
Ask HN: Is asking your friends to vote your HN postings to the front page ok? - jacquesm
It seems a rethorical question, but apparently it needs asking because it seems to be that this is not clear to some.<p>Because it isn't mentioned in the guidelines this is looked upon as a 'loophole' and some people use this to boost submissions to the new page.<p>So, what is your take on this?
======
Perceval
This kind of behavior is exactly what made Digg the useless oligarchy of
content promotion that it is.

I think asking other people to vote your favored story to the front page is
really an exercise in egotism, and it kinda misses the point. If other people
are interested, your story will make it to the front page on merit.

If other people aren't interested, why would one force it to the front page?
For what? So that people can see it and skip over it and not discuss it and
wish something more interesting were on the front page?

I hope it doesn't come to the same measures that Digg tried (and mostly
failed) to implement, with algorithmic detection of rigged voting and banning
of people doing scripted submissions and votes.

~~~
lincolnq
Hang on, though. What if I don't even have to ask?

I know that I tend to upvote people more often who I know (even without them
asking). Is that bad / immoral?

If you say yes, then it's very important to come up with an answer for "what's
an upvote supposed to mean?" If you don't think I should be allowed to upvote
people because I know them, you can no longer say that the rule is "I was
interested in this story" but instead "I think the HN community would be
interested in this story".

But that's asking for trouble, because everybody has their own crazy views on
what HN should be (see the periodic threads on how HN is offtopic, or too big,
or not as cool as it used to be).

~~~
alanthonyc
Upvote based on the content of the link, not the person/persona behind it.

If we focus on quality ( _regardless of your specific definition of quality_
), then it can only improve the site.

If a personal friend of mine submitted a crap comment, I would downvote. Crap
site, flag.

EDIT: And I upvoted you because you asked a useful question that would bring
up good conversation, although obviously I disagree with your stance.

~~~
kyro
That doesn't always hold. If a submission on security came and tptacek
commented, I'd probably upvote his comment knowing that he's pretty damn well
versed in that field.

~~~
blhack
I don't think that there is a perfect if/then way of solving this issue...this
is why we have humans doing the moderating ;-).

------
alain94040
We all agree that _merit_ should be the ultimate judge. And I have experienced
it myself: great posts I submit will rise on their own, not so good ones will
linger.

However: without the initial boost of making it to the home page, great posts
tend to die off and don't even get a chance to win on merit.

Some data to confirm my point: my submissions typically either get 1 vote
(mine), no matter how good they are, or get from 10 to 30 votes, based on
their merit. There is no middle ground.

So I find it a little bit naive to believe that merit alone will win the day.
On the other hand, as everyone else said, I don't want HN to turn into guild
of ringers...

~~~
mcantor
It does seem to me that those vital first 10 minutes disproportionately affect
a submission's life expectancy.

~~~
hugh_
Perhaps solutions should be aimed at slowing down the churn rate on the "new"
page, then? What if everybody were limited to submitting, say, one article per
day?

~~~
saroskar
How about a different "channel" for posts that ask for a feedback from the HN
community on particular project? Like all those posts that announce a new site
or a new open source library that some HN member has built. I think loss in
such posts getting buried is much higher than the loss when other posts that
say, just link to an interesting articles etc. get buried. Feedback from
highly technical community like HN can be invaluable for an individual hacker
but it's not always possible to get it. I personally experienced the
importance of first 10 minutes rule when I submitted post about a small JS
library that I had developed asking for feedback couple of days back. I
probably submitted it at wrong time (holiday, late at night) so it never made
to "visible" pages.

If we had a new channel exclusively for things you've actually built it would
be difficult to game it as you would have to actually put in efforts to built
the thing in the first place. It would also be more in line with the HN ethos,
for hackers by hackers :)

------
pg
There's a fuzzy line. I think it's ok (or at least undetectable) if the voters
are genuine HN users. There are limits to what they'll upvote, unless they
genuinely like it. Whereas it's not ok to email a bunch of people and tell
them to create HN accounts for the purpose of upvoting your post; that's
basically sockpuppets by proxy. The threshold is somewhere between these two
cases.

There is a lot of code for detecting voting rings, and it itself embodies
varying levels of punishment (ranging from votes not affecting the position on
the page, to votes not affecting the score, to the post getting flagged to be
killed) depending on how abusive a vote seems. So far things seem to be under
control, probably because the way I decide when to add more countermeasures is
when I notice lame posts doing suspiciously well on the frontpage.

