
Show HN: Highlighting Efforts of Creation from Hacker News - cjbarber
https://medium.com/design-startups/e394f6d917d3
======
ghc
Thanks for doing this for all of us who make things. Indifference towards
people's side projects and new startup ideas has been creeping into the HN
community for the past couple of years and I find it discouraging. Personally,
I'd rather read about people's Show HN posts than the latest mainstream news
stories that I could find anywhere.

HN Showcase highlights the problem: Hardly any of the Show HN posts get voted
on anymore. I think we've become more a community of critics than makers. I
haven't even thought about posting Show HN's for my last couple of projects
(and my current startup), where 5 years ago that would have been the first
thing I did! A cool hack is worth sharing, even if it's not perfect.

EDIT: Actually, if you feel like me and have held back, why not use the
comments section of this post to "Show HN" your project. At least in here
you'll know everyone cares about side projects and maybe we can all endeavor
to give you constructive feedback :)

~~~
bobfunk
Sometimes getting voted on is not enough. Posted a Show HN for BitBalloon
yesterday
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6285205](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6285205)).
Got up-votes enough to go on the front-page, but a few minutes after it hit
front-page, it suddenly got booted way down to page 3, and that was the end of
it.

Still got some more votes, but nothing could bring it up above #50.

Here's a screen of the ranking weirdness: [http://hn-voting-
weirdness.bitballoon.com/](http://hn-voting-weirdness.bitballoon.com/)

Don't know what it got penalized for...

~~~
bhauer
Your submission was probably flagged, possibly by multiple people.

An HN pet peeve of mine is that flagging does not require even a modicum of
rationale. I can flag any submission without even the slightest justification.
When my own submissions have been flagged, I've also been left wondering
"Why?" I understand why many of my submissions have not been upvoted. Many are
simply not of upvote-quality. But not upvoting is quite different from
flagging.

You may be interested in the HN Slapdown user script [1] which provides
insight into articles' scores versus their rank order. With this installed, I
tend to look especially at those with red scores because I am interested in
counteracting what I believe to be an overzealous application of flagging.

Even right now, this very article has a yellow score indicating that it may be
flagged (or something else is affecting its rank order versus its point
score).

I personally have only ever flagged one or two articles, and only when I felt
that the subject matter had utterly nothing to do with my understanding of the
purpose of this site. When I did so, I was shocked at the magnitude of the
penalty: if I recall correctly, the article I flagged was instantly dropped
from the front page to the third page. It really gave me appreciation for how
sparingly one should apply flags.

When I don't find a submission interesting, I just don't upvote it.

[1]
[http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/150452](http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/150452)

~~~
bobfunk
Thanks, that script is really neat. Installed now.

------
marknadal
Thank you so much for doing this. If hackernews fails to return to its roots I
think it is prime time to create a spinoff community.

I submitted my javascript library last week and was bummed it didn't get
upvoted more, even though it was well received on github. I've spent a
horrible lot amount of time on it,
[https://github.com/amark/theory](https://github.com/amark/theory) if anybody
is interested. And my Twitter account is the same as my username here.

~~~
farnsworth
This is great! I want to read more of this, and less about Snowden. Or rather,
I want to go one place to read about the tech community's take on Snowden and
a different place to read just about things like cool new JS libraries that
someone came up with.

~~~
trez
Same here. I don't care about Snowden or anything related but I like to learn
about any new libs, projects, startups...

------
TranceMan
I agree, the amount of Guardian articles that have frequented the front page
since the 'Snowden Affair' [Almost on a daily basis - some are 'opinion'
pieces ] is not what I come to HN for.

I would also argue most of them articles are not within HN guidelines.

~~~
OnyeaboAduba
Couldnt agree more with this post and love the idea. Im working on a startup
right now and have been debating whether to post it on HN glad to see some
people feeling what I was feeling. I will be looking out for the weekly post.

------
ig1
At the moment I believe ShowHN posts are negatively penalized by the front
page scoring algorithm, something that was setup many many years ago when HN
was a completely different community.

Perhaps it's time to reverse that so ShowHN post get positively scored. Also
maybe reduce the impact of flagging on ShowHN posts.

------
eranation
Thanks for posting this, happy to see this on the front page

Also relevant: [http://showinghn.com/](http://showinghn.com/)
[https://twitter.com/JustShowHN](https://twitter.com/JustShowHN)

~~~
arturbelico
These are great, my preferred one is [http://skimhn.com](http://skimhn.com).
And it's on github so I created a version that shows the latest 50 show hn.
It's incredible the quantity of projects that go unnoticed. And then there are
some cases like pud showing his new music project and being ignored and after
some time putting a link saying he had like 400k users and didn't know what to
with them and everybody went crazy up voting it. Sometimes HN is just too far
from the target audience.

------
mkrecny
Really love the spirit of this project. Does your Medium channel give you
sufficient extra reach to make an impact for these builders?

