Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?
What I find strange is that Hacker News feels oddly opaque. I’ve never met anyone who can clearly explain how it works in practice. Not just the rules, but the dynamics: what’s repeatable, what’s luck, and what actually matters.
By using the Kevin Bacon-number idea: I can usually get within three degrees of separation of well-known technologists like Linus Torvalds, but I can’t seem to get within three steps of someone who confidently understands how HN works.
So I’m asking sincerely: Does anyone here feel they understand Hacker News? If so, what are the real levers, and what do people consistently misunderstand?
PS: This question comes from a mix of genuine curiosity and personal frustration. I’m honestly trying to understand how HN works in practice.
82 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 102 ms ] threadThe HN audience upvotes it or downvotes it or flags it or ignores it.
From the reaction, you get an impression of the reception of the thing.
That's... it.
Be somewhat novel, communicate very clearly (particularly what is' for and why you might want to use it, even if that seems obvious to you) and post around mid-morning PST so people can goof off from work to 'research' your interesting new thing.
use prefixes [Tell HN: Ask HN: Show HN:] and suffixes [ [PDF] [video] [1995] ] where needed.
be a human being, dont repost, or post promotional materials for adspace, cultivate a nuts and guts discussion for any project you promote rather than a sales ad.
There are no "levers". People come to HN to discuss nerdy topics and those that have come to HN to help make those discussions more informed and interesting are welcome. Anyone who comes to HN to create buzz, drive site traffic, do SEO, or market something, whether it be a product or themselves, can expect an extremely frosty reception, particularly since the rate of spam submissions is high lately. And we are certainly not here to be a gauge of interest to any investors.
The one semi-exception is Show HN, which is intended to showcase something interesting that users can play with. There are separate specific guidelines for Show HN submissions (https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html) and tips from the site moderators (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22336638). Do note that among the tips is the following "Drop any language that sounds like marketing or sales. On HN, that is an instant turnoff. Use factual, direct language. Personal stories and technical details are great." If you have questions about the guidelines or tips, the site moderators can be reached through the email on the contact page linked at the bottom of the page.
I disagree, there are always levers. But the "comfort-zone" of HN's mods and crowd is much smaller and more specific, while the attention on misbehaviour is much sharper, so the lever are not as easy to pull as on other platforms. HN is basically hard-mode, compared to any big noisy platform.
> Anyone who comes to HN to create buzz, drive site traffic, do SEO, or market something, whether it be a product or themselves, can expect an extremely frosty reception, particularly since the rate of spam submissions is high lately.
That's only true if it's done poorly, or outside HNs core-topics. There is a good deal of sneaky marketing on HN, but usually well integrated into the normal flow of comments, so It's either accepted in context, or low enough to fly under the radar. In a nutshell, this means, everything is accepted, as long as it brings value, high entertainment or satisfy curiosity, and is not just selling stupidly in your face.
At the end, HN is still a platform of smarter and more educated people, and they want to be handled on their level. If you can match this, you can pull every lever they've given space for. But of course, that's not something many can easily do.
There are never "no levers" - the best you can do is make sure that the levers you know about are aligned with the purpose of the site.
And that works pretty well. Don't SEO-post, write a blog about some technical aspect of SEO-posting, and you'll do better.
HN-posting successfully can't really be done "at scale" - by design.
Here's a successful formula, but takes some time.
Participate, read things you know about and are interested in. Post comments. Eventually you'll find yourself repeating, or linking to previous comments. Write a blog post about that. Post it.
HN is very self-explanatory if you take it for what it is — a discussion forum. It’s a place where some people post ideas, questions, news, or projects and other people respond to them. That’s it. If you post something interesting or meaningful, then people will respond.
Your question makes me feel ancient because I fear that the concept of communicating to spark conversation (as opposed to communicating to promote or to manipulate or to drive traffic or to pull any number of other “levers”) is exceedingly a thing of the past.
It's true that this place can be cryptic, and that has downsides—specifically, it can be confusing to newcomers, even to some newcomers who would make ideal HN users. That sucks.
But there's a key that unlocks most of the puzzles. That is to understand that we're optimizing for exactly one thing: curiosity. (Specifically, intellectual curiosity, since there are other kinds of curiosity too.) Here are links to past explanations about that: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
We try to elevate things that gratify curiosity: creative work, surprising discoveries, deep dives, technical achievements, unusual personal experience, whimsical unpredictability, good conversation, etc. And we try to demote things that run against curiosity, especially repetition, indignation, sensationalism, and promotion.
It gets complicated because you'll also see plenty of repetition, indignation, sensationalism, and promotion on HN—alas! This is the internet after all. But the site survives because the balance of these things stays within tolerable ranges, thanks to two factors: an active community which cares greatly about preserving this place for intended purpose (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html); and an owner (Y Combinator) that pays us to work on the site full time and mainly just wants us to keep it good, to the extent possible.
