

“a dribbling selfish jerk” – an analysis of getting on the front page of HN - kerno
http://afatefulhaven.com/2012/12/an-analysis-of-getting-on-the-front-page-of-hacker-news/

======
kyro
There is a large percentage of users on HN who are neither tactful nor
socially competent.

I've been here for 6+ years and while much of the time the discussions can be
insightful, many other times you get people who are overly aggressive and
downright mean because they're either unable to control their jealousy or
throw away all decency for the pursuit of Truth and Accuracy.

I really don't know if it's because of something like Aspergers, or that maybe
hackers tend to be overly analytical and take pride in that over being civil.
I find myself complaining about it from time to time.

This is the norm here.

Edit: OP, "A Dribbling, Selfish Jerk" should be the title of your blog from
now on.

~~~
jrogers65
It appears to be a hardware limit - humans can only consider a given number of
other humans as individuals. Everyone else composes "the others" and are
treated less favorably.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number>

~~~
SoftwareMaven
It is possible for one to group somebody outside our Dunbar number and not be
a douche[0]. Empathy is not as strong for people we don't know, but it is
still possible to have it (or even convincingly fake it as many on the Autism
spectrum[1] do).

In fact that empathy is what allows normal conversations to occur "in the
real". That people lose that empathy online isn't surprising, they are talking
to a screen, after all. But I also believe that those who can see past the
pixels and into the virtual eyes of the person they are talking to make better
real-life people. It also makes for much better conversations[2] online.

0\. I'm going to go Godwin here just by saying I'm going Godwin here. You know
what I mean!

1\. My wife works for a pediatrician and has told me they are no longer
considering Asperger's as its own syndrome (disease, disorder, I always get
those mixed up); it is just a place on the spectrum. I have no separate source
and just thought it was interesting. I also realize trusting what a single
doctor says is a really stupid move on my part, so please feel free to shred
me.

2\. If for no other reason than you don't have to read a bunch of self-
effacing, defensive crap, such as I wrote in the above footnote.

~~~
Crake
1\. I heard that too, actually. It looks like they just dropped it from the
DSM-5: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/dec/02/aspergers-
synd...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/dec/02/aspergers-syndrome-
dropped-psychiatric-dsm)

I guess it makes sense in a way, but it'll probably just confuse popular
conception of autism even further. Ah well.

------
pbateman
I'm just amazed someone is a sad enough individual to take time out of their
day to write a nasty email to someone they don't know. Don't sane people just
close the browser window and move on?

~~~
TillE
I snapped and wrote to Gruber once, pointing out exactly how he was factually
wrong about some Android issue. I believe he continued to write and be wrong
about it.

Clearly a waste of my time. I was at least polite, though.

~~~
huhtenberg
High-profile bloggers' priority is not to get the facts right. It is to
generate traffic.

~~~
drivingmenuts
It sounds like bloggers are devolving into the Angelyne's of the web (famous
for being famous).

------
petenixey
I actually think you got unlucky with this one. I've been fortunate enough to
get a few posts onto Hacker News over the years and I've never received any
remarks like the one you had.

Once bitten, twice shy (though also it appears twice on the front of HN so not
all bad ;) however my experience is that most of the discussion and feedback
from Hacker News is very good and that which is rude or genuinely unfair gets
downvoted pretty aggressively. That doesn't of course account for private
messages but for one reason or another I don't tend to receive those.

------
mahmud
It's better for the future of this site and "community" if it didn't become
people's goal to get on the front-page, or some such idiotic achievement.

~~~
kami8845
This is wrong. Making the frontpage === making something that is interesting
to hackers and gets upvoted.

~~~
mkhattab
No, it's wrong to make this the goal in and of itself. The purpose, according
to the guidelines, is to post something that is intellectually stimulating to
oneself. If it makes it on the front-page, then this is an indication that
others share the same perception. This is perhaps a fine distinction. One more
thing, your suggestion encourages groupthink and is something that I have been
observing on HN since I've signed up.

