Does the submitter have a script that automatically posts new essays from paulgraham.com? You've submitted the last three in a row almost instantly. Not that I'm criticising; just curious :-).
And when an article has 10 upvotes in the first few minutes, it's almost guaranteed to make the top spot on the front page, and therefore gain even more votes from real users due to the publicity and feel that others have found the article interesting.
I was top 15 and wanted to get invited to Startup School again, so I didn't make the script. But since then, users have come out of nowhere to reach the top ten, accumulating karma at a dizzying pace.
One of the top users has said he submits the best stories from his rss reader every day. I believe a more likely explanation is that all stories from sites that are commonly referenced on the front page are auto-submitted by a script that checks for new articles every few minutes.
This was also my explanation on why so many techcrunch stories have been upvoted on news.yc--they make an easy candidate for auto-submitting: not because of story content, unfortunately, but because auto-submitting stories from sites that already appear often and that other auto-submitters might submit gives one a free set of 4-10 votes each time.
I guess my point is that Hacker News is being gamed the way reddit and digg are.
Only if you think the "game" is to accumulate karma. For me, the submissions are merely seeds around which insightful discussions grow.
But here is something close: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=136837
Karma is taken into account when you apply. That is incentive enough to attempt to game HN.
It's not simply a function of karma, though, but whether we recognize the username as someone who seems smart.
Hmm, looks like 15 of my 21 submissions have been from my blog.
... the evidence suggests nearly all of them are doing it to drive traffic...
Ouch. Any chance that I can convince you that I honestly think that the articles I submit are of interest to hackers? After all, I don't submit all of my blog posts here... just almost all.
What a sad thought. "Gaming" hacker news to get invited to Startup School.
Here's an idea:
Why not just be yourself. Contribute what you can. Take what you need. Make a few friends along the way. And learn a thing or two that may change your life. I can't think of a better place to do it.
Karma is a very minor byproduct. What you and this community become is the real payoff. But like a planted seed, you may just have to wait a while before you see that result.
One corollary to that is by not having done it, all I can do is write a post on news.yc. But that does not mean that it should be confused with the act of actually doing it.
Another corollary is that maybe doing it wouldn't have been a bad idea. If karma is the measure of value, and users enjoy the stories, maybe developing an algorithm that automatically submits stories to news.yc (and judges how users vote on it to then submit better stories, the way a human might) would actually be something Paul loves, and the first release of such an app, of course, could basically submit everything indiscriminately to start with.
I know nothing about Startup School, but I didn't think it had anything to do whatsoever with things on Hacker News.
The same effect is obviously true everywhere. Being known by someone on the inside gets you a job more often than not, etc.
First, I stumbled upon Hacker News by searching for information related to angel and vc investing. I found Y Combinator naturally. As I was reading the application (just to see what the process entailed), I read one line about how good applicants come from HN. My impression at the time was that applications were screened for high karma points--even though I had no idea how a karma point was earned.
So to be perfectly honest, for the first few weeks I was obsessed with Hacker News. I spent A LOT of time on this site, before I came to the conclusion that Mr. Graham noted. It took a while for me to realize the TRUE value of this site: a civilized discussion forum where I could meet other people just like me and learn from their experiences.
But I also noticed competition in the comments section that has left me a bit turned off. Sometimes I feel like people are trying to prove something, by unnecessarily down-voting a good comment or arguing just for the sake of arguing.
I think the sum of my newbie experience has been good. Nothing is perfect. I have certainly learned a TON about the start-up scene, hacking, and just this forum in general.
I'm argumentative, rambling and usually off-topic, and most likely to satisfy my requirement for cognitive dissonance, I've carefully ignored my karma so that my personality on HN isn't beholden to my karma score. Obvious results, I might add!