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Comment by franze | Hacker News Reader

i'm guilty of something: when i submit a "Show HN" entry, and i see it drop of the "new" list too fast (within 5 to 10 minutes) without any(!) upvotes, i delete it and wait for a better time.

my rationalizing behind that:

a) I'm sad that i didn't get any feedback on my latest weekend project. (That's the emotional part)

b) But also i believe that the timing was just bad. 5 to 10 minutes isn't much of a window.

deleting gives the opportunity to resubmit it.

said that: i know that this is kinda "gaming HN" and should probably not be possible. (@pg)

my vote/like/+1 for a http://news.ycombinator.com/show view.

p.s.: shameless self promotion: here is my latest "Show HN" submission https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=4053553

View on HN

I don't think you should feel guilty for that at all. In fact I'd encourage it.

Voting systems which are based on momentum are inherently fickle. Whether or not people see the story at all comes down to whether or not it gets votes in the first few minutes after being posted.

If you really think your thing is worth attention, I say go ahead and try again later. We can flag spam; you're not hurting anyone.

I sometimes do that even for articles that aren't "Show HN". The oldest article on the newest page is currently 31 minutes, so if your submission doesn't get at least a few upvotes within 31 minutes, it will never be seen.

I've previously said that there should be some kind of algorithm for that page other than "here are the latest entries", such as "here are the randomized latest entries over the past few hours without enough upvotes to reach the front page, removing the entries that are on the front page, removing most-likely-spam entries that have at least one flag and were submitted by a new account, and (maybe) giving weight to submitters with higher account ages or karma scores."

I suppose the fairest way would be to try to equalize the number of eyeballs that have a chance to look at each submission headline on 'new'. So removing stories from 'new' once they can be seen on the front page, but also somehow adjusting for periods of low 'new' page views, and peak submission times.

I have been working on my webapp for 3 yrs and knowing that lot of weekend projects get decent exposure on the front page, I had my hopes high.

I submitted my app couple of times but never made it. It seems like my website is flagged. It is a great tool for startups and small businesses.

Do you see anything wrong with the web app that it deserved to be flagged? https://my.infocaptor.com

If you submitted for the purpose of feedback, I'll give you some very frank feedback. The marketing copy on the homepage is terrible. You need to speak to the potential customer in plain English. Like:

"Extract key insights from your business with an online dashboard".

The primary button that you want people to click says "warning", which tells me not to click it. There are instructions on how to click a button. The next section is why you built the business, not why I need this product.

My advice would be to read up on the basics of marketing, and then study the marketing copy on every successful SaaS business you know about.

"Terrible" is really harsh, don't you think?

I got 50/50 feedback on being greatest "demonstrable" and sales page comment and "what does it do?" kind of questions.

I agree the "warning" bell is stopper but again I would not have gathered interesting stats. And why does every web app have to follow each other. I like to be different and experiments new stuff. If i fail, i will make adjustments to it.

I'm in similar shoes. Been working on an app for about 2 years and submitted it a couple of times after major updates in order to get feedback on the changes. After the original submission it started to just fall off the front page with out any votes or even many click throughs (according to Google Analytics). Which makes me wonder if it's impossible to resubmit something -- even if the old submission is months or years old or if it's been deleted.

Even today, in this atmosphere of upvoting Show HN posts, it fell right off the new page.

Happened to me as well, I even got it to the front page, but for some reason it disappeared from there in a matter of minutes: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4045377

+1 for a "show" only view too

that's an interesting issue. wonder if it'd be useful (or just abused) to have a "Show HN" link-filter on top for people who are interested in those kinds of posts (which I'm hoping to Show NH something soon too, so certainly a biased opinion)

>a) I'm sad that i didn't get any feedback on my latest weekend project. (That's the emotional part)

Then you should also join this HN Facebook group and post your project there as well:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/launchinnov/

More likely to get seen by other HNers if your HN post drops off too fast.

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