~~~
jacquesm
Ok, thanks. So how about a group of people that collude on a back channel in
order to categorically boost their posts/comments and flag others?

I know that it is annoying to have to define this but apparently it needs to
be spelled out.

I've found that it is very easy to detect this kind of stuff by simply
monitoring a post in the first few minutes after it goes live, anything that
gets 3 or more upvotes in the first ten minutes but sinks off the homepage is
a good candidate, 3 or more upvotes in the first 3 minutes is more or less a
guarantee of having people that game the system.

~~~
pg
If they did it frequently enough to create a detectable pattern, the votes
would start to be ignored to varying degrees.

As you point out (though this wasn't your theme), the ranking algorithm on the
front page also helps mitigate the problem. Stuff upvoted by a ring will sink
back down if it doesn't catch on with other users.

------
sophacles
I've done some experiments, it seems to me that the first vote is critical,
and that it should occur w/in 10 - 20 minutes of posting a story. Otherwise
the story just won't get noticed. I've seen this with submissions many time,
and in fact have intentionally voted up a "worse" version of a story to test
this. Turns out the upvoted version gains the momentum most of the time, even
when the other story is better written or has more detail, or whatever.

Now whether or not it is ethical is different, but it seems to me that this
general behaviour of how stories go would suggest a single "friend vote" at
the right time carries more weight than having friends cheat anyway. So the
question becomes: if I post something to HN, then link a friend to my HN
posting, instead of a direct link, is it ethical since I know he will probably
vote up the HN post.

Edit: another question that arrises... many of my freinds and I link each
other constantly in private communications, does moving part of this to HN
constitute an ethical dilemma since there is now voting and a larger audience
invovled? Part of me says no, as those articles are interesting to us anyway,
hence the linking, and the upvote is just a formalization of that...

~~~
jxcole
I have visitor tracking on my site and I have submitted several articles that
no one has even glanced at.

There are two ways to over step this problem: One is to get an immediate
upvote to your story. This will at least get you noticed.

The other is to title your article with something that seems to defy reality
or be very unlikely. "Google sucks at search", no matter what the argument, is
sure to get a lot of clicks. My theory is that people want to read the article
to refute it (there are also a lot of google bashers around).

------
mixmax
I would say absolutely not.

Submissions should be voted up based on their own merits, not on how many
friends you happen to have on HN to help you. This, as far as I know, is an
ongoing problem at sites like Digg where it is reportedly almost impossible to
get on the frontpage without being a member of some kind of voting ring, or
having the right connections.

I hope we're above that.

------
jedwhite
I suspect most users (seeking interesting content) infrequently look at "new",
and mostly stick to the front page.

Items already on the front page get voted up more because they are already on
the front page.

The only stories that get on to the front page with the current algorithm are
those that get a handful of votes very quickly (within first 10-20 mins).

Therefore, the story selection for the front page becomes a self-reinforcing
loop. The combination of the algorithm prioritizing stories that get a few
votes quickly, and the fact that new stories get reduced exposure, means, I
think, that it's often random whether a story makes the front. Once it does,
if it's interesting it will stay there and get a lot of votes (so that works)
and if it's not it will drop off again quickly.

So the system is good at ranking stories that are already on the front page
and keeping them there longer, but I think fails at selecting the best new
content submitted. I often notice great items dropping off new that never got
any votes or comments while there are less interesting ones that made the
front.

Without wanting to suggest damaging the simplicity that makes it such a great
site for surfacing interesting stuff, maybe there could be a sidebar or
secondary area on the front page with a simple headline list of the lastest
new submissions separate to the "hot" items, so that all users see what's
coming in, rather than the subset who consciously go to "new" to look for new
stuff to vote for.

