
Ask HN: How would you maximize rep/upvotes? - muzani
Not saying rep is important, but I find that rep&#x2F;likes&#x2F;upvotes are a good representation of that community. When people get annoyed by the culture, they leave or don&#x27;t contribute, so it self selects.<p>Every community seems to have these things that trigger an avalanche of shares, upvotes, downvotes or whatever. What I find more fascinating is how one would increase or decrease rep in a repeatable manner.<p>Whether it&#x27;s HN, Reddit, Facebook, Stack Overflow, Quora. What patterns have you found?
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CamelCaseName
Reddit: Low hanging jokes are easy to pump out and do very well. I have
several 100K+ comment karma accounts. Find some rising threads where the
kitchen sink could contribute and make a short (1 line) joke. For thread
karma, simply repost to the default subreddits whatever was posted ~ a year
ago.

Alternatively, you could copy and paste the top imgur comment, or the top
Reddit comment if it is a repost. This would be easy to write a bot for.

HN: Jokes don't do that well here, for better in my opinion. Volume is much
more important. Many 1-2 paragraph posts will do well for you, though this
requires a lot of domain knowledge. Going after the low hanging fruit, like
"hating" on Uber, or privacy qualms on Facebook, also helps as these tend to
attract the most comments.

And of course, for both sites, going for breaking news topics when they are
relatively fresh is a huge multiplier. Being 1h earlier is the difference
between 10 points on HN and 100.

Stack Overflow: SO is very different. Aim to answer introductory level
questions with a substantial amount of detail and links. Quality is much more
than quantity. The key is answering homework questions that will be googled by
undergrads (like myself, sorry) and viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

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CamelCaseName
Facebook: Be attractive and accept all friend requests.

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muzani
I find that there's momentum for most of them. If someone liked your last
post, they're more likely to like the next one. If their friends 'wow' react
your post, you're more likely to get a higher ratio of 'wow'. If you (visibly)
hit 20 upvotes, it's easy to get to 80.

Facebook: Emotional content is extremely popular, so much so that many
"influencers" choose to be continually angry or sarcastic. Second is things
that are shocking or surprising.

Instagram: Really beautiful pictures first. Use hashtags that get a lot of
traffic; hashtags are like a highway, they're how people browse. Good stories
matter too, and it's surprisingly a great place to blog as long as you take
good photos. Being pretty will earn you a lot of followers but isn't
necessary.

Stack Overflow: Write in a format easy to copy paste or step by step
instructions. Theoretical posts don't do well.

HN: Productivity advice is very easy to farm, e.g. how to stop
procrastinating. A lot of people are experienced; some Dilbert style criticism
on bad work habits is easy rep. But jokes and hyperbole get downvoted. Don't
write too much, around 200 words is ideal.

