Ask HN: Is Hacker News no longer a great place to “Show HN”? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is Hacker News no longer a great place to “Show HN”?

20 pointshoodoof15 comments

Used to be that HN felt like a great place to show what you'd done with a "Show HN" post.

A while back they changed it, moving "Show HN" posts to https://news.ycombinator.com/show and moving new "Show HN" posts two steps away so you have to go to https://news.ycombinator.com/show then to https://news.ycombinator.com/shownew if you want to see them.

Your post has to go through some sort of judgment even to get to https://news.ycombinator.com/show, let alone onto the front page.

This is entirely subjective but it just feels like the whole "Show HN" thing has sort of lost its magic.

Maybe entrepreneurs and developers have moved their "show and tell" to ProductHunt and Reddit.

View on HN

I think it's the other way around. The "Show HN" are treated as the usual post, they appear in the \newest page and with enough votes they appear in the front page. They are not hidden.

The \show and \shownew pages are only there to promote the "Show HN" post, so if one of them don't get enough votes to reach the front page and falls from the \newest pages it's easier to find it.

If I have to complain, I think that previously the "Show HN" was like a secret code, and only the true user used it. Now there are a lot of false "Show HN" posts that don't follow the guidelines and hide the true "Show HN" posts.

> If I have to complain, I think that previously the "Show HN" was like a secret code, and only the true user used it. Now there are a lot of false "Show HN" posts that don't follow the guidelines and hide the true "Show HN" posts.

As a lurker, this is what I have noticed. I have become less and less interested in anything of this sort.

We've noticed it too, and I'm not sure what to do about it. We take "Show HN" out of the titles when we see posts using it inappropriately (like for email signups or blog posts). But there are too many submissions for us to scrutinize them all.

Any suggestions?

(a) minimum karma for posting a Show HN, otherwise the keywords are automatically removed from your title (similar to downvoting priveleges)

(b) keep track of the accounts who get their Show HNs removed for inappropriate use, and if it happens too many times their Show HN privileges are revoked (similar to flagging privileges)

Just brainstorming possibilities.

Those are good suggestions, but on reflection (a) is problematic because we don't want to block out good posts by new users—in general on HN, the cost of losing a good post is much higher than receiving a few bad ones (I like to think of it as analogous to startup investing!). And (b) is problematic because most of these are not repeat offenders.

I suspect what we need is community curation. We're not going to do much of that as moderators—we don't have the cycles, and I think it's a good thing we don't have the cycles. But we would be open to changing the software somehow to support community members who want to curate the Show HNs, e.g. by weeding out the ones that break the rules.

Maybe a 'flag as not meeting Show HN guidelines' thingie on the thread page will be enough? With the only penalty for accumulating too many flags being the removal of the Show HN prefix.

It also seems there's a lot of genuine lack of familiarity with the guidelines, perhaps there's some simple, not-terribly-onerous way to encourage posters read them when they try to post a Show HN.

Those are two practical suggestions. Thanks!

> Any suggestions?

Paste this into the console on https://news.ycombinator.com/submit and try submitting a Show HN. Some code is odd in order to make it browser-pasteable. Obviously rules can be changed to what you think are most important.

  var title=document.querySelector('[name="title"]'),submit=document.querySelector('[type="submit"]'),alreadyShow=!1;window.accept=function(){var e=document.querySelectorAll(".show-rule:checked").length;3!==e?(submit.disabled=!0,submit.style.opacity=.5):(submit.disabled=!1,submit.style.opacity=1)},title.addEventListener("input",function(e){if("show hn"!==e.target.value.substr(0,7).toLowerCase()){submit.disabled=!1,alreadyShow=!1;var t=document.querySelector(".show-guidelines");return void(t&&t.parentNode.removeChild(t))}if(!alreadyShow){alreadyShow=!0;var o=document.createElement("div");o.className="show-guidelines",o.style.height="80px",o.innerHTML=' <div style="position: absolute; margin: 15px 28px;"> Please ensure your post follows the <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html">Show HN Guidelines</a>. In short:<br> <input class="show-rule" type="checkbox" onclick="window.accept()"> I made this new thing.<br> <input class="show-rule" type="checkbox" onclick="window.accept()"> People can play with it.<br> <input class="show-rule" type="checkbox" onclick="window.accept()"> I\'m happy to receive feedback. </div> ';var i=document.querySelector("form tbody tr:nth-of-type(7)");i.parentNode.insertBefore(o,i),accept()}},!1);

Slight revision, forgot to reset the submit button's opacity after canceling the Show HN prefix:

  var title=document.querySelector('[name="title"]'),submit=document.querySelector('[type="submit"]'),alreadyShow=!1;window.accept=function(){var e=document.querySelectorAll(".show-rule:checked").length;3!==e?(submit.disabled=!0,submit.style.opacity=.5):(submit.disabled=!1,submit.style.opacity=1)},title.addEventListener("input",function(e){if("show hn"!==e.target.value.substr(0,7).toLowerCase()){submit.disabled=!1,submit.style.opacity=1,alreadyShow=!1;var t=document.querySelector(".show-guidelines");return void(t&&t.parentNode.removeChild(t))}if(!alreadyShow){alreadyShow=!0;var o=document.createElement("div");o.className="show-guidelines",o.style.height="80px",o.innerHTML=' <div style="position: absolute; margin: 15px 28px;"> Please ensure your post follows the <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html">Show HN Guidelines</a>. In short:<br> <input class="show-rule" type="checkbox" onclick="window.accept()"> I made this new thing.<br> <input class="show-rule" type="checkbox" onclick="window.accept()"> People can play with it.<br> <input class="show-rule" type="checkbox" onclick="window.accept()"> I\'m happy to receive feedback. </div> ';var i=document.querySelector("form tbody tr:nth-of-type(7)");i.parentNode.insertBefore(o,i),accept()}},!1);

I semi-recently posted a Show HN that attracted very little attention, received no upvotes or comments, and yet I don't think the system is broken.

The volume of Show HN's is just so high now, thus "standing out" is more difficult. The shownew page has tons of projects and one in every handful receives interest. It seems to be that the audience is there, but they have naturally become more selective.

Of course there remains a huge timing and luck element. Are the people in your demographic browsing shownew at the time you post? Are they even on HN? These things are out of your control.

I'm not convinced there's much traffic to shownew

Have you found that there is a specific time/day that is better than others? Have you found that products that have a specific landing page for HackerNews people they convert better?

Nothing changed about how Show HNs are ranked on the main page. All we did was add two new pages so if you want to you can see more of them.

I've definitely noticed a dropoff in my interest in Show HN. I used to look forward to seeing Show HNs on the front page, and even posted one that was moderately successful, but now it seems like very few posts ever make it.

Meanwhile, going to Show HN directly feels very cumbersome to me. I can't explain it, maybe due to all the techy nomenclature mashed into one page, it's just very off-putting.

On the other hand, Ask HN has been my favorite source of HN content lately by far.

𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐰 some comments, 𝐇𝐍.

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