Be interesting to know what the traffic difference is between the front page
and "new" - that would determine if my theory had any merit.

------
kyro
Yes and no. Yes in that submissions do not rise solely based on their quality
and merits. But no in that I have seen many many submissions, specifically Ask
HNs, fall right through the 'new' page without an upvote. So I'll upvote them
after reading the title, and not clicking through. If it's something I can
help them out with, then I'll click through; if not, I upvote in hopes of
someone else answering. I'll admit, I've asked many times for an Ask HN of
mine to be upvoted because it seems that only when it hits the front page do
people come of out of the woodwork.

For some reason, many more submissions are slipping through the cracks. I
don't know if it's the algorithm that needs to be tweaked again or what.
Stories will skyrocket to 150+ points while others are left unnoticed. I'm
getting sick of seeing the same story on the front page for 2 consecutive days
while Ask HNs and other interesting submissions are falling through on an
hourly basis. That's why I'm ok with asking friends for upvotes.

~~~
jacquesm
So, you and your friends are free to make your own site then, where you play
according to your own ruleset. Where bringing your friends along to rig the
vote is an accepted part of the game. But to use some backchannel to
manipulate HN in order to have a louder voice than those that refuse to cheat
is really beyond the pale.

If you think that there is stuff that ought to change you can petition PG
about it and maybe he'll listen to you, maybe he won't, it is _his_ site after
all.

Essentially you and your buddies are hijacking the site for your own
gratification.

How many times do you do this?

Do you _really_ think that because the end justifies the means it is ok to
cheat?

~~~
kyro
Let's relax a bit and cut the dramatics.

I do it mostly, and not all that often, to increase the turnover rate on the
front page. And when I say 'I do it mostly', I mean upvote others' submissions
without giving them a proper read. Stories sit there for days in a row with
100s of points and so many comments while others asking for help aren't given
any attention. What I loved about HN was that I could visit it in the morning
and read and engage in one set of submissions, then log in at night and jump
into a completely different one. That's not the case now.

I've been here 3 times longer than you have, although I haven't quite engaged
as much, so to accuse me of trying to hijack the site for my own gratification
is kind of offensive given how long I've stayed here, which should show how
much I enjoy the community. I care about the quality here as much as you do.

~~~
jacquesm
yes, let's relax a bit. A community that I care about seems to have a _very_
undesirable element where people that pretend they are ordinary users collude
in order to change the atmosphere from something good in to the exact
opposite.

Again, I can't help but notice that your comment has an upvote within a 10
second window from its submission.

Tell me you didn't ask someone to vote you up?

Are you capable at all of simple discourse without resorting to cheats?

~~~
icey
Take it easy with the accusations. I voted his comment up when it was at 0
minutes. I wouldn't know kyro from Adam, I don't think I've ever had a
conversation with him about anything, let alone some sort of voting cabal.

~~~
jacquesm
Fair enough.

I'm reasonably pissed of about this because I see HN as one of the better
communities on the net and I'm really upset that there is a 'let's game the
system, because we're doing it it must be ok' group active here.

When I first saw this I thought it as incidental, but in fact it is a lot
worse than that.

If PG has the votes timestamped I'm pretty sure that there will be some
interesting stuff found in there.

~~~
sophacles
I think it is worth noting that many people here are the type to game the
system, not out of right, wrong, self interest or whatever, but because the
CAN. There is a certain amount of "how does this work", "how can i make it do
what i want" and whatnot inside of all of us on this site. I'll admit to doing
experiments that lead to "how to game hn" type knowledge (see some of my other
posts on this thread).

There is also a natural law on the net -- as a site gains more importance,
more people will try to game it. Its a sign of value. Eventually the gamers
will gut it, and it will be time to move on. See slashdot and kuro5hin for
notorious examples.

