No upvotes on Hacker News: Still awesome to submit | Hacker News Reader

No upvotes on Hacker News: Still awesome to submit

eduardo-mourao.squarespace.com

140 pointseduardordm59 comments

I'm from the school where I read the article before deciding to upvote. Unfortunately, if the article is interesting, I read it all the way through and forget to come back and upvote it. In this case the subject of the article reminded me to upvote, but I think it would be a good idea to put the reminder at the end of the article as well.

I'm in the same boat as him where I'll submit everything I write, watch 400 people read it on google analytics, and never get a comment of an upvote. It's sort of frustrating because I'm submitting my writing specifically to get feedback, but I also realize that if something is truly interesting to me, I'm more likely to hop straight to twitter to share it.

Try adding a link to comments on Hacker News on the bottom of the article.

Seriously, you submit everything your write here? What is your goal?

I want, you know, news relevant for hackers on this site. Not everything that was published on the internets in the last 24 hours.

If I were you I'd try to find more relevant sites, or maybe some subreddit.

You didn't look at the submissions before complaining about them, right?

http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=ante_annum

They all seem perfectly appropriate to me.

It could also be that he only writes stuff he views is a fit for hacker news.

>It's sort of frustrating because I'm submitting my writing specifically to get feedback...

Personally, I'm hesitant to give feedback or even comment unless I think I have something unique to offer or have an unusually strong feeling about the material.

I think a large part of it is the generally combative stance many people seem to default into online.

I quickly got tired of "So, what have you done better?" responses to what I think is polite, constructive criticism or a "What does this add to the discussion?" quip as a result of posting a simple show of appreciation.

I'm theorizing it's an overcompensation from the transformation of certain aggregators into something like a backpatting / validation request line.

It's also always amazing to me how few people upvote an article. Like something on the front page getting tens of thousands of votes, that people clearly like, and usually only a few hundred can be bothered to click a little arrow.

I rarely upvote because doing so on HN automatically adds that article to your Saved section. I prefer to keep this section only for submissions to which I'd want to come back later (and I'm unsure if the "upvote to save" behavior can be changed).

Either way, view this as a great lesson in why getting conversions can be so tough. A person better have a very persuasive case for a stranger to go out of their way and click a button.

The saved section makes me more selective in terms of what merits an upvote. I will confess/admit/proclaim that the position of an article within the stack also influences my upvoting. In other words, my standard for upvoting is lower on the New page than the front page.

I'm in the same boat : Just because I like an article doesn't mean I want it saved to my permanent list. I would be very interested if there is a way to change this behavior as I would then upvote far more articles.

I had no idea this section even existed, and I've been on here for years, literally never clicked that link!

I don't know about others. But I upvote a lot!! And I almost always remember to come back to upvote after reading the article.

I tend to upvote articles that I read and find interesting. It's very easy to do, so perhaps they didn't find it interesting and as insightful as you did?

> So, next time you write something, make sure you submit to Hacker News, even if you don't get upvotes, people will still read it.

Sorry, I have to disagree. It is not "awesome" to get pageviews for the sake of getting pageviews. What is awesome is if 1 out of those 100 people who gave you the benefit of the doubt gives you an upvote because you gave them something interesting to read.

Instead of "Still awesome to submit", it should be "Still awesome to write/create". Don't tie the point of your writing to some nominal number of random readers.

You're putting words in OP's mouth he never said. He wrote these articles because he thought they'd be useful, submitted them to HN, and was happy to learn later that, even with zero upvotes, they'd been read by dozens of people.

He explains this in the second sentence (!) of the post: "I try to write some useful info like How to land an airplane if you are not a pilot or This is why you should never use Oracle DB those are not very interesting topics but, anyway, I always submit my post to Hacker News hoping at least 10 individuals would read it."

There's a world of difference between writing something to get attention versus writing something you truly believe and being heartened when it gets attention. He never suggests people should engage in the former, he just says to submit to HN when you do the latter.

I didn't put words in the OP's mouth, I used a direct quote, and I don't think I took it out of context.

> So, next time you write something, make sure you submit to Hacker News, even if you don't get upvotes, people will still read it.

"something" not "something worthwhile" or "something you care about". Is it a far stretch to think that OP is saying, "Who cares if no one actually affirms your work, at least you'll get pageviews?" And while that's probably a true statement, I think it's not overall a net positive for HN.

I'll give the benefit of the doubt to the OP that what he actually means is: "Even if you don't get any upvotes, your content will still get read, and at least a few people will benefit from it" But I can't, as you say, put words in the OP's mouth.

Implicit in that "something" is at the very least "something you care about" because frankly, while the Internet is filled with a bunch of crap, usually the producers of said crap actually do care about it. It's hard to sit down and write 5 paragraphs about something you don't care about.

Yes, it is a stretch to assume the OP meant "Who cares if no one actually affirms your work, at least you'll get pageviews?"

