

Ask HN: How come my submissions drop so fast? - Killah911

Just wondering, I submitted a couple of articles and one question.  The submissions were barely on the first page for a couple of seconds.  Is there some automation built in that's doing it? really hoping this question will an answer before it drops too
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wbhart
There's an article somewhere about how the HN algorithm works. I think it
ranks articles roughly speaking according to how many upvotes they received
over a given time period. So you need sustained and concentrated interest to
keep them up on the first page. I think I have also seen references to some
topics which are made to "fall" faster than others because otherwise there is
a tendency for them to get upvoted to such a degree that they clog up the main
page (but someone may correct me if that is not the case).

But it sounds as if you might not be even seeing the front page. Click on
"Hacker News" not "new". The latter is just a list of all articles that get
submitted, many of which haven't made it to the front page yet.

To get it to the front page it should be on topic, it must have a catchy
enough title that people will want to click on it, and the article itself has
to be interesting enough that people will upvote it. I think there is a slight
disadvantage for articles that are really interesting and take a long time to
read, as by the time people have finished reading them, they will have already
fallen off the edge of the world. But no one ever claimed the world was fair
(I believe it is almost universally accepted that it is not flat though).

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Killah911
Thanks for the info. I was actually referring to the AskHN and the main HN
page. In both instances, they were there for just an instance (1 page refresh
long). I thought maybe my submission hadn't made it thru. I'd really
appreciate it if you'd post a link to the page you were talking about. I
looked thru the "Guidelines" page and I wasn't really violating any of the
rules/guidelines there. Thanks!

~~~
tokenadult
See this:

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

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sid6376
Are you looking at the newest page (<http://news.ycombinator.com/newest>)?
From what you say, it seems you are.

~~~
Killah911
Actually, I'm not looking at the new page. I was just looking on the main
hacker news page or the AskHN page. I was more perplexed by the AskHN dropping
so quickly. It was literally there for 2 seconds and as soon as I hit refresh,
it was gone. Maybe my question was too long... Thanks for replying though, I
really appreciate it :)

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pilom
4pm eastern time to 7pm pacific is peak time for submissions b/c everyone gets
to the end of their day and starts browsing the web.