------
noelwelsh
Were I to have written this, I would have included a link to the post in
question. That seems a pretty obvious traffic acquisition strategy to me. When
you write a followup about how _this_ post was included on the front page
perhaps that will be a point under "The Bad" :-P

The few times I've been on the front page of HN I've had a fairly consistent
1000 visitors per hour, FWIW.

~~~
kerno
Hey Noel,

Thanks for the tip! I've made that edit now, can't believe I overlooked that.
Too much Christmas cheer in my system!

------
dizzystar
I was on the front page the day I released my "blog" website. I ended up being
on the front page for a few hours, but that is partly because I released on a
Saturday evening. The traffic was shocking.

I didn't end up with any really bad feedback. In fact, I was immensely pleased
with the feedback I received and the commentary I had here on HN. I think it
was obvious to those who visited that the site was brand-new and rusty. I
considered adding a comment area to the site, but I decided against that for
several reasons I don't want to get into here.

I also thought I missed out on the social media stuff, but I don't think I
did. The traffic was very healthy from social media because people _wanted_ to
share my article, and I don't think that any real reminder would have caused
people to share that would not have. I did add social sharing buttons on the
site for about a week and the sharing decreased during that time. Also, there
was a lot of traffic from "other" social media outlets, so how many buttons
would I really need?

Congrats on front-paging again. It really is a nice feeling.

~~~
kerno
Hi dizzystar,

Thanks for your congrats - it does feel good, although I'm sure some of that
is the pre-Xmas drinks!

I'm surprised that when you added sharing buttons that sharing decreased - do
you have any idea why?

~~~
dizzystar
There could be several reasons, but my research suggests that the practice of
using social-sharing buttons blows up in your face more often than not. It may
have been partly because of the location of the sharing buttons (this
apparently is the number one issue). It could also be a matter of timing: I
would have to get front-page here again with social sharing so I have proper
data to work with.

I did have significant traffic from another site I won't name here and that
didn't generate any social sharing. I honestly think people will share only if
they want to. I've recently been paying more attention to the counters on
other websites, and it is quite surprising anyone would publicly advertise
such low numbers.

I guess you'll now have some gAnalytics to look at and you'll get a more clear
picture of where your traffic comes from.

------
thomasbk
I'm surprised that he got fewer than 1000 hits. I always thought that
HackerNews and Slashdot (probably much larger, I guess) would send way more
people, for some reason.

I guess HN traffic is quite targeted and valuable to some people though.

~~~
daeken
I'm sort of surprised by this too. Perhaps it comes down to titles and time of
day? Most of the posts I've had hit the front page get >20k hits the first
day, but I also word my titles carefully (no linkbait, but make it catchy) and
time the submissions when I know that the maximum number of people will see
them.

------
dendory
I've been on the front page a few times and got around 10,000 to 20,000 visits
from it. It often brought many more comments on the posts that made it than
when people find it another way, but I saw no real increase in social sharing.
Opposite that, if a post makes it to a fairly popular subreddit, I get a lot
less comments from that kind of traffic, but on the other hand the posts will
tend to be picked up again by other blogs or sites. I found that interesting.

------
barking
If you make a comment that's downvoted, it gradually becomes invisible to the
extent that people have to select it to view it.

I know from experience that either people do just that and then downvote or
else downvote unread. Either way it smacks of kicking a dog when it's down.

It seems anomalous that when a comment is upvoted no one knows it except the
person voting and the person getting the vote but when you're downvoted
everyone knows it.

------
businessleads
We were on the front page briefly the other day
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4916201>) and got about 2,800 visitors.
The comments were largely helpful and the experience a positive one overall.

On the other hand, nobody succeeded in earning the $2,500 bounty yet.

------
epicjunction
PG's hierarchy of disagreement should be a sticky post on the front page for
this reason. +1. Thanks for sharing.