His writing did not exclude that interpretation, but it didn't include it specifically either. We shouldn't be grabbing any possible interpretation from our own perspective and projecting it onto the OP.

I haven't submitted stories personally, but I think I understand what he meant: Even though nobody took the time to come back to HN and exalt him with karma, the page views he received meant that somebody 'out there' experienced his creation.

The desire to be part of a group and share one's ideas with others is a pretty common trait shared by most human beings. Therefore, even if nobody thinks what he said is awesome enough to elicit an upvote, at least he was able to share it with the world. It's a validation that the work didn't just end up in the ether.

I would argue that it's Not Awesome to only write/create. Instead, it's awesome to be able to get one's writings/creations in front of others. We all have an ego...even if we don't admit it.

Visits != readers - there are a lot of automated bots that scrape HN.

If you get into the top 3 or 4 on the front page, you can expect around 20-30,000 hits on your site. But the number of people who stick around and read the articles is much lower - around 1,000 to 2,000 according to my blog's Google Analytics.

Congrats on hitting the front page, by the way!

I would think most bots wouldn't have JavaScript and therefore not register on GA. I think a lot of people are bored and do click the articles on the New page. That said, even clicks from the front page are often not actual readers (as you can tell by many of the comments).

I wrote a post last year which stuck around on the front page for a while - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3554206

It got 28,000 pageviews, but 92% of visitors stuck around for under 10 seconds, according to Google Analytics.

But sometimes it's a short post. I usually read everything, and with this particularity short blog post, I'd be surprised if it took me longer than 20 seconds to read the entirety of his post and close it out. I imagine you can glean most everything you want from the less beefy ars or tech crunch articles in 10...

I ended up reading your article on to land an airplane, it was really good. My palms were sweating the whole time ! Should've gotten upvotes for that.

thanks! I still remember my first time I was sweating and shaking a lot, flying is awesome

Yup that post was awesome! Almost didn't watch the video at the end, but glad I did. Although there is zero chance I'm going to remember any of that when I actually need to land a plane :p (Luckily the chance that I need to land a plane is probably much lower...)

I look through the 'new' page archives every few days, and reblog interesting posts. They're usually so old that upvotes wouldn't matter, but the signal-to-noise ratio for submissions is high enough that I can usually find some neglected gems.

Let me suggest, after reading this post and the one on reasons not to use Oracle, that readership (and upvotes) may follow if you improve your grammar. It's not terrible, but it lacks 'quality.' If English is not your primary language, it shouldn't be difficult to get someone you know to help you proofread and edit your work.

Also, while I'm here, I also suggest spending a bit more time reflecting on your blog post before publishing. Is the message clear? Does the post flow well? Just a little extra polish can make your articles much more appealing.

Thanks a lot! English is not my first language, I've been gradually getting better, but certainly a proofread from someone else would help me a lot.

I would pay for a english teacher to proofread and provide writing tips. I tried wordy.com but they just do some basic checking, really.

I think @LorenPaulsson would do this. I can vouch for his language, communication, and editing skills—and his work ethic.

I submitted stuff that never got upvotes for months and thought I had just become out of sync somehow with the interests of the rest of HN. Then I realized that my submissions had apparently been banned! I can see them when I'm logged in as myself, but when I hit the site without logging in they're nowhere to be found.

Not quite a hell-ban, since people (apparently) still see my comments, but still frustrating.

There are many blocked IP's when it comes to submissions. PG commented on within the past several months. Having a link immediately go dead isn't related to one's karma - or at least that's my impression.

In any event, such links don't really disappear. If "Show Dead" is selected as a preference they can still be seen.

It's still a bummer, though. What part of my account history means I shouldn't be able to submit anymore?

From my limited experience this has less to do with the poster's history than with the site being linked. Some of the sites just seem to turn false positives wrt being spam.

I for one have plenty of dead BuzzFeed submissions to my name.

That's entirely based on the site and not me - fortunately.

Some sites are only allowed from special users. I've had submissions go insta-dead on me, only to see the exact same link show up later, from someone else, and appparently approved.

I'm looking at two dozen submissions, nearly all from different sites (ranging from major news sites to personal blogs), all apparently banned. I know some sites are blocked, but it's hard for me to believe that every single one of those submissions came from a site that's HN-verboten. It seems like a much more straightforward explanation to assume that at some point an admin decided that anything submitted from my username from then on would go straight into File 13.

My personal theory as to what happened is this -- this is the last submission I made that got any upvotes:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4331466

It was made tongue in cheek (follow the link and you'll get the joke), but I think an admin saw it, didn't like it, and decided that was sufficient justification for sending me into the Outer Darkness.

Personally I wouldn't care as much if there'd just been an up-front explanation when the decision was made. Passive-aggressive hellban-type sanctions are supposed to be for hardcore trolls, and I would think 4400+ karma (average of 6.02) would indicate that I am not that. But whatevs.

Well, the same thing happened to me :(

I think for some reason an admin flagged me (it happened after my submission of the "September Mourn"[1] article from the Guardian) and now all my submissions are visible to me only..

