When is a good time to submit a story to Hacker News?

http://hnpickup.appspot.com/#flip

by ColinWright • 14 years ago

53 20 14 years ago

hnpickup.appspot.com

DanI-S2• 14 years ago

To anyone who spends any significant amount of time on here, it is apparent that timing, rather than the quality of the link, decides whether or not something reaches the front page.

Is this a feature or a bug?

makecheck2• 14 years ago

I wonder what would change if, say, all submissions within a time interval (like one hour) were collected and then posted all at once, at the top of the hour, in random order.

DanI-S2• 14 years ago

That's definitely interesting. Maybe if a random selection of links posted in high volume periods didn't show up until low volume periods, smoothing out the curve?

ilamont• 14 years ago

How would that affect flagging?

eeirinberg• 14 years ago

not working for me...

ColinWright3• 14 years ago

Quite possibly just killed by the load HN puts on it when submitted at a good time. Ironic, isn't it.

ColinWright3• 14 years ago

It's been pointed out to me that this has been submitted before:

* http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3251877

* http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3703024

In fact, the question has been discussed several times:

* http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=title%3A%28...

My personal observation is not quite the same as DanI-S who says:

    it is apparent that timing, rather than
    the quality of the link, decides whether
    or not something reaches the front page.

( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4058699 )

My observation is that it is a combination of timing, title, content, and luck. Timing does play a huge part in it, but if an item has significant merit, it usually (or at least often) does well despite poor timing.

It's complicated, and unless you pay attention, good items will pass you by. That's why I'm working on a site to augment HN and try to capture good items.

judofyr2• 14 years ago

> My observation is that it is a combination of timing, title, content, and luck.

And friends/followers in other communities/media.

bretthardin• 14 years ago

I just went to the site and nothing is being presented to me. I would assume I am supposed to see a graph?

icoder• 14 years ago

Same here (Chrome on Ubuntu)

Dn_Ab• 14 years ago

There are also meme bubbles which come up around contentious but easy to argue topics. Then a bunch of people try to get in on the action to increase their reputation stock but have to be careful with timing so as not to be posting a tired Yet Another. Everyone knows when they are in a meme bubble but I don't know if this weariness will end them, the topics are after all, contentious and easy to argue about.

amorphid• 14 years ago

When you have something worth submitting.

monsterix• 14 years ago

Wow! Bang on time and strange too @colinwright - I have been thinking of timing our post on HN, and amazing that this is second time this week, that you've come to my rescue.

EzGraphs• 14 years ago

More eyes on HN = more chance for quick up-votes = greater likelihood of hitting front page.

Part of the reason I set up http://hn4d.com was to get a sense of how much activity was going on at a given time. Can't say I have done any sort of rigorous testing though.

Link title and content also matter - as well as a link's relationship to other posts that have captured the hn community's attention..

judofyr2• 14 years ago

It works both ways:

More eyes on HN = more chance everyone else gets quick up-votes

ColinWright3• 14 years ago

More eyes on HN probably means items being submitted more quickly, hence less time on the "newest" page in which to get noticed.

zerop• 14 years ago

Dont submit when any big company product is going to be launched or any Big event is going to occur like IPO etc I dont like to submit on holidays & weekend.

rsanchez1• 14 years ago

I know that it is definitely not a good time to submit a story when someone else has submitted that same story. If your link goes into the story with more detail, fine, but when everyone submits the same story from 10 different tech blogs, which are just echo chambers of the same story anyway, that is not good.

When is a good time to submit a story to Hacker News?

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