Hi everyone,<p>I've been lingering around the site for a few months now, and I've submitted a few articles / blog posts that I have found interesting. However, they seem to get few views. It is mostly chance which posts become popular and get a lot of views? Is it a function of timing? Do you gain reputation by commenting on posts?<p>Just trying to get a better idea for how to engage well with the community here. Any ideas are appreciated.
I'm going to go a bit against the grain. The way to gain karma is to entertain your audience.<p>Like any performance, timing plays a role, quality plays a role, and luck should not be discounted.<p>However, one should not mistake what passes for entertainment on other websites for what people want from HN and are likely to reward. In general, HN expects accuracy and rewards insight and good writing. It definitely punishes trying to create inside jokes and exclusionary cliques (see PG's essay about high school).<p>So long as it is of high caliber, wit may be rewarded. The same is true to a lesser extent of sarcasm and even snark. My personal rules of thumb are: snark only if what I have to say is emotionally important enough to take the downvotes and karma hit in stride; avoid sarcasm in general; and if I am not sure something is really witty to forgo posting it.<p>With any type of comment, I am willing to delete it if it isn't going to accomplish my goal or add to the community...and yes, sometimes my ego is at odds with what adds to the community. Hopefully, that is less and less the case.<p>As far as submissions, I have had my most success with more technical articles and blogs, less with opinion pieces. Largely, getting a good article to the front page is a matter of luck for me.
I can't address submissions, but I can however address posts:<p>The unfortunate problem with this is that often, there is no direct link between comment quality and the amount of karma you receive for posting it as several walls must first be breached before your comment is even seen.<p>Firstly, the quality of the article in question is the most important outside factor, if it is a fluff piece, apart from several posts about it being a fluff piece there will rarely be a fair amount of visitors to the comments section, whereas well written, high quality articles tend to drag a crowd, curious to know what their peers have to say of the subject in question.<p>Secondly, the position of your comment in the comments section can be a massive boundary, you will find that often, the comment at the top has the most replies, this has a direct correlation to it's position of course, people tend to read what the see first (and to reach the top, it must have been up-voted, leading you to believe it will add value to the thread) although, the more cynical side in me wants to believe that some people post on high placed comments simply to farm karma with their yes-man comments.<p>After being seen, there is the length of your comment, people bore easily and if your comment isn't interesting (to the person reading in particular) from the first instance then they will move on without properly absorbing your opinion.<p>After gaining the initial traction to be read, then and only then is the quality of your comment going to become a variable in the equation of how much karma you will receive.
Hacker News is broken into many sub-segments. Everything you submit will catch the attention of a given demographic here. If you want to become popular, then address a common issue among demographics. Though "popularity" is not what you should seek. Be a valuable member of the community. Online <i>and</i> offline. Be a friend, a collegue, or just a hacker. Praise their successes, ignore their failures, help them cure their pain. Only then will you be, not only a valuable and reputable member of hacker news, but a valuable and reputable member of society. :)
Don't try to gain karma. Your phrasing in this title is going to ill serve you.<p>Repost this as what you seem to have intended, asking how to engage with the community.<p>Now, for anyone who is here to learn how to game karma, I'd like to convey the following:<p>Karma is an abstract way to show quality, a way to organize discussion on HN to prioritize valuable information and people with insight. It is not an end to itself, except maybe as an ego boost. Oh, I guess at some point you can down vote posts, but seriously, karma is a tool intended to benefit the community, not a measure of your value as a person, or your skills as a developer or entrepreneur.<p>Try to add to the community; Add your insight and knowledge, up vote good quality comments and posts that are interesting, and trust the community. Attempting to game karma detracts value from the community. You are better than that. We are all better than that. And if you do that, the karma will come.
I've looked through old comments a few times, and my opinion of my comment quality had only a very weak correlation to the number of upvotes my comments receive.<p>Specifically, comments that I thought made only small contributions to the conversation received the same number of votes on average as those that I thought were much better comments.
Good comments (thoughtful, insightful etc) will generally attract good reputation. Adding posts is a tricky one, and is a combination of timing, quality and luck.
Why are you trying to gain reputation? I don't know who has 5k karma and who has 50, but I do know which posters tend to make thought-provoking comments worth paying attention to.<p>If you want to engage with the community, then just do so. Ask questions, respond to posts intelligently and politely and you'll find people responding in kind.
Okay, so I have a question: When submitting a url, is there any reason to comment about the content? Is it all about using an appropriate title, or should there be some explanation/summary given?