------
DanBC
I'm guessing that someone posting like that on HN would quickly be downvoted
and then shaddow-banned.

Comment systems are baffling, and it's an important problem that needs some
work.

Don't say what it is, but did they use a real name or an obvious psydonym or
pseudoanonymous?

------
jacques_chester
My unseemly ranting about a popular hosting service was pinned to the top of
HN for about a day. It was good for about 20,000 visits.

If you think 20,000 visits in 24 hours is a lot, it's not. It just isn't. It
hasn't been since 1998.

But the audience is valuable.

~~~
crntaylor
Surely it's all relative? Sure, 20,000 people in a day might not be a lot when
compared to 'total people using the internet every day' or even 'total people
looking at HN every day' but it's a huge number when compared to 'total people
looking at my blog on an average day'.

------
chris_wot
Now that you have all your analytical installed, I'm interested in seeing what
they produce :-)

------
treskot
Congrats you're on the front page of HN now! Nice insights on the post though.

------
rdl
Heh, now you've gotten on the front page twice. Yay?

------
danso
I've honestly struggled with how to give feedback to other users on HN. It's
not hard to be civil, but my automatic reaction is to look for things to
_criticize_ , not because I'm overly critical, but because I assume that's the
purpose of submitting your work to HN in the first place...if you're confident
enough to do so, I guess I just assume you have a decent amount of self-
validation going and more patting-on-the-back is going to be less helpful than
critique.

*

Having read your original post on HN, I noticed you didn't actually fix the
problem that the rude user complains about. The rude user is definitely out of
line, but are you really much better by just dismissing their point as simply
"sheer mind-numbing stupidity"? Is the user wrong because he/she was an
asshole or just wrong period? Because I think the user had a good point: you
refer to an off-site video that you don't show until the very end, and you
don't even link to the indepth NYT article that includes the video, which
would be common courtesy for any SEO specialist.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
There was nothing broken. Why should he fix it? Putting the video at the top
would result in people watching the video, then ignoring the words, because,
hey, they just watched the video. Putting it at the bottom makes it an extra
treat for those who put in the effort to read the words.[1]

And that is exactly the problem with feedback online. Instead of assuming
something is the way it is for a reason, people assume it is that way because
the author, who spent who knows how much time thinking about things, was too
selfish to cover my own particular need.

I think selfish is the right word for how people view it. If it was just
incompetent, people would be more willing to help. But people take it
_personally_ , and that implies people see open hostility.

On the other hand, when competence in the author and humility in ourselves is
assumed, the dialog is much more interesting and useful. Instead of just
shredding the work, helpful language and reasons for the concern are used.

1\. I have no idea if this is the author's actual thought process, but when I
viewed the page, I immediately thought, "Wait, it makes _sense_ for the video
to be at the bottom. Anywhere else would be highly distracting to the
article."

~~~
danso
Well, yes, something _was_ broken. The author makes reference to a video
without saying where it exists, even though it seems to be a video that exists
on the Internet. This leads the user to believe that maybe his browser is
broken or that the JS on the page is broken.

Is it really an either-or situation here? If it's not right for the video to
be at top (which would go against a lot of other user-studies showing how
important it is to have imagery leading the text, and how especially important
it is to have assets close to where they are referred to in the text) then
there should be a link. This is how the web was meant to work. If the readers
end up clicking through (there's no reason you can't just have it anchor to
the bottom instead of going externally) and never come back to the text, then
that is an issue of the author not fulfilling his first rule of advice: "I
like the first line to be funny right away" (replace "funny" with
"compelling").

And you may be right, just because the author did it this way doesn't mean
that he is "selfish". But it's hard to have any sympathy for him when he rips
on someone for being ad hominem with an ad hominem attack.

(Also, it's worth pointing out that if the OP author had explicitly made the
argument that it's good SEO practice to put the source material at the bottom
and force the reader to discover it at the bottom, the OP would never have
been upvoted to the front page. I don't think that's a design philosophy
shared by many at HN)

