Ask HN: Are there voting rings operating on this site? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are there voting rings operating on this site?

5 pointsIgorPartola10 comments

Since it only takes 3-4 quick votes for a new story to end up on the front page, and the front page can deliver hundreds of thousands of visitors, do you believe there are voting rings operating on Hacker News? To me it seems like a huge and easy target, and while technical means can be employed to prevent this, nothing would really prevent an individual from registering several accounts using different IP addresses and maintain a certain level of activity on each, then use 3-4 of them to propel his/her stories to the front page.

If this is happening, why is it not more apparent? Or is it and I am just too blind to see it?

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nothing would really prevent an individual from registering several accounts using different IP addresses and maintain a certain level of activity on each, then use 3-4 of them to propel his/her stories to the front page.

Not particularly effective. Upvotes are weighted dependent on your karma (and probably a few other factors). The same IP's voting for the same users submissions also flags the detection system.

It's insanely easy to fall fowl of the voting ring detector. I've inadvertently fallen foul of it before when the same few work colleagues in one of our other offices were upvoting my submissions each time without my knowledge. As far as I can tell it resulted in my posts dying and their upvotes not even registering.

There are vote-ring detectors working. I imagine its an arms race of sorts with each side going back and forth on who is winning.

Being on the front page of HN can bring page views. It can also bring flags to the article.

An atom-blaster is a good weapon, but it can point both ways. -- Salvor Hardin

A person doing this seems impractical. The cost/benefit ratio for manually maintaining all that activity is too high.

If the process were automated, maybe. But there are probably latent factors that go into the page ranking that aren't exposed to users.

Also, what's the real benefit to this scheme? You'd have to: 1. Consistently write/find articles to post 2. Consistently monitor the voting ring

And your benefit is...?

The benefit is wide exposure to possibly your target audience. HN is often a great place to announce that you released an new SaaS offering.

I really don't see it as much of an effort. Take the amount of time you currently spend on HN, divide it by 5 an do the exact same stuff that you currently do, but using one of the 5 accounts chosen randomly. All you really need to do is write some insightful comments to get your karma above some low thresholds and make sure that you upvote stories in a random enough pattern. Sure, eventually, this ring would be discovered, but then you just start a new one.

Exposure doesn't necessarily mean conversion. If your product isn't good enough, getting it into the front page will only serve to get you panned faster.

So much of whether you make it to the front page has to do with timing and luck. The overlap between "good product" and "makes it to the front page" is probably a sliver on the Venn diagram. Having more control over it is better.

Also, launches are not the only thing that can benefit from exposure. Things like "We are hiring" (for non-YC companies), "please hire me", or just great blog posts that result in people visiting your blog repeatedly do convert. So do sites like TechCrunch which are geared towards having lots of views. FOSS projects benefit from exposure and potentially get charitable contributions. So do actual charities.

The opposite is also true: flag a competitor's post into oblivion before it reaches the front page to avoid giving their possibly superior product an edge. There is lots to be gained here.

There's some very detailed hive minds. Confidence in new companies, begrudging acceptance of Google, dislike of Microsoft and Yahoo.

PG SEES ALL.

The solution to this is for more people to read (and vote) on new articles. I read the newest feed often each day, and find it broad and excellent. Indeed, my votes often concur and help define the homepage. In any event, more saturated statistics help crowdsource the best articles, and keep the system honest.

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