Tell HN: Why you should submit your stuff as a blog posting

[jacquesm]

Self posts are strongly discounted on HN, if you post a question or an article without a link then you will find that there is a good chance that you will not be getting any traction at all.

The reason for this is that self posts are discounted at (and this is a guess, maybe PG can correct me) roughly 40% of what it would take to get a similar frontpage ranking for a regular post.

So even if your well formulated article that you posted on HN (nice, because you are obviously not in it for the advertising revenue) is voted up a few times its chances of being really discussed are very slim indeed.

On the other hand, you could post an external link to an article about prostitution ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1075970) or the latest episode in one of the soaps (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1075944) and you'd be guaranteed plenty of discussion.

The practical upshot of this is that if you really want an answer of if you really want to discuss a subject and you think that it is not mainstream enough to catch a couple of upvotes in the first half hour you can more than double your chances by posting it elsewhere and then submitting the link.

I don't pretend to understand the reason behind the penalty assigned to 'Ask HN' style posts and articles that are posted as original content on HN, I just notice that plenty of those seem to drop sight unseen whereas lots of trivial content makes the homepage without too much trouble, as long as it is on an external site.

We'll see if this post is self-defeating ;)

To see how big this effect is, as long as this post is on the homepage you can check it against other posts with links that have roughly the same number of points and age.

[olalonde]

-1. Why didn't you post this on your blog ? :D

[jacquesm → olalonde]

> We'll see if this post is self-defeating ;)

But compare the position this entry has on the homepage with the others around it, the key metric is (points / age), and you'll see that linked posts with a lesser score by that metric still rank much higher.

[breck]

Did you get this from looking at the source code?

http://github.com/nex3/arc/blob/master/news.arc

[jacquesm → breck]

No, just by observing the various postings and how they appear and disappear on the homepage.

I think this is one of the main reason why plenty of Ask HN style threads are gone before anybody gets a chance to look at them.

They're unpopular by definition, after all they ask the audience to do something (answer a question), this adds to that.

Then today I saw an Ask HN that was doing exceptionally well, and I noticed that the only thing that caused it to be ranked so high was that it was an external link.

[kf → jacquesm]

Here's the comment about some downweighting for lightweight sites. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=294439 Here's one confirming the downweighting of self posts, though without saying the modifier. I remember the modifier as being 0.7, for what it's worth. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=304058

[jacquesm → kf]

Thanks for digging that up.

The original posting is this:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=303605

And that's what PG comments on, see the thread.

The interesting bit is that there are some self posts (such as that specimen) that clearly deserve their 'weighting' but there are plenty of others that do not, and these fall victim to the collective punishment meted out to all submissions without urls.

I estimated the .4, so apparently it is even less.

[nwinter → jacquesm]

I think that many of the Ask YC or Tell HN posts tend to get more votes more easily, so the weighting makes sense even good posts of that sort. I noticed this in the source while we were asking for advice, but we still got a lot more spotlight with the Ask HN tag than when we tried to do similar things with blog posts. The weighting makes sense to me.

[frossie → nwinter]

I think that many of the Ask YC or Tell HN posts tend to get more votes more easily

Yes but do you wonder why that is?

From my own experience I know if I only have a minute or two, I hit on "New", scan down for Ask/Tell HN and then if they are decent posts, immediately upvote them. So sure, Ask/Tells get more votes from me because they are more likely to have unique content as opposed to the Nth million Apple Tablet rumour.

Moreover, even though I couldn't be further away from startup circles, it is clear that HN is clearly a startup community, and Ask/Tells are the posts that are most likely to tap that vein - so I upvote them in line with what I think are the community values. I mean, if I don't upvote a "Review my site" plea, what am I here for?

I'm not sure why exactly the ranking penalty for that is so large. It's all very well to say "well post it on your own blog", but the style of discourse over a blog posting is considerably different for what I see in Ask/Tells; the comments on the latter are generally more supportive as they are seen as a plea for help and less as an attempt at self-promotion - precisely because they are more transient. Moreover, an Ask/Tell in a way is a debate on neutral ground, whereas comments on somebody's personal blog post don't quite have the same dynamic.

[axod]

It's pretty sad self posts are discounted, since they IMHO are one of the best parts of HN.

[ynniv]

nice, because you are obviously not in it for the advertising revenue

Just because you link to your blog doesn't mean you are getting ad revenue (ex, my blog has no ads).

I personally feel that Ask HN posts are weaker because they are transient. To Ask HN is to have a discussion that lasts maybe a day with a small number of (relatively) like-minded people. A blog post will be more visible for "longer" (I don't recall any Ask HN posts showing up on Google, so their lifespan is basically their front page time), and represents a stronger commitment to the point made. Not all blogs have comments, but generally they do, and are open to a wider audience than HN.

[vaksel]

The practical thing is that when you submit as a blog post, other people might link to you. Noone is going to link to a post they read on HN.

But a blog post? Oh yeah.

Remember my rant a few weeks ago about how the Crunchies were the kid's choice awards of the web? That got picked up by LA Times and they linked to my post in one of their stories. I doubt that'd happen if I posted the same exact thing as a "Tell HN" post.

[ErrantX]

The practical upshot of this is that if you really want an answer of if you really want to discuss a subject and you think that it is not mainstream enough to catch a couple of upvotes in the first half hour you can more than double your chances by posting it elsewhere and then submitting the link

This has always been the recommended approach by pg.

[abennett]

Sounds to me like HN is a victim of its own success and is rapidly going the way of Digg. There's a reason people write "trivial" content: It gets clicks.