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

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

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53 pointsColinWright20 comments

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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.

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

And friends/followers in other communities/media.

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

Same here (Chrome on Ubuntu)

Nothing here as well (Chrome on Windows)

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.

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?

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.

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?

How would that affect flagging?

The random posting order could allow the "most objectionable" of all new articles to appear further down the list and last a bit longer than it might have otherwise. I think people watching the new-list will still be thorough; if something shouldn't be posted, it will be flagged eventually.

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..

It works both ways:

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

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

When you have something worth submitting.

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.

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.

not working for me...

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

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.

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