

Show HN: Free Reddit submission scheduling and vote potential estimation - ElvisMa
http://www.redditlater.com/

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Houshalter
I don't understand the point of the analysis. A slightly higher percentage of
things might be posted at 8:00 on Wednesday. That doesn't mean it's the best
time to post. In fact it might be the worst time to post because you are
competing with all those other people.

Here's a better analysis for HN: [https://silverman.svbtle.com/the-best-time-
to-post-on-hacker...](https://silverman.svbtle.com/the-best-time-to-post-on-
hacker-news)

It measures the liklihood of reaching the front page at a given time, not the
number of posts at that time.

~~~
yaeger
>In fact it might be the worst time to post because you are competing with all
those other people.

I don't understand that reasoning. Yes you are competing with other people,
but for a reason. Reason being, during that time a lot more people are active
and that is why the chances are much higher to have a high scoring submission.

Isn't your reasoning the same as saying you shouldn't play the lottery using
"dates"? Like anniversaries or birthdays. So numbers 1-31 etc because that is
what everybody plays and if you win you have to split the pot with all those
other people? To me, this is ignoring the fact that a million dollars split
between 100 people is still a lot more than zero dollars you get for yourself
because you played different numbers.

~~~
Houshalter
Perhaps, but it's not exactly a fair system. Reddit is based on a "rich get
richer, poor get poorer" type model. The more people you are competing
against, the more likely you are to end up in tail end of the distribution.
There are only a limited number of slots on the front page after all.

No one sorts through the "new" tag, especially on reddit. So your post depends
on getting on the front page for a few minutes and hope a few people see it
and vote on it.

If there are many people posting, those precious front page slots will be
taken, and your post will appear on page 4 and sink down over time.

Hence you are far more likely to do well in a smaller subreddit than a larger
one. That wouldn't be true in your egalitarian model, where more users mean
each post gets proportionally more attention.

But in reality those extra users still all go to the top 25 posts, but the
competition to get there is increased.

>To me, this is ignoring the fact that a million dollars split between 100
people is still a lot more than zero dollars you get for yourself because you
played different numbers.

The expected payoff of a lottery ticket minus it's cost, is already negative.
If you divide up the jackpot it gets even worse.

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minimaxir
Here's a (old) heat map I made of Reddit submissions average score by time and
day-of-week of submissions:
[http://i.imgur.com/ur18gQa.png](http://i.imgur.com/ur18gQa.png)

Here's the heat map for only viral submissions:
[http://i.imgur.com/ct5LNcG.png](http://i.imgur.com/ct5LNcG.png)

Subreddit behavior will typically match the first chart due to Law of Large
Numbers. And almost all the time it will come down to luck so _score
prediction_ is misleading at best.

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avivo
What I thought this was, and what would be fascinating, is a tool that you
give both the post and context, and it predicts the response and posts it at
the ideal time.

This could work by training an ML algorithm over the reddit corpus (especially
the contextually relevant stuff -- the subreddit) and metadata (including post
time, among many other factors).

Even more impressively, it could suggest modifications, ala crystalknows.com.
Does anything like this currently exist?

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meesterdude
> The reddit ranking algorithm is time-sensitive

Can someone explain to me why on earth they would do this? It just seems like
they're throwing variables in a pot and coming up with ways to use them at
that point.

~~~
IanCal
As I understand it, it is time-sensitive but indirectly.

The number of votes compared to the age is important, but this isn't
normalised compared to the current vote rate. There's a significant
fluctuation in the number of people on reddit at different times of the day,
so when you submit can be important.

~~~
jkyle
This is absolutely correct. The algorithm is meant to quickly drop posts from
the top. Such that even if a post has a record vote score, it still will only
remain at the top for a few days.

The amix link above didn't load for me today, but I like this scienceblogs
post on the algorithm.[1]

 _edit_

It should also be noted that since reddit is open source, you can always dig
right in! [2]

[1] [http://scienceblogs.com/builtonfacts/2013/01/16/the-
mathemat...](http://scienceblogs.com/builtonfacts/2013/01/16/the-mathematics-
of-reddit-rankings-or-how-upvotes-are-time-travel/)

[2]
[https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/db/_s...](https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/db/_sorts.pyx)

~~~
ElvisMa
not only that, the ranking is also defined by the overall activity in the sub-
reddit it is posted in. So you can see a post with fewer upvotes, posted later
over a post which has a lot more upvotes posted earlier. Which means, even
submissions to very small sub-reddits have a decent chance to be promoted to
trending and to r/all even

~~~
jkyle
The trending or 'hot' algorithm is a bit different than the "top" algorithm.

I believe you're referring to the 'hot' algorithm which is meant to take
velocity into account. Velocity tries to abstract away contextual factors like
subreddit activity, number of votes, etc. and represent how quickly, relative
to number of participants, a post is 'rising'.

The 'top' algorithm, however, is purely a factor of total vote (up - down) +
time.

~~~
ElvisMa
oh,... yes you are right :)

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mkagenius
I wonder how would this succeed when they have thousands of posts to schedule
- each post will compete with the other. This might work when they have very
small no. of posts to schedule.

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anti-shill
frontrunning?

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ElvisMa
I can confirm that it is awesome, I use it for
[http://www.araprototype.com](http://www.araprototype.com) for a long time now
:)