~~~
cjbarber
Thank you so much. Just checked out your profile, congrats on being supported
by your own project :)

Not yet, but I believe concentrating them into one post on HN might make it
easier for them to be noticed (in many ways pooling the resources of the
posts/creators).

------
daliwali
Thanks for taking the time to compile this. I had debated with myself whether
or not to post my project to HN this week, expecting that either the comments
would be very harsh on a v0.0.1 release, or that it would whiz by the "new"
feed with no upvotes. Seeing my project, Fortune.js, on this list is very
encouraging.

------
hugofirth
I really like the idea. In fact this is in keeping with the spirit of the idea
I submitted a couple of weeks ago
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6201511](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6201511)).

It didn't pick up much traction at the time but I know (as this submission
demonstrates) that the issue is one many members of the HN community would
like to see addressed.

Part of the issue lies in the fact that HN is essentially a loose collective
of special interest groups. Show HN submissions are competing not only with
Main stream news (as you suggest) but also the large variety of other
submissions ... and visa versa.

I genuinely think that a curated summary (in whatever form it may take,
whether that be directory, ezine or podcast) from a couple of interesting
people with different opinions would infer so much value to the HN community.
Keep posting!

------
mightybrenden
Hi Chris, I agree, underdogs deserve their shot at the title. I actually
duplicated the functionality of Hacker News at (www.plantdietlife.com) with an
emphasis on plant based diets.

I think one way to address the great idea you're bringing up is to use the
code I have produced for PDL (voting algorithm and all) and create another
site that's only for peoples personal projects. We can have some sort of
verification process where the submissions have to be approved as a "personal
project" to be on the home page. Once the item is on the home page we'll
demand that it needs a certain amount of comments/likes in order for it to be
removed and for the next personal project to appear.

IDK, it's just a quick idea. I look forward to seeing how this vision of yours
progresses.

------
lifeisstillgood
I think the showbot suggestion below is great - and it can be implemented with
no extra effort.

So how about a throwaway account, so karma issues are put aside, that posts
each Friday evening a thread that anyone can attach their maker projects to -
a "MadeByHN" thread?

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pearjuice
I used to get a weekly hand curated newsletter with "Show HN" projects. No
idea where that guy went.

edit: [http://www.weekendupdate.me](http://www.weekendupdate.me) would be
great to know why it is halted.

------
thaumaturgy
This is fantastic, thank you for going to the trouble of doing it. I, too,
would like to see HN "return to its roots" \-- more articles submitted about
member projects and YC companies and what they're doing.

------
wyantb
> One vote and a comment if they are especially lucky.

Rings pretty true to me; admittedly, I don't participate much in comments or
have a recognizable name, but my past submissions certainly fit this bill.

Though, when I look at the 'newest' queue [1], there are 30 posts in the last
hour and only one front page. Not everybody can make it. For my part, I'm
mostly curious what does, actually, make it.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/newest](https://news.ycombinator.com/newest)

------
k3n
[off-topic] The text on the page is all exceedingly large, is that
intentional? It looks like I'm being served a mobile version on my desktop. I
can read the title from 20' away, and the paragraph text from 8'. It only
looks "normal" when I zoom to 67%.

Not a huge problem, but it's annoying to the point of distracting to require
so much scrolling for so little actual text. Otherwise, I love the idea and
the execution.

~~~
malcolmmcc
This is just how Medium is. Of debatable merit.

~~~
k3n
Thanks for the info! That's certainly their prerogative, and as long as they
provide good content it shouldn't matter too much I guess (it's easy enough
for me to fix on my end).

------
planblock
I absolutely agree with this. It seemed the initial posting about our events
website launch wasn't seen at all or by very few people. But, if this is an
appropriate place to re-post, I'd love your feedback!
[http://planblock.com](http://planblock.com) and like the page at
[http://facebook.com/planblock](http://facebook.com/planblock)

------
gurraman
I'm just an echo here, but this is a great - and much appreciated -
initiative! Thank you for taking the time to compile this list.

------
avalaunch
Thanks for the post. I love show HN posts. I wish they fared better.

As an aside, I think your requirement of less than 1000 twitter followers is a
bit low. I have a couple thousand followers and I can tell you that it means
very little. If I tweet a link to a project of mine I can expect a ctr of
about .2%.

------
AndrewVos
Hey thanks for mentioning statistic.li!

------
trez
Thanks for rising that. Let see if my new Show
HN([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6294623](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6294623))
will got a better audience after your post :)

------
cocoflunchy
The first project you link to is marked as dead, so it's impossible to follow
the link or post comments on it. Maybe someone should resubmit it?

------
ozh
Write on Medium = get a front page post on HN. Write on Medium _about HN_?
OMG, genius.

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dnautics
thanks, I am not in the camp that believe is utter purity of HN, but things
can go overboard. Good to see this.