A final thought: there is always some amount of backchannel going on -- e.g.
YC founders hang together. It is futile (even silly) to suggest that we
pretend there is no backchannel, or to act as if there are not things
happening outside the site.

~~~
jacquesm
Excellent points, I think it is the second one you are making that I'm trying
to avoid here.

The gamers here seem to be more approachable than elsewhere so I figured maybe
there is a chance to make some of them think twice about rigging the system in
the future.

Maybe the opposite, I don't know. Backchannels are fine as long as they're not
abused, in this particular case I think the abuse is pretty obvious.

If you'd use your 'backchannel' to simply sharpen your postings and to use
that to increase the chance of being judeged on merit alone that would be
excellent. But to simply use it as a megaphone so you can drown out others
that play by the rules is completely out of bounds as far as I'm concerned.

~~~
roundsquare
Honestly, I think you are making some good points. However, I think they would
be better received if you changed the tone of your replies. Starting with
"well, you and your friends can leave" pretty quickly turns the the thread
from a discussion to an argument.

Just my two cents.

~~~
jacquesm
You are absolutely right.

------
blhack
I'd say that for HN, absolutely not.

One of the problems that I have with most moderation systems (reddit, digg,
HN, etc.) is that everybody has got _unlimited_ mod-power.

I can only speak for myself, but when I get slashdot moderator points, I make
_sure_ that I use them correctly; it feels like a privilege to get them.

Now, I don't think that that is the _best_ way of doing things, but I think it
is good.

The way I did it on my website (which is small, so I haven't _really_ gotten
to see if it works or not) is that you have to _earn_ your mod points by
submitting things and then having others upvote them. Points also expire after
24 hours. To me, encouraging your friends to upvote your stories is okay with
my mod system because if they upvote on thing, it means that they can't upvote
another.

I guess what I'm saying is _yes_ , it is bad...but only because you don't lose
anything by upvoting something. If mod points were limited, I don't see a
problem with it, at least not as much of a problem...it would be a bit like
encouraging your friends to use a product that you make, but still charging
them for it.

(my website is: <http://www.gibsonandlily.com> if you want to see the mod-
system I'm talking about).

~~~
jacquesm
That sounds really clever what you have built there.

~~~
blhack
Thanks :). Now if only I can figure out how to get people to actually _use_
it, haha.

------
axod
I've seen it happen...

The other 'quirk' which makes it a little worse, is that if someone submits
something, and just asks a couple of friends to upvote it _immediately_ , it
pretty much goes to #1.

Maybe the ranking algorithm should have some protection against that.

I think really, articles should rise and fall on their own merits, but I don't
think there's any reason not to tell friends about a cool submission. They
should then use their judgement as to if they upvote it.

------
petercooper
I've trawled /new a bit (though only once every couple of weeks or so) and
seen some good stuff that deserves to make the front page but only gets a few
votes - usually due to the time of submission or a crappy title. I wonder if
there's a way to get "around" that problem without resorting to bloc voting.

------
mcantor
I'm surprised that there are no voting systems which simply detect cliques,
and make your votes weaker when you're voting for someone in your clique.

That is, the more you vote for someone's submissions, the less "power" your
votes have when voting on them. As long as you balanced it correctly, you
would maintain the theme of compelling submissions hitting the front page
while removing clique-based vote problems.

If someone is so awesome that everyone upvotes every single submission they
have, and are thus part of their "clique," it still wouldn't be a problem,
because there would be enough people upvoting their submissions to counteract
the juice being removed from their individual votes.

~~~
sophacles
The ultimate problem with this is there is it invites more gaming, which
invites more rules.... and so on.

~~~
mcantor
True, but it doesn't invite any _more_ gaming than the existing system. That
is, you could game the "clique" system by registering new accounts, but you
could game the existing system that way, too.

~~~
sophacles
I dont know, sometimes codifying rules invites more gaming, particularly in
computery situations. When the rules are hard like that, a "win" is more
consistent and noticeable so more people will do it/notice the pattern/etc.

Also, my original meaning of more wasn't too clear, which was: adding more
rules can create unbalanced situations in which gaming has a greater effect,
since more rules stacking in weird ways potentially amplifies things.

------
adityakothadiya
Ideally it's not. But I've seen all YC alumni and founders upvote all other YC
company related posts within very short amount of time. Just add (YC Year) in
subject line, and it gets an upvote from other YC fellow.

