Comment by yaeger | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yaeger | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

>In fact it might be the worst time to post because you are competing with all those other people.

I don't understand that reasoning. Yes you are competing with other people, but for a reason. Reason being, during that time a lot more people are active and that is why the chances are much higher to have a high scoring submission.

Isn't your reasoning the same as saying you shouldn't play the lottery using "dates"? Like anniversaries or birthdays. So numbers 1-31 etc because that is what everybody plays and if you win you have to split the pot with all those other people? To me, this is ignoring the fact that a million dollars split between 100 people is still a lot more than zero dollars you get for yourself because you played different numbers.

Perhaps, but it's not exactly a fair system. Reddit is based on a "rich get richer, poor get poorer" type model. The more people you are competing against, the more likely you are to end up in tail end of the distribution. There are only a limited number of slots on the front page after all.

No one sorts through the "new" tag, especially on reddit. So your post depends on getting on the front page for a few minutes and hope a few people see it and vote on it.

If there are many people posting, those precious front page slots will be taken, and your post will appear on page 4 and sink down over time.

Hence you are far more likely to do well in a smaller subreddit than a larger one. That wouldn't be true in your egalitarian model, where more users mean each post gets proportionally more attention.

But in reality those extra users still all go to the top 25 posts, but the competition to get there is increased.

>To me, this is ignoring the fact that a million dollars split between 100 people is still a lot more than zero dollars you get for yourself because you played different numbers.

The expected payoff of a lottery ticket minus it's cost, is already negative. If you divide up the jackpot it gets even worse.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com