

Ask YC:Guidelines for submitting interesting (for HC) articles - pbnaidu

Are there set of guidelines for submitting links to interesting articles to HN? I am asking this because some of my submitted links to articles are not at all interesting to HN community, where I thought they're interesting and align with the goals of HN. I would like to filter out uninteresting links myself without polluting HN.
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epi0Bauqu
<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

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pbnaidu
Thanks. My question is about filtering within the boundaries of ontopic area.
Sometimes I feel HN community has mood swings, for example community sometimes
likes entrepreneurial oriented articles, startup success stories and sometimes
it doesn't.

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epi0Bauqu
The problem is bigger than just _mood swings._ I have seen the same exact
story around the same time (but not on the same "new" page--say, a day later),
and one gets voted up and the other doesn't.

I think a lot of the problem stems from the new page to front page algorithm.
Only a small subset of readers on HN upvote stories. And only a small subset
of those upvoters ever look at the new page. And both groups are self-selected
and not necessarily representative of the whole group. And when looking at the
new page, the top stories on that page get looked at more. And when people
actually click on a link, the majority don't actually read the story. And on
top of that, stories only show there for a fixed amount of time, and in some
cases, it isn't that long.

The result of all that is stories are looked at by very few people before a
decision is made (algorithmically) to promote it to the front page or not.
Often it only takes one upvote. I've submitted a lot of stories, and some from
my own blog, so I know the amount of traffic you get from the new page, i.e.
the # of people actually reading your story while it is on that page is quite
small.

One idea would be to randomly give x slots of the front page (under say, the
top 10) to new stories. These stories would be randomly chosen from the past y
hours to give them more exposure. A different selection would display on each
page load. Presumably, once a story gets one upvote it would stop showing in
this random process. Perhaps such an algorithm could also take into account
how many people clicked on the article, and also do something with that
information as well.

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rantfoil
You're right, more people should check out the 'new' items -- there are a lot
of gems in there.

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bigtoga
I would also add that you please not try to post the exact same news here that
we're already seeing on digg/reddit/slashdot/etc. Most of us read those sites
as well and, if we don't, the reason is likely that we're *&^%ing sick of the
stories posted on those sites lol.

Thank you for asking.

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krschultz
Although lately I think it is the opposite, I see an article here and then
24-48 hours later it shows up on Slashdot or Reddit. I used to read Digg, but
it has gotten so bad the last 4 months I don't waste my time, so no comment
there. I feel like some of the power users on those sites watch here first.