I guess everything is fair in love, war and marketing (your startup or you).
:)

~~~
wgj
How do you know who's upvoting those submissions?

------
tokenadult
Many of the interesting problems mentioned here can be alleviated in large
part if a large part of the veteran participants here browse the new
submissions

<http://news.ycombinator.com/news>

and upvote those that most contribute to the HN community's interests, as
defined by the guidelines.

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

I'm sure some people ask for upvoting help from their friends, but I'm sure I
don't, and most of the time I think I get a fair response from the (unknown to
me) group of participants who either upvote or pass by my submissions. Random
issues like at what time of day in what time zone I post probably make a
difference, but I mostly don't worry about that.

~~~
jeremyw
Your submission record mirrors that of most of the top posters I see: the
majority of posts get a few votes and die. Assuming your content is HN worthy
and you're not posting too much, then it's not about fair, but far more
important is the too great volume of posts.

The exception in my limited scouting was those posters with a feel for
headlines, e.g. petercooper stands out with a better percentage.

------
prodigal_erik
In an attention economy, this is shoplifting. An upvote should mean "I
genuinely think this is interesting and worth reading". If I can manipulate
you into upvoting for any other reason, that's scarcely better than cracking
your account and pushing the button myself.

I want "how marketing works" to remain on topic here, but why must that always
attract the unscrupulous?

------
jacquesm
This is all in response to this exchange:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1035080>

------
alex_c
I have occasionally done this, for stories that are of personal importance to
me. I won't argue that it's absolutely justified, but there are a few reasons
I can still sleep at night after doing it:

1) I love the HN community, and would never do it for a post that I don't
think is of interest (for that matter, I wouldn't submit something that I
don't think would be of interest in the first place, so maybe that cancels
out).

2) It's never been more than about 2 votes, beyond which it floats or sinks on
its own merits. Yes, it can be argued that a story floats or sinks on its own
merits to start with, but there IS an element of luck - the 'new' page moves
pretty quickly now. If a story is only "worth" 20 votes in its lifetime, what
are the odds that one of those votes will happen when it's sitting on the new
page at 1 vote? Asking for an initial boost doesn't put a story on the front
page anymore, but it does guarantee that the community passes an actual
judgement on it.

3) I don't abuse it (by my own definition of 'abuse' - whose else would I
use?). I don't do it more than once or twice a year, and it's never for ego,
karma, traffic to my blog, etc. It's for something that is personally
important to me, and potentially useful to at least some members of the
community.

There IS one thing that bothers me:

1) It can too easily be a slippery slope. "Just this once" or "just a bit" can
too easily turn into "well, everyone's doing it", to the obvious detriment of
the site.

Overall, I see it as asking a friend for a selfish favor. If it's done too
often, or without giving anything in return, or without regard for the cost to
the friend, then it's a problem. If it's done judiciously - give and take - it
can be the basis for a stronger relationship.

------
rjurney
Most of my high up-vote links were seeded with my friends, and on twitter. Its
not necessary to ask for votes, they just happen. The first few friend votes
got the thing to the main page, after that they took off.

If its JUST friends, it doesn't stay on the main page. The algorithm works.

------
gyardley
I'd love to see Hacker News release who upvoted what, when - 'anonymized' if
necessary (although I'm skeptical whether anonymization with a unique ID would
truly be anonymous). The quantitative among us could mine the data for
interesting things and vote-rigging would be exposed.

Any reason why this data couldn't be made public? There's an implicit social
contract here - you don't expect the private to suddenly become public - but
if that's a concern, we could get around this by just exposing the data from a
publicly-announced point in the future.

------
rms
If you're going to do it, there's a big difference between giving a story 1 or
2 extra points and 5 or 10.

~~~
axod
1 or 2 extra points within the first few seconds of a posts existence makes it
shoot to the top 5 at least. I think the algorithm could do with some
modification for that sort of case.

~~~
jacquesm
That's still game-able.

