As the title states.. Is the HN ranking algorithm based purely on a post/comment's upvotes and engagement, or is the author's karma points an input into the algorithm as well?
There's no documented karma input to ranking and I doubt any exists. Stories I submit are picked up as randomly as anyone else's.<p>The same isn't true of stories I write; I have a pretty good track record of getting blog posts on the front page. But HN doesn't know when something I've submitted is something I've written; what gets stories from high-karma users ranked is mostly just name recognition.<p>I doubt people are looking at the submitter name when choosing to upvote stories; I do think some subset of them look at the domain name of the story site though.
<a href="https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented</a><p>This might help answer some of your burning questions.
I have moderately high karma, and I haven't noticed any evidence that my posts are treated favorably as a result. I'm less sure on comments. At times I have suspected that comments from high karma users may get bubbled up, but I certainly couldn't swear to it.
FWIW, I just commented on the Ask HN about career advice and my comment landed about 2/3rds down the page. Seems like a data point for the "ranking of comments does not look at karma" point of view.
I don't know if it is purely based on upvotes but what I can say for my account is that on average I used to get significantly less then one karma point per upvote. When I watched the upvote counter on the individual item[1] and compared it with my karma increase a view years ago it was pretty consistent at 0.5.<p>Back then I shrugged this of as effect of the voting ring detector but it left me wondering: can the false positive rate be so high and so consistent ... IDK. Needless to say that I never participated in a voting ring and I'm not that well connected that many upvotes should be from the same people.<p>An alternative explanation that crossed my mind was if it could depend on the story/comment ratio because back at the time I submitted much more stories than I wrote comments. I did this with good intentions, I often like to read what other think even if I don't get involved in the discussion, but I could understand if a platform incentivized a healthy ratio of submissions and discussion.<p>[1] I can't remember if this was true for stories or comment but I think I could only see it for one type of submission.
The latter would create a bubble of some people’s submissions flooding the site over time and not allowing others’ submissions to come to the front page.<p>The ranking <i>is affected</i> to a good extent by when a post is submitted because of the times (and time zones) when more HN voters are online and active.
I have had a few of my post make the front page and I don't have a lot of karma and don't personally know anyone else who has a user account here.<p>I've also posted a link that got buried without anyone looking at it, then came back later in the day to see someone else posted the same thing from a different source and it made the front page.<p>If there are others gaming their posts here to get karma points they can have them. As far as I know there's no place to cash them in so it doesn't cost me anything.<p>It's nice to see others find what I've submitted interesting and "karma" gives us a measure of that, but the reason I check into HN is to find things that interest me.
I'm new here, but my limited experience so far has been good. I've only submitted a handful of things, of which I initially thought "this deserves much more up votes," but in retrospect I came about and acknowledged my bias because I'm the author or it fits my worldview. I don't think all my posts merit their current karma, but most do.<p>Also, somehow I find myself being disincentivized to post unhelpful comments.
As a matter of fact, every time I share an article I found on Hacker News I recommend people reading the comments. This site definitely has the highest helpful to unhelpful comment ratio.
I suspect even if it's not done deliberately it happens as a self-fulfilling prophecy. The people that have high amounts of karma tend to post better articles so people are more likely to look at them or follow the person.
I've sometimes submitted some of my own content here, usually without much happening. Then have someone else (not always with more karma) submit it again 1 to 24 hours later and it got to the front page. I've also had content do fairly well on e.g. Reddit or Lobsters be pretty much ignored here as well.<p>I call it the HN roulette. I think HN is just too large and a lot of good content (or at least, I'd like to think my own content is good, heh) gets missed. Quality of the content is definitely a factor, as are things like an enticing headline, but you also just need to be lucky.
Things that I have seen that influence whether a story will end up being ranked: 1) Timing. Early in the morning Eastern US time 2) The uniqueness of the posting. When everyone is posting COVID or protest stories, a story about an interesting astronomical event (e.g. PHA) is slightly more likely to get a kick. 3) I suspect that there may be a tendency to browse /newest by some folks and if they see submissions by posters they know, there may be a slight liklihood of upvotes.
Not 100% sure, but:
- Karma is indeed a good indicator.
- Having a 'non'-anonymous HN profile also seems to make your posts more credible.<p>Otherwise, good luck!
Karma is a meaningless number. It depends more on luck than good management. I've put well-written posts out there with no karma given. I've also written throw-away lines that gain oodles of karma. Go figure.<p>20 million karma points and five bucks will buy you a coffee.
I always thought it would be neat to apply something like pagerank to reddit (or HN, or whatever) comments. Surprised nobody has done this.<p>(Maybe it would turn into an echo chamber pretty fast, but I'm not 100% certain, which is like I'd like to see someone try it.)
Technically, I suspect there's a <i>very</i> strong correlation. You get a lot of karma for popular posts.<p>But never seen any evidence that the system gives you preferential treatment if you have good karma.
No, but the only way to get a post to the front page of HN these days is to discreetly ask a bunch of your friends to upvote it. And people with high karma are probably people who tend to have other friends who are also HN readers and who they can ask for upvotes.<p>As much as this probably isn't the fair system we all want, it's what the system's optimization encourages today.<p>Try posting something SUPER interesting, staying quiet and not telling anyone. It's almost guaranteed not to make it to the front page.<p>Although I don't encourage this, with the current algorithm, you could probably even <i>prevent</i> others' from getting their work on the front page by posting it ahead of time. When they try to post it they'll get a duplicate link but it's already stale and past its upvote-to-front-page life, which is probably about 30-60 minutes.