
Show HN: When is good time to submit a story on HN? - zeratul
http://hnpickup.appspot.com/
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brlewis
Currently "gravity" pulls stories down as a function of time. If time were
replaced by a counter that increments with each story upvote across HN,
gravity would be normalized for activity and timing would matter less.

~~~
wavephorm

      a counter that increments with each story upvote
    

Probably should increment based on each story _submitted_.

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brlewis
An increase in the number of stories submitted already makes it harder for an
individual story to get on the front page, since it rolls off the New page
faster.

I think I know why you didn't like the story-upvote count, since sometimes
there might not be any good stories available to upvote. But keep in mind that
if story upvotes are the new "time", then "time" slows down for the existing
front-page stories as much as it does for the new submissions.

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zeratul
Thank you very, very much. I will implement all your suggestions over the
weekend. I was trying to make the app work with mobile devices, hence, skimpy
use of the real estate.

\- If you click on the graph you get the definitions.

\- If you click at the title you get the visual analysis of the data
([http://hnpickup.appspot.com/hnpickup_ratio_visual_analysis.p...](http://hnpickup.appspot.com/hnpickup_ratio_visual_analysis.png))

\- if you click at the link below graph is sends you to HN.

\- the time is calculated on the client side and it should be Your local time
- let me know if it's not the case (JSON data has UTC epoch time, though)

And yes: it is a catch-22 ;-)

EDIT: I don't like clutter on a web page. You can put a lot of information on
what is what but you just need it ONE time, then it should go away. Maybe
someday I will find a jquery plugin that will do the trick.

~~~
pgroves
It's a nice visualization.

One more suggestion: Do label the time zone. even if it correctly detects the
user's time zone, that's unexpected on the internet. Plus you don't label
'current' time... for all I know it's a Time Zone ahead but only updates once
an hour. Anyway, all confusion goes away with a label.

Edit: Took out references to my personal time zone

~~~
Matt_Cutts
Even better, draw a vertical line on the x-offset location of the graph that
represents the current time. That will let everyone calibrate to their own
time zone intuitively.

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lpolovets
Cool idea, although it might turn into a Catch-22: once people know what the
best times to submit are, those will no longer be the best times to submit. =)

You should label and explain the axes and sliders. I have no idea what the
numbers mean, or what the "pickup ratio" is.

Also, instead of linking "bad" below the chart, you should make it bold and
link the word "submit" instead. I thought clicking on "bad" would take me to
an explanation, not the HN submit page.

~~~
cookiecaper
> _You should label and explain the axes and sliders. I have no idea what the
> numbers mean, or what the "pickup ratio" is._

Left-click on the graph.

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lpolovets
Thanks.. I saw that mentioned in another comment as well. When I first went to
the site I didn't see any affordances indicating that that graph was
clickable.

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danso
Cool idea. Theres a possible significant blindspot.

The best time to submit a story appears to be 8:30 pm, but that may be because
a higher number of stories that were popular during the workday (which is
probably when HN gets the most traffic) have been pulled down by gravity
enough that newer stories have a better chance of getting in.

But don't those new stories peak during a time that presumably, HN's traffic
is at a low? And can peaking at 10PM be enough to carry a story through to the
top of the next day's new popular stories?

TLDR: Does being popular in the off-hours offset by the presumably lower
traffic to HN?

~~~
joshuarrrr
I think you have to consider that not all submissions are equal. Some stories
are likely to shoot to the top of the front page regardless of their
competition. For those, you would want the post to peak when there are the
most readers, which requires posting during competitive slots. But for more
run-of-the-mill submissions, posting during a time of less competition is
probably a bonus.

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wukkuan
Very interesting!

However, I can't find any indication of what time zone you're displaying. Is
it my time zone, GMT+0, or something else?

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revorad
Graph nanny says "Label your axes, damnit!"

~~~
zeratul
I know, I know. It's amazing how many times I broke this rule. I do better in
future.

Somehow I think there should be a different design rules for labeling
"persistent" (?) graphs, i.e. graphs that you look at regularly. If you look
at a graph couple times a day you need to know the meaning of axes only one
time. After that, the labels are waste of the real estate. I will look at the
vital signs equipment to see how it's done.

~~~
revorad
The point of labelling graphs, much like commenting code, is communication
with others and your future self.

~~~
zeratul
This is invaluable comment. Changes my whole perspective on how to represent
the data. If I could I would use all my karma here. Thank you

EDIT: My mentor always says "graph or table has to stand on it's own" but that
does not resonate with me. The "commenting code" analogy does.

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JonnieCache
I've always just checked the age of the story at the bottom of the new page,
but this is a big step forward. Nice work.

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tszming
The text on the graph is hardly readable on Windows/Chrome

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yread
Hmm this story seems to be posted in a good time. Coincidence?

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mrpollo
In my experience, Friday Night PST has always worked out great for stories I
post

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ma2rten
I actually had the same idea once. I am glad you got around to implement it,
so I don't have to ;).

I also thought about making other stats, to answer questions like "How much
does it matter which user submitted the post?", "Which words in the title
influence if a story gets upvoted?", "Which sites have the most high quality
(upvoted) content?"

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kennywinker
I would love to see this for reddit (all of reddit, and for specific
subreddits as well).

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svmegatron
Cool! Can you put the graph and the text on a single page, and make them both
bigger?

~~~
AlexC04
yeah - that was way too small for me. I had to zoom a lot. For a small project
like this it's sort of a "who cares" decision, but I'd hate for that size to
be a design "norm".

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ck2
Some might say this is the "more" link but there is probably room for a "news
you missed" feed/service that looks at articles that got some links or
comments but either never made it to the front page or fell off too quickly.

~~~
tingletech
are you aware of <http://hckrnews.com/> ?

~~~
Mz
Not sure how close this is, but there is also: <http://rrrewind.com/>

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phil
This doesn't make any sense. We can upvote a story 1,000s of times but
eventually gravity will win and it will fall to the bottom of the front page.

And when it does, it will skew the hell out of that graph.

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koenigdavidmj
Shouldn't a story should get more activity because people think that it is
interesting/insightful/useful, not because it showed up at the right time?

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nocivus
This post will balance things out, i think...

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iambot
thats pretty cool, as far as using/hackin HN for the best possible result (if
thats what one is aiming for).

One this that got me though, in terms of usablity, is that me being at GMT+0
it was hard to determine if the far right of the graph was current or lagging?

but I'll definitely be checking this out in the future for launch planning
etc.

~~~
iambot
Could the author identify him/herself? I think this is brilliant, and would
like to web-stalk/follow whom ever created this. In a purely selfish-
selfimprovement manner. :)

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fuzzythinker
No separation of stats for day of the week?

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sycren
What timezone is this?

