Ask HN: Why do “Show HN” posts rarely make it to the front page?

[abhisuri97]

[blackdogie]

Because they don’t generate interest ?

[abhisuri97 → blackdogie]

But they get a number of upvotes (which could be considered a proxy indicator of interest). In some instances the show page top submission has a higher up vote count than most of the front page but still does not show up.

[cottsak → abhisuri97]

It's not for us mere mortals to try understand the HN home page algorithms .. but there are a couple of lines here https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

[Tomte → abhisuri97]

There a few Ask HNs. You can see that the Ask HN page moves much slower.

So the upvotes are spread out over a long time, and the ranking algorithm heavily discounts spread-out upvotes.

[gamechangr]

two reasons:

1) top stories are usually very unique or a good debate

2) if it worked, people would work together to game the system.

[random_comment → gamechangr]

> very unique

I once read a short article by a journal editor, on the theme of contributors describing their work as 'extremely unique'.

Something is either unique or it's not.

If anyone knows the article I'm referring to, I'd appreciate a link, I've been trying to find it again for a year or two.

[caseyf7]

Mainly because they are unique so they are not automatically upvoted when duplicates are submitted the way articles are.