This is sad and very unrespectable towards the users, because the system does not say that I'm banned or whatnot, it just accepts the submission and shows it to me as if everything is OK. So, in short, HN doesn't respect my time and efforts spent on submissions, I could have never found out that I was flagged.

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/oct/17/martin-sheen-wood...

edit: typo

Just a quick scan of your submissions shows a potential variety of reasons for dead submissions.

The Slate article was already submitted http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5079680

Scripting.com has a unique relationship with HN - Dave Weiner often submits directly, and an article I submitted after him doesn't show up in my list of submissions. Discussions in which he joins sometimes take on their own flavor.

The "Windows Phone without Google" Editorial seems likely to foster partisan debate rather than foster discussion.

"Good News for Gmail users" is blogspam.

There may be a golden nugget in your links. But nothing really pops out. What I will say is that given your karma, people may be following you more closely because of the weight which it can give your posts - I have seen some evidence of this. What you submit may be getting quick attention, and at a certain karma threshold flagging a new submission may be sufficient to kill it - I have seen some evidence of this as well.

Find something really good to submit from an obscure corner of the web. Not the usual suspects. Not linkbait. Not blogspam. Then you can test your theory. Cringly or NY Magazine or Harpers aren't candidates.

21 of 22 articles is not chance, it seems however

the verge.com, slate.com, gigaom.com etc.

are not the purely sketchy sites one would expect

So when you reach a certain (unspecified) karma level, the quality of your submissions stops being judged by HN readers and starts being judged by HN admins? And in twenty-plus cases they consistently found my submissions wanting, every time? Wanting so much that they needed to be filtered out before other HN users could even see them?

If that sounds reasonable to you, you've found a friendly place here, I guess. To me it sounds bizarre.

Find something really good to submit from an obscure corner of the web. Not the usual suspects. Not linkbait. Not blogspam. Then you can test your theory.

My submissions included stuff I wrote myself, which is by definition "not the usual suspects."

Look at this piece, for instance, which I submitted:

http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2012/08/twitter-teaches-a-new-gene...

Is this blogspam? Is this linkbait? I would argue it's an original discussion of an issue that was much debated among HN readers at the time. You may agree or disagree with its premise, but I cannot see how you could classify it as cheap.

And yet it was killed, just like all the others.

My next-to-last submission turned up [dead] the moment I submitted it even though the linked site wasn as far as I know neither spammy nor off-topic. Maybe some of the HN spam prevention knobs were/are turned too far towards eleven.

Same thing happened to me when i tried submitting a story from that site (i-programmer.info).

A lot of good stuff doesn't "take off" here until it's been submitted several times. It's just the nature of the beast when the shop window doesn't expand to fit the increased number of products on sale.

I do find it funny when several of the items on the front page are things I had in my weekly newsletters earlier in the day though (as happened today) given all the people who said weekly e-mails would be a "slow" way to get news ;-)

Read >100 times, or just clicked >100 times?

I wouldn't submit anything of mine to HN out of fear that the traffic might bring down my site (Webfaction hosted Django/Nginx blog)... and also because at the moment I wouldn't have anything to gain from the traffic besides a temporary ego boost.

EDIT: Speaking of which, is there a service out there that can test how much load your site can handle at one time?

It's sad that you would submit something only if you can gain something and not to help the community.

BTW First results in google for "website load testing": http://loadimpact.com/ For example you could try this service out and write a post about your experience and submit it to HN so you could help the community with useful information.

Thanks for the suggestion. I will try it out and maybe find other services I can compare this one with.

My experience with programming/product launching is also so junior/non-existent that I doubt anyone on HN would be interested in hearing about it. So the only other reason I might post (at this time at least) is if I were selling something (and I'm not). I was just being honest about what I feel I can contribute to HN at this time. Which is very little, hence why I stick to merely commenting.

I just hope it stays this way. There are few enough submits to HackerNews to ensure that every post gets viewed. If Hacker News gets over popular soon the reddit effect will happen.

HN is so popular that really good stuff disappears (and ironically, relatively "humdrum" stuff such as this gets to the front page :D).

His article on "how to land a plane" is a brilliant read, for example: http://eduardo.intermeta.com.br/posts/2013/1/25/how-to-land-...

I've had the same experience. My blog posts not getting any upvotes, but still quite a few page views. However, GA tells me the views from HN have an atrociously high bounce rate and an average time on page of like 8 seconds. :P

I'm very surprised, but excited, to see this is true. Thanks for sharing.

From my sample size of one I show about 100 visits for each upvote for my one and only submission.

23390/247

Sounds like the 1% rule:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)

I should mention that was just while the post was on the front page. The numbers are still going up, but the votes seem to have stopped.

Ironically, this DID get upvotes.

That's somewhat encouraging. I have not had good results with either ask or submit.

Loved the video of the landing with speech bubbles - it made a great deal of sense.

Have an upvote :-)

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