Personally I'm pretty angry about this, also the fact that people seem to
think that there are justifications for behavior like this.

~~~
axod
I think you should credit the community with more integrity. I don't think
anyone here would blindly upvote a submission if asked to, without first
checking if the submission was in fact something they'd upvote anyway if they
knew about it.

Also for me, the ASK HN: submissions are the most interesting. Often they get
overlooked and buried. It'd be nice to have a separate page for ASK HN
submissions IMHO.

Anything to get more "ASK HN:" and less "ZOMG! Tablet! It's a tablet PC or at
least a rumor about one!"

Is asking friends to flag a submission 'wrong' also?

~~~
jacquesm
> I don't think anyone here would blindly upvote a submission if asked to

I wished that were true.

> Also for me, the ASK HN: submissions are the most interesting. Often they
> get overlooked and buried. It'd be nice to have a separate page for ASK HN
> submissions IMHO.

I fully agree with that.

~~~
swombat
_I wished that were true._

From personal experience of having _many times_ asked other HNers to have a
look to a story I submitted (often not one from my blog, but simply a story I
felt deserved some attention), it _is_ true.

------
ankeshk
Ideally should not be done. But disclosure: I've done it before. And I've done
it before because the first 10 minutes of submission seem to be very very
important for the life of the submission.

Ideally: it would be awesome if we could hide the entries we've already read
from the front page. And these entries are replaced by "new" entries. This
would give the new entries a fair chance - and people wouldn't resort to
gaming the system.

Also - giving points to people to visit the new page is a good idea.

------
icey
I've mentioned this a few times before, but I really wish votes here were
public information.

~~~
Mark_B
While a public voting record may work for members of congress, I can't see how
that would help. If anything else, I would be strongly discouraged from voting
on any submission if it might result in my being judged because of it.

~~~
icey
I never really thought about people getting judged based on the submissions
they've voted for - are you concerned about people coming back with "Mark_B,
you voted up that posting by Arrington, so I think you're a talentless hack"
or something like that?

~~~
Mark_B
Absolutely. Imagine the backlash in a "vi is better than emacs" thread.

~~~
icey
Would you still have the same trepidation if the data were generally
anonymized? I don't think there's a way to say that it would ever be actually
anonymous, but it would prevent casual browsing of someone's voting history
that way.

------
jrockway
People will read whatever is on the front page, regardless of interest. If you
want eyeballs, which almost everyone does, ensuring that you get on the front
page is an effective way of getting them. Getting your friends to upvote your
article is a good way to do this.

Saying it's unethical is not going to change anything. It's a social news
site, not some place where imaginary ethics matter.

------
johnthedebs
For one of the (few) stories I've submitted, I asked friends to take a look
and upvote the story if they found it interesting - not all of them did.

I felt that approach was okay because I routinely recommend my friends to
stuff I find interesting and, since I posted the story here, I obviously
thought it was interesting.

The votes I got were still based on merit, though, even if I did generate a
little bit of extra attention trying to get those votes.

That said, this is a really hard problem because it goes against the way
humans operate. We learn to trust or distrust certain sources and that affects
the way we view information we get from them - it simply takes too much time
to evaluate the trustworthiness of everything we encounter.

I don't have any specific suggestions (although I'll be thinking about it),
but maybe a system that operated with that in mind would have better success
even as it grew in popularity.

------
ErrantX
Define friends: do you mean HN users or just randoms? CLearly the last is
unethical and the first should be discouraged.

With that said I don't see anything wrong with either going to your HN friends
and saying "hey check this out and see what you think". It might well amount
to the same thing but I feel it is the right side of the communities "eithics"
[on the assumption that said HN friends are community spirited enough to judge
the post on merit] :)

\----

On a related anecdote; this is how I joined the community here. A friend asked
me to vote up his "here's my new site" post (actually to be accurate and fair
to him he asked a group of us if anyone had a HN account to add an upvote).
Anyway I created an account and upvoted... and then hung around.

I like to _think_ I'm a net gain to the community :) (certainly it has been
good for me personally) so perhaps this issue is not wholly cut and dried! :)

