

Ask HN: How does a 0-comment, 3-upvote github.com url reach the front page? - leeoniya

There has been a lot of discussion about how HN&#x27;s ranking algorithm affects position [1]. Supposedly there&#x27;s an automatic penalty for some domains, including github.com.<p>I&#x27;ve posted some of my projects here hosted on github and have gotten something like 6 comments and 10 upvotes while still on the &quot;New&quot; page. None of them ever made it to the front page. Yet other github.com projects make it to the front page with 0 comments and only 3 upvotes [2] (could have been less before I saw it).<p>I don&#x27;t want to come off bitter (I&#x27;m not), but there&#x27;s a bad smell of favoritism and manual moderator selection here for lack of a better explanation :(<p>Any insight would be helpful, as I enjoy participating in the community here and want to continue doing so.<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6799854<p>[2] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6811490
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pg
"I've posted some of my projects here hosted on github and have gotten
something like 6 comments and 10 upvotes while still on the "New" page."

You have posted 3 stories with github urls, and they got 1, 1, and 2, points
respectively.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=leeoniya](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=leeoniya)

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leeoniya
yeah, sorry.

the others were Show HNs, which cant contain both a link and some text. which
should make a stronger point for not being penalized and having 10 points:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4512834](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4512834)

but there are others that are not github submissions which reached more points
and comments than i have seen for many front page posts.

if this is, in fact, a velocity algo doing its thing, i would say it needs
tuning. i also dont think the fact that low voted submissions get massively
upvoted after hitting the front page is meaningful validation of the current
algo's effectiveness. personally, i've seen a lot of genuinely interesting
articles fall through the cracks of the "New" sieve despite people's obvious
interest.

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JacobAldridge
3 votes (which is actually only 2 upvotes) in quick succession after posting
will give a story good momentum of votes over time (gravity). That will get it
to the front page.

As I now understand it, HN will recalculate that story when the next upvote is
received (though there is a random selection recalculation to mitigate this as
well). So a story may temporarily benefit from 2 quick upvotes (moving it to
the front page) followed by no additional upvotes for some time (preventing
recalculation). But if the love stops, eventually it will drop like a stone.

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redtexture
How about a pre-holiday Thanksgiving day of travel in the U.S. with subdued
posting to Hacker News, hence a speculatively anomalously quiet posting and
front- and second-page activity for the day?

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trumbitta2
That's something I found myself wandering about sometimes...

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goldenkey
Me too. On the other hand, I like the variety and fast-pace of HN as compared
to reddit. There is a lot more chance to see a wide variety of non-favorited
stuff here. Spice is the nice of life :-)

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danso
AFAIK, 3 votes is the minimum before something is pushed into the front page
queue, though if there are enough hot stories, a 3 vote story may only show up
on the second page. Usually 3 votes under 20 min is enough velocity to get to
the front page.

Number of comments does not seem to help a ranking...some of he best
submissions don't have comments for an hour or so

