide when you will submit.
        1. It matters a bit when you post, this will be different depending on when your "fan base" is awake and running.
      3. Put the name and the direct URL when submitting. Don’t use a URL shortener.

    3. As soon as you post you will be in http://news.ycombinator.com/newest

    4. Once you hit 5 or 6 upvotes, within the first five to ten minutes, you should get to the first or second page.

    5. Ask people you have some relationship with to upvote it / help you.
      1. 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).
      2. 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.
      3. I would try to send to another 10 people. All at different locations.
    6. 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.
  • Articles / videos
    • Quora - Front Page of Hacker News: How do you get on the frontpage?
      • Jake Alon
        • Post at the right time.
        • Figure out what HN'ers like / dislike, what's 'trending'.
          • Right now, there seems to the be hardcore Hacker type who are more interested in Linux/Node.js/etc., and the lesser-technical types who prefer stories with less about programming, and more about startups, businesses, CEO interviews and on.

        • Keep the title the same as the article, except when adding either the author or more crucial details is needed.

      • Tom Allen
      • James Lancaster
        1. Do what it takes to get enough karma points early on to have a fair chance at building natural traction.
        2. Have a good title.
        3. Have a relevant submission.
        4. Avoid downvotes – "Once your submission gets voted downwards, your time is up. Typically downvoting kills a submission."
          1. NW: I would be very interested in knowing if downvotes have a stronger effect than upvotes. I doubt it, based on the descriptions I've heard of the ranking algorithm. It seems more likely that–if it's true that something like this is happening–moderators are subtly and gradually lowering the ranking of submissions they don't think are good contributions, even if those submissions are being upvoted.
      • Scott Patten
        • The score depends on the number of upvotes you get and the time since submission.
        • There is no dependence on views or comments.
    • Quora - How do you get a reaction on Hacker News?
    • 2011.01.13 - Swombat - How to get your startup on Hacker News
    • 2012.10.24 - RJMetrics - How to Get On the Front Page of Hacker News
    • 2013(?) - Alex's Tech Thoughts - How To Get On The Frontpage of Hacker News
      • Some things you need to know:
        1. You only get one upvote per IP address. Asking everyone in the office to upvote your post will result in 1 upvote.
        2. 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:
        1. Write something interesting.
          • Your post should have a slant towards developers and technology.
        2. Put the name and the direct URL when submitting. Don’t use a URL shortener.
        3. As soon as you post you will be in http://news.ycombinator.com/newest
        4. Once you hit 5 or 6 upvotes, within the first five to ten minutes, you should get to the first or second page.
        5. 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).
        6. 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.
        7. I would try to send to another 10 people. All at different locations.
        8. 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.
      • 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.

          1. Write something genuinely interesting.

          2. 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.

          3. 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.

          4. After 6 upvotes you should gain natural traction, if you don't, give up.

          5. 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 :)
    • 2013.11.14 - GrooveHQ - How We Failed Our Way to a Day on the Front Page of Hacker News
    • 2015.03.06 - Wiredcraft - How to post on Hacker News
    • 2016.06.14(?) - GrowthText - How I Made It to the Hacker News Front Page and Landed 765 Visits to My Blog Within 24 Hours
      • 765 visits seems like very few for a front-page article...maybe she didn't get very high on the front page?


How to gain karma by making individual comments that get a lot of upvotes

  1. Find a submission that:
    • is relatively 'young' / new
    • is likely to become heavily-upvoted / commented-on.
    • is related to a topic that you have uncommon knowledge about.
  2. Make a comment that is likely to end up towards the top of the thread.
  3. Respond quickly to rebuttals / replies, especially in the first 30-or-so minutes.
    1. 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.
    2. 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.
  4. 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 may gain very few–if any–new upvotes from your comments on that submission.

How to predict which submissions will become heavily-upvoted / commented-on

  1. Look for general-interest topics.
  2. YC-related blog posts will probably do well; follow the YC account on Twitter to be notified when they release a new blog post.
  3. Articles posted earlier in the morning (say, around 6-9am Pacific) on a weekday may be especially good candidates.

How to make it more likely that your comment will be at the top of a particular thread

  1. Be one of the first people to write a comment (say, in the first 15 or so comments).
  2. Say something substantial, that other users will find particularly interesting. Like some gold-nugget of wisdom you've learned.
  3. Make your post neither too long nor too short.
    • 1-3 paragraphs is probably the right range.


Misc. Information


Misc articles about HN



How HN's Rankings Work

  • 2010.10.11 - amix.dk - How Hacker News ranking algorithm works

    • In essence the ranking performed by Hacker News looks like this:
      Score = (P-1) / (T+2)^G

      where,
      P = points of an item (and -1 is to negate submitters vote)
      T = time since submission (in hours)
      G = Gravity, defaults to 1.8 in news.arc

      Gravity and time have a significant impact on the score of an item. Generally these things hold true:

      - the score decreases as T increases, meaning that older items will get lower and lower scores
      - the score decreases much faster for older items if gravity is increased

    • HN discussion
    • I couldn't make sense of the Arc/Lisp code, but the Python version (of the original Arc implementation) is:
      • def calculate_score(votes, item_hour_age, gravity=1.8):
    return (votes - 1) / pow((item_hour_age+2), gravity)
    • The practical takeaway from knowing how the algorithm works seems to line up with the advice people have been giving:
      1. The only way you can influence your article's ranking are by trying to influence 1) the age of your submission, and 2) the number of upvotes.
      2. Submit in the early morning on a weekday.
        1. A submission is heavily penalized by the algorithm for being more than a few hours old. If you submit your article at 3am Pacific and get only a handful of upvotes until 9am Pacific, and someone else submits at 9am Pacific and gets some friends to give them a "boost" of a few upvotes, and then both your articles begin getting upvoted at the same rate, the other person may end up with a (far?) higher score than you.
      3. Organize a group of people to upvote your article within the first 20-30 minutes of submitting.
    • It isn't clear to me how PG arrived at "1.8" for the gravity factor.
      • Gravity effects ← The three values of gravity tried here are 0.5, 1.8, and 2.0.
      • From looking at the graph, and from my experience with HN, it seems the gravity factor is tweaked to have the popular articles stay on the front page for hours, but the 'average' articles changing every few hours.


Tools


Prominent people's HN profiles


Criticisms of HN




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