Ask YC:Guidelines for submitting interesting (for HC) articles

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=195172

by pbnaidu • 18 years ago

6 7 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Are there set of guidelines for submitting links to interesting articles to HN? I am asking this because some of my submitted links to articles are not at all interesting to HN community, where I thought they're interesting and align with the goals of HN. I would like to filter out uninteresting links myself without polluting HN.

epi0Bauqu2• 18 years ago

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

pbnaidu2• 18 years ago

Thanks. My question is about filtering within the boundaries of ontopic area. Sometimes I feel HN community has mood swings, for example community sometimes likes entrepreneurial oriented articles, startup success stories and sometimes it doesn't.

epi0Bauqu2• 18 years ago

The problem is bigger than just mood swings. I have seen the same exact story around the same time (but not on the same "new" page--say, a day later), and one gets voted up and the other doesn't.

I think a lot of the problem stems from the new page to front page algorithm. Only a small subset of readers on HN upvote stories. And only a small subset of those upvoters ever look at the new page. And both groups are self-selected and not necessarily representative of the whole group. And when looking at the new page, the top stories on that page get looked at more. And when people actually click on a link, the majority don't actually read the story. And on top of that, stories only show there for a fixed amount of time, and in some cases, it isn't that long.

The result of all that is stories are looked at by very few people before a decision is made (algorithmically) to promote it to the front page or not. Often it only takes one upvote. I've submitted a lot of stories, and some from my own blog, so I know the amount of traffic you get from the new page, i.e. the # of people actually reading your story while it is on that page is quite small.

One idea would be to randomly give x slots of the front page (under say, the top 10) to new stories. These stories would be randomly chosen from the past y hours to give them more exposure. A different selection would display on each page load. Presumably, once a story gets one upvote it would stop showing in this random process. Perhaps such an algorithm could also take into account how many people clicked on the article, and also do something with that information as well.

bigtoga• 18 years ago

I would also add that you please not try to post the exact same news here that we're already seeing on digg/reddit/slashdot/etc. Most of us read those sites as well and, if we don't, the reason is likely that we're *&^%ing sick of the stories posted on those sites lol.

Thank you for asking.

krschultz• 18 years ago

Although lately I think it is the opposite, I see an article here and then 24-48 hours later it shows up on Slashdot or Reddit. I used to read Digg, but it has gotten so bad the last 4 months I don't waste my time, so no comment there. I feel like some of the power users on those sites watch here first.

Ask YC:Guidelines for submitting interesting (for HC) articles

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