In my experience, the OP is correct about one thing, it's waste of time to post on upcoming on PH. However this is nothing compared to how opaque Hacker News is. If your product is novel enough and reach out to these "insiders" beforehand (or even afterhand), I don't think you have trouble getting to the front page on PH, whereas on HN I see tons of people reaching front page by asking for upvotes from friends. The only difference is PH is--ironically--transparent about its opaqueness, whereas HN is opaque about its transparentness. To elaborate, on hacker news everything looks transparent, and to certain degree it is (you can find the raw stream under "new" tab), but the ones that reach the front page are not always there because 100% of the community decided so, there are many hidden things going on in the background that most people don't even know. Whereas all you need to do to get featured on PH is to reach out to these "insiders", to guarantee you reach front page on HN you need to get people to upvote you. I feel that PH is much more democratic than HN since everyone gets same chance whereas on HN the people with already existing audience wins.
Asking for upvotes does not work on HN, and using shennanigans like mass voting from /newest doesn't work either. (the points register but they will not be used for ranking)
Product Hunt, in fairness, has the same do-not-ask-for-upvotes clause in their FAQ, but given the amount of people blatantly asking for upvotes on Twitter (https://twitter.com/search?q=product%20hunt%20upvote&s=typd) I am doubtful that policy is actually enforced. It's free publicity, after all.
Yes theoretically it shouldn't work, but I see it work everyday, you just need to email your friends and tell them not to visit the direct link but go to the front page and find your post and upvote. But anyway my point was exactly this, most people aren't even aware of this "black magic" going on in the background, which is worse than the process being opaque. Because at least on product hunt people know how to hack their way into being featured whereas on hacker news most people don't even realize it's possible. Also my point was not just about asking for upvotes. I was trying to point out how on hackernews if you already have an audience--say your email newsletter subscribers or blog readers--it is likely that your post will go up to the front page. Therefore newbies regardless of how great content they have don't get to play on level field as already famous people. What I found great about PH was you are judged by what you build, not your existing reputation. I'm not saying HN is more corrupt or anything than PH. PH is better at this since HN is more general purpose whereas PH is just about products.
> Yes theoretically it shouldn't work, but I see it work everyday
I'm pretty sure this is not true (certainly the method you mention doesn't work), but if you think you know counterexamples, please send them to hn@ycombinator.com. We have put a ton of work into counteracting promotional voting a.k.a. voting rings, and genuine counterexamples (i.e. voting rings that defeated our software) are super valuable to us.
Can you give a transparent answer to this scenario?: Let's say I posted a "Show HN". I would email my friends who are HN users, telling them "hey guys i posted something on hacker news, please go to the front page, find a post titled * and upvote!" I just can't think of a robust way to detect this.
I remember reading a while ago that YC founders' posts appear in a different color to other YC founders. Is this still true? If so, that's sort of an in-built voting ring.
Still true. But AFAICT such voting-ring impact as it has is canceled by HN's anti-voting-ring software, which treats everyone the same.
By the way, when pg added that feature years ago, he actually added two features: the colored usernames, plus a page for stories submitted by YC founders. The latter really did have a voting ring effect, and when we figured that out we got rid of it.
PH's algorithm tries to discount upvotes that seem to be stuffed... eg by counting votes that come from front page more highly. community managers sometimes scold people on twitter for begging upvotes.