If you really want to figure this place out, the way to do it is as a reader. Hang out on the site, look at the mix of articles that make the frontpage, spend time in the discussion threads (hopefully the interesting sectors and not the flamey ones!), and over time your eyes will adjust.
What doesn't work—and this is good because we want it not to work—is approaching HN as a platform for promoting content. If you (<-- I don't mean you personally, but anyone) mainly care about "how can I use this thing to get attention for my startup/blog/project/newsletter", then you're operating in 'push' mode rather than 'pull' mode (or 'idle' mode, which is even better). In that case you won't be curious because you're too focused on what you're wanting for extraneous reasons—and if you aren't in a state of curiosity, this place won't make sense. At least we hope it won't!
However, I feel like there's a lot more repetition, indignation, sensationalism, and promotion on HN in the last few months than there has ever been.
I feel like every other thread on here devolves into an unhinged rant about AI, enshittification, privacy, or crazy conspiracy theories about age restrictions on social media and the politicians passing them (which I'm personally a staunch opponent of). It's all the same arguments over and over, most of them without a shred of evidence. It feels like people aren't arguing in good faith any more, we're all just screaming our politics at (or past) each other. This didn't use to be the case.
(yes I know I have showdead on, those are not the dead comments).
Are there any other mods besides you?
Also it just occured to me, is dang one person or a account the represents all mods?
Hacker News can only be "figured out", relative to what looks like the biases and financial interests of ownership and its staff, where they do the "pushing" (elevating) and "demoting". This "state of curiosity" being referred to, appears to include wanting readers to blindly accept what is fed to them, and ignore or not question strange inconsistencies.
Newcomers and outsiders would usually be expecting transparency, honesty, and impartiality. Their confusion, can be when they notice the difference in moderation based on adhering to a clear and obvious standard versus the hidden, strange, inexplicable, or unequal treatment.
The only really opaque thing I’ve found is the anti spam/anti flame war rules but it’s not crazy to keep those secret and I say that as someone who gets temp banned by those rules on here frequently
edit: oh, you should also go to your profile and set showdead to `yes` if you want to see the unfiltered forum. You'll get about 10% controversial opinions and 90% green name accounts posting spam.
Ah and if the poster's name is green in your browser it means they are a very new account
- the older it is, the less score
- the more votes and comments it has, the higher the score
- penalties reduce the score ( eg. By moderator)
How it works for the end-user:
- People browsing in newest, make it visible in the main page.
- Most people see the main page
Result: interesting topics go to the main page
But the reason they won't tell you is that the entire reason it works is because you don't know.
For instance I submitted an article three times (spaced a year apart). The first two times the article got no upvotes. The third time it got 600+ and hit the top of the front page. It's just a matter of who happens to be looking at the New page at the time.
If there is one thing to note, it’s that obvious self-promotion is not good. Technical details are more interesting than sales pitches.
Money. A spot as US citizen to get into startup school.
Money. An investment from a noble mind to another noble mind.
Money. Pass information to fellows at YC (who are from a different domain, see YC as a cool place) they crowd and promote (seems organic)
Money. Well, then the product or the tech fades, because its a bloatware.
They retry the same thing again with next batch of people. Keeps the forum running. The maintainers get retired or really tired.
Readers. I have seen this one before. Reader. Well, now, you are old
I found out, the other day, that if you post too many comments in too short a time (also undocumented) your final comment is deleted (sorry, you just lose it) instantly with a somewhat snarky message about how you post too much.
I am a little mystified about what community Hacker News serves. It doesn't seem to be the kind of hackers I grew up with (fiercely skeptical, a la 2600 magazine), because, as one example, skepticism about AI or self-driving vehicles is generally downvoted.
Not so much Hacker News as Next Shiny Toy News.
Even so, I know of no better way to discover interesting tools and trends than Hacker News.
Sometimes my friends post on social media platform A "Hey, I've just posted on platform B. Upvotes appreciated."
Or a newsletter will say "please share this post on…"
Or people on Discord / Slack / Matrix will say "people are being mean to me on platform C, where are my defenders at?"
HN feels organic - and is pretty well moderated - but it isn't immune to family & friends giving something an initial boost.
But if no one wants to discuss it, the post will falter.
As for the other levers, it is hard to say. Sometimes the posts I've worked hardest on with the most detail just die a death. But the half-finished thought casually tossed off will Do Numbers. Outrage sometimes works, but it is a fickle friend to tame. Catchy titles aren't clickbait (despite what some people say) but they work best when they are descriptive.
And, finally, people can and do resubmit stuff. What doesn't work at 0900 Monday will be popular at 1700 Tuesday. Why? That's just the way it is.
In the end, it is all luck. But, as the saying goes, the harder you work the luckier you get.