
An alternative to Show HN - karjaluoto
I realize that HN has grown in popularity over the years, and this is a good thing (mostly).<p>Unfortunately, the high volume of posts means that getting a Show HN post to reach the homepage is difficult&#x2F;impossible. Frankly, I’m not sure it can be done without asking all your friends to upvote (which I absolutely hate doing).<p>The feedback you can get through Show HN is so beneficial, though. As such, I hate for anyone (including myself) to miss out on it. So, I created a couple of channels on Chapp for this. Could be that no one even bothers with these, but they might be useful to some of you.  :-)<p>Got something ready to show, post here: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;chapp.is&#x2F;ShowChapp<p>Getting ready to launch, post here: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;chapp.is&#x2F;prelaunch<p>That’s it!
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minimaxir
> _Unfortunately, the high volume of posts means that getting a Show HN post
> to reach the homepage is difficult /impossible._

Not more than any other submission to Hacker News. It's about luck.

> _Frankly, I’m not sure it can be done without asking all your friends to
> upvote (which I absolutely hate doing)._

People shouldn't be doing this anyways because it doesn't work.

~~~
karjaluoto
> Not more than any other submission to Hacker News. It's about luck.

I agree with your first point. I think it’s about more than just luck, though.

> People shouldn't be doing this anyways because it doesn't work.

Actually, it does work—but you have to do it a certain way—and it sucks.

~~~
dang
> _Actually, it does work—but you have to do it a certain way_

I'd be curious to see links to such posts. If you know what some are, would
you email them to hn@ycombinator.com?

~~~
karjaluoto
I don’t have any links. That’s not the sort of thing I keep track of.

That said, I’ve spoken with a batch of folks who’ve explained their tricks for
getting their stories bumped up.

Just from a quick search, though, it doesn’t seem like such discussion is
hidden: [http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-
really...](http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-
works.html)

~~~
dang
I don't think that article discussed voting rings? Also, not all the info
there is accurate, and things have changed a lot since then.

It's pretty important to HN that "tricks for getting stories bumped up" end up
costing more than they benefit. Since I'm one of the people who've worked on
this, the engineer in me is eager to see counterexamples, so everybody please
email us if you think you see one.

~~~
karjaluoto
I just skimmed the post I linked to—didn’t read it in depth. (That said, I did
bookmark it, to read more thoroughly when I have a moment.)

Most of the things I’ve heard have been in personal discussions, so I haven’t
seen the actual links.

I’m curious: do you see a lot of folks running workarounds/tricks to get to
the homepage? Is it something that’s difficult to stop?

~~~
dang
Yes, we see a lot of that and yes it's difficult to stop, but we've put a lot
of work into the software and it currently has the upper hand. It's a bit of
an arms race though.

~~~
karjaluoto
I can appreciate that. Seems like a tough thing to keep on top of.

------
karjaluoto
Just realized that the links don’t work in the text above, so I’ve duplicated
them, here:

Launched: [http://chapp.is/ShowChapp](http://chapp.is/ShowChapp)

Pre-launch: [http://chapp.is/prelaunch](http://chapp.is/prelaunch)

------
gus_massa
Have you tried with a ShowHN? Many people read the /newest page and if the
project is interesting they will drop a comment.

I submitted a few post with 5-10 upvotes, that's not enough to get to the
front page, but it get about a hundred visits.

Others were more lucky/better and reached the front page and they got much
more visits. But I think that an important part of the value of a ShowHN is
the feedback.

Some comments:

* In IE11 I get in most pages a "No posts yet" message. Supporting every browsers is difficult, but you can try to change the message.

* Are you sorting the post by age? I really like some variant of points/age like in HN or Reddit.

~~~
karjaluoto
Yes—we’ve posted a few things over the years. A couple got some traction, even
hitting the home page. That said, even staying listed in New for more than an
hour seems pretty tough these days.

I don’t think that’s a bad thing. As the community grows, the threshold to
reach the homepage simply gets higher. That said, I figure if there’s another
way to get folks some visibility, why not? (And preparing those channels took
me all of 10 minutes.)

And—yes—the feedback is the best part! I love new site visits, but user input
is so incredibly helpful. :-)

I haven’t seen the “No posts yet” message, but it could be something we’ve
just overlooked. We’ve been so busy with client work and building Officehours
that we haven’t given Chapp any love in a good long while.

Posts will be sorted by age, for now. If this sees a little interest, we could
sort by nods (the Chapp equivalent of likes/points).

------
krapp
The link is right there - right at the top of the page. It's not hard to find,
and honestly, if most of the traffic on /show are from people actively looking
to comment on projects and mvps, then all the better. A section of the site
with a narrower focus _should_ have less traffic than the frontpage.

It's unfortunate if most users act like those thirty links on the frontpage
are the entirety of HN but trying to siphon traffic to chapp.is as an
"alternative" is probably doomed to failure, because the network effect and
the culture keep people here.

~~~
karjaluoto
I didn’t mean this as an affront to the HN community, or as a criticism of
Show HN. That said, after you work on a startup for a while, getting
traffic/feedback on it is important.

I check HN daily, mostly by skimming the homepage. This happens on the toilet,
before I start my day—and, while laying in bed with my son at night, while he
falls asleep. I find a lot of good reading here.

But, I have to admit that I found it more useful (personally) 8 years ago. I’m
not quite sure why. There seems to be an ebb and flow of content from one
season to the next. Sometimes it’s overly technical for me (I’m not a
developer), or it’s so unrelated that I don’t feel compelled to read.

My hunch is that this is representative of a community that has simply reached
a certain size. I don’t mean that HN was better when it was smaller, but I
certainly found more pleasure in it then.

Back to the point though, I don’t want to devalue anything that YC, or the
community, is doing here (nor do I mean to take anything away).

Instead, I just had a thought pop into my head that maybe there should be
other ways to get founders feedback on what they’re doing. As we’d already
built Chapp, I figured it couldn’t hurt to toss it out there.

