Who actually votes stuff onto the front page of Hacker News?

11 points by gimlids 12 years ago | 19 comments

Just wondering who actually spends the time to go through the (presumably) lower quality "New" tab of Hacker News, finds the good stuff, and upvotes it onto the front page. Seems like a waste of time if "New" has a lot of crap in it. Or are there already pretty high quality links over there?

Stal3r 12 years ago |

The actual answer is that insider networks are used to upvote stories. If you don't have a network of people you know on HN to upvote your article, it is very unlikely to ever get seen or noticed. This is a wart of HN that people don't want to talk about. Traffic isn't organic; it's a popularity contest at best. It would be naive to think that people wouldn't game a system that can drive so much traffic to any site.

MattBearman 12 years ago | |

HN does have a vote ring detector (or so I'm told) but I have a theory on how people avoid it:

You only need 4 or 5 quick votes to get to the front page, from there the submission will probably get organic traction.

So you need a network of 100 or more people who upvote each others submissions, but won't upvote if the submission already has enough votes to hit the front page. This way it's unlikely it will be the same subset of your network upvoting your story each time, making it much harder to catch.

Having said that, I have no such network, but have a few submissions reach the front page, one even spent a day at the top, so it is possible to get to the front page with out cheating

pedalpete 12 years ago | |

This is true, but shouldn't it be fairly easy to develop a system that looks for these groups of voters and discounts the total volume of their votes, rendering their gaming of the system as moot?

Also, seeing as discussion is so important to HN, I assume that active discussion is just as valuable as votes. I'll often comment on an article but forget to upvote it.

jacalata 12 years ago | | |

Actually, hn has a "controversy" penalty that automatically downgrades posts with more comments than votes (kicks in at 40 comments) and pushes them down or off the front page.

davidjnelson 12 years ago | |

Doesn't this get you hellbanned?

mmastrac 12 years ago |

I usually spend some time in /newest after reading the front page.

anigbrowl 12 years ago |

You miss a lot of interesting stuff if you don't check the new page regularly. I probably have that open more often than the main page.

japhyr 12 years ago |

Well, one advantage of looking at the new page is that you can kick off the discussion for an article. It's kind of fun to have the top-level comment once in a while. It's nothing I seek out, but it's fun when it happens.

You can also catch some things that relate to one of your interests, but don't have enough immediate appeal to make it to the front page.

adventured 12 years ago |

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe when multiple people submit the same link, it generates an upvote automatically.

So if ten people submit the same story, it gets ten upvotes. For plenty of stories I imagine that eliminates the need to derive upvotes from people browsing "new."

tokenadult 12 years ago |

I look at the new tab all the time (right after every time I look at the front page) and I upvote the stuff that gratifies my curiosity and I think will be of value to the community. Hmm, what do I think of this question?

zw123456 12 years ago | |

Hmmm, it is a fair question, but one of the reasons I continue to visit HN is because of the quality of postings. It is a discerning audience, tough crowd. So, find interesting things to post and try to be thought provoking. There are a lot of influential people that frequent this site so it is worth your time to try.

ScottWhigham 12 years ago |

I do. I go through new 1-2x a day, usually the first page or first two pages so that I can "do my part". It's our community thus it's up to us to flag/vote up stories that we would like to see in our community. pg + team have been great at making new better and better w/ less junk.

gus_massa 12 years ago |

Me. I usually read the newest page after reading the front page. There’s a lot of crap and I flag the worst. But from time to time I found an interesting story and upvote it, it makes me happy to find them before they disappear, and I’m happier when they later get more upvotes.

necavi 12 years ago |

A lot of the stuff I see on the front page tends to be simply what is "popular" at the time, not necessarily what is relevant to my interests, I find that the new tab has a more balanced view, in general.

baruch 12 years ago |

And here I was ready to see an analysis that showed the voter statistics and show some interesting information about it.

I monitor the new and ask pages and vote rarely, often just forgetting to vote after I saw the article...

MattBearman 12 years ago |

I read (and upvote interesting stories) on /newest a hell of a lot more than I ever go to page 2 on the main page.

thenomad 12 years ago |

Yep, I read and upvote from New every so often. The ratio of quality stuff to junk in New is still surprisingly high.

jbarrec 12 years ago |

I read, and upvote the deserving posts.

GrahamsNumber 12 years ago |

I just check the front page, the first ask page, and the first new page. Usually doesn't take more than 30 seconds if there's nothing good on it.