Hacker News Reader

Comment by alexkearns | Hacker News Reader

I think Hacker News needs to do more to highlight Show HNs. Lots of them just disappear without trace and with no-one commenting on them. So I like what you have done. It brings some much-needed attention to Show HN.

View on HN

I tend to browse https://news.ycombinator.com/shownew at least a couple of times a week and it's always full of spam. Some comes from green-colored accounts (newly created), some - from accounts created few weeks ago, but with no activity, some just keep posting the same thing over and over again and also without any other comments or posts. Lots and lots of it. I'd say at least 50% of non-dead posts are that way.

Just a pinch of reality. It's really quite discouraging.

This. So much this.

I've posted projects several times and they have gone unnoticed until I posted them the 2nd or 3rd (or even Nth via friends) time.

Forums like this for hackers really need to give some additional ranking weight to "I put hard work and hacked together this" vs. the piles and piles of just links to news articles.

Maybe Show HN should just be a separate section on the front page itself; few people click into the other tabs (I don't).

I have run a little experiment. Published a Show HN. In the last 30 minutes, I have had around 37 visits via your app. And zero via Hacker News' Show HN page.

That’s an interesting result :)

My guess would be that more people look at front page and follow the links than those who go to /show

I agree! Exactly the reason why I developed this tool; Show HN is my favorite HN section ;)

You guys know about https://news.ycombinator.com/show, right?

It's linked in the tagline of OP's tool, so I guess they are aware of it. The benefit seems to be that it's decorated with some additional information like Github and Twitter accounts.

I wonder if there's a substantial number of users that visit /shownew or if votes on new Show HN posts come purely from /newest before the post qualifies for /show. Maybe putting a /shownew link in /newest could be a good idea. I didn't even notice /shownew existed until recently.

I am sure /shownew gets substantially less visits than /show. And /show does not get many. I wouldn't be surprised if the main way that Show HNs end up on the home page is because lots of the developer's friends give them upvotes.

Giving greater profile to /shownew is a good idea that I would get behind.

I wonder if there is any purpose statement of "Show HNs"? It's known as very poor place for getting feedback/audience/marketing whatever except for just "Show HNs" literally. I visit this tab regularly. While Launch HN (YC) projects are mostly like we are going to the moon vibe. That's very sensible though in here.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com