~~~
jacquesm
Sure, but that is not what this is about, this is about structurally having
your buddies upvote your stuff.

~~~
ErrantX
Ah right, well that is clearly wrong. I thought you were asking a broader
question.

Besides, I mostly wanted to give my anecdote ;)

------
azharcs
I would say posting and getting upvoted on HN should be like a litmus test for
the blog posts, write good blogposts, put your effort into it and post it on
HN to see if people like it or upvote it. If they don't, get back to work and
improve your writing or style enough to get upvoted by itself (not by
rigging). By asking your friends to upvote your posts (which I am assuming are
not good because if they were, you wouldn't need your friends) you might be
able to get couple of thousand views to your website, make couple of dollars
in advertising money and then maybe some discussion too, but you wouldn't
learn failure and improvement. So all I can say is, treat your posts like
litmus test and improve enough that they can't ignore you.

Be so Good, They can't Ignore you - Steve Martin

------
scott_s
Asking your friends to _look_ at something you posted is fair and expected.
They will do so because they're your friends. But then further leveraging your
social standing with them and explicitly asking for a vote is, I think,
detrimental to HN.

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koepked
I don't like the idea of doing this, but as others have pointed out, there are
many many submissions that never make the front page, and in many cases I
don't believe it's because they lack merit. I've seen times where the same
information was posted several times before one of the submissions hit the
front page. I've attempted submissions about 3-5 times, and pretty much gave
up on submitting after watching those submissions fall from the front page of
the new threads in a matter of about an hour. It very well could be that the
quality wasn't there in what I tried to submit, but, like others have said, a
lot slips through the cracks until it hits the front page.

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aplusbi
Anytime a friend of mine has asked me to upvote something (usually on digg)
I've read the article first and, if I liked it, I upvoted it. Most of the time
I liked it and most of the time I would not have read it if they hadn't asked
me to.

------
axod
Also, related question - is asking your friends to flag a 'flaggable' article
ok.

~~~
jacquesm
I've seen that happen too but it is much much harder to prove.

And if it were only the real flaggables that got flagged I'd not have a
problem with it but it is also used to bury stuff actively that is in
principle as good or better than things that are left untouched.

~~~
axod
Harder to prove? :/ This is a community. Seems like you're taking this all a
little seriously.

The bigger threat IMHO is things like the "OMG! This is a funny picture about
how programmers see each other ROTFL!". That got something like 80 upvotes
(Think it got killed _evertually_ , but still). That's a far bigger worry than
people asking friends to lend a vote or 2 to their submissions. IMHO

~~~
jacquesm
People ganging up on other people is a serious issue, and yes, it does happen.

The other item is also a big problem, but don't underestimate the pressure
that comes from having your comments systematically downvoted and/or your
submissions killed.

~~~
swombat
_People ganging up on other people is a serious issue, and yes, it does
happen._

I have not seen this happen. As far as I can tell it's a non-problem.

------
JoelMcCracken
How about a page that shows posts that are "about to die"?

Or, even, the ability to resubmit/revise one of your own almost dead posts?

------
ivankirigin
Yes. But don't be annoying about it.

A nice way to do it is to link to hacker news to comment. If they upvote,
good.

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j_baker
I think the deciding factor is this: are your friends voting you up because
your post was good or because they're your friends? I think there's only a
problem if it's the latter.

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araneae
The algorithm actually deals with this; if the same person keeps upvoting your
posts it will no longer work after a while.

So if you're using this strategy, save it for special occasions.

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nishantmodak
I never care about who posed it. If I like it, I recommend fellow HNers by
upvoting it (the content, not the author)

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pasbesoin
I think HN wants ranking based on content and not the poster's social network.

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angelbob
Seems like a bad idea to encourage such things.

~~~
Panoramix
I agree. I used to think that this kind of behavior had no place in this
forum. I was scared yesterday, when I noticed that hn had 4 front-page stories
in common with reddit. Perhaps limiting the number of votes a user gets would
make a difference?

------
anonjon
Why can't it be weighted so that if one person up votes the same person all of
the time, the up votes start to count for less.

Or if one person up votes more in general his up votes count for less.

Could be the same with down votes as well.

Would be a pretty easy system and would keep people from spamming up votes.
Maybe people would choose a bit more wisely about who it is that they give
points to.

------
hockeybias
No.

