
Ask HN: Does Karma affect the rank of a submission? - kazehana03
I understand that going to the 1st page of HN needs people to upvote but does Karma affect the ranking.
e.g. A &amp; B shared 2 links at the same time.<p>A&#x27;s account (10 Karma) shared a link, got 100 upvotes within an hour.<p>B&#x27;s account (2000 Karma) shared a link, got 100 upvotes within an hour.<p>Will B&#x27;s link get a higher rank on the top page?
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brudgers
Keep in mind that flagging drags a story down.

In my experience, story quality plays a big role and luck a somewhat smaller
one. Because what makes a story good on Hacker News can be a bit different
than what makes it good on other sites someone with 2000 karma is probably
more likely to submit a better story -- e.g. right now this submission about a
fourteen year old Linux text book:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11352295](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11352295)
is on the front page -- simply based on the likelihood of greater engagement
and more experience.

My observation is that many stories that get 100 upvotes in an hour generate
low quality discussions and disappear due to flagging, though there are
exceptions.

My unsolicited advice is to write good comments and post good articles and not
get to tangled up in trying to optimize around timing.

Good luck.

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Tomte
I'm pretty sure it does not.

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kazehana03
Thanks. This means the impact of submitting a link with a new account and a
high Karma account are the same, right?

~~~
CarolineW
Some people have favorite submitters, and so well established accounts may get
more readers, and hence more upvotes, than newer accounts. Your question
included the proviso that both submissions got the same number of upvotes in
the same time - that might not happen with accounts that have difference
karma.

And not all upvotes are equal. The software has voting ring detection that is
good, but not perfect. Submissions often get quite a lot of upvotes that don't
convert to karma for the user simply because not all upvotes are regarded as
"genuine". Those upvotes might not count towards the submissions ranking, but
I don't know.

What I do know is that there is "secret sauce" and that it's generally pretty
good, although not perfect. Trying to game the system is rarely successful,
and trying to understand it from the outside is going to be really hard.

Personally, I submit stuff I think is going to be of interest, I read stuff
that looks like it might be interesting, and then I walk away. The internet in
general has taught me not to care.

