Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors

Re:Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors by wenc on Thursday February 22, 2018 @12:59PM (#16439653)

I find that true technical commentary is often less appreciated than superficial technical statements.

Using only myself as an example:

* I write a comment about databases and data science that comprises hard-won insights borne out of years of experience and mistakes -> {0, 1, 2} upvotes.

* I write a throwaway comment about IBM PC-DOS -> many more upvotes (>10).

I'm not complaining. I think HN merely conforms to the broader pattern of the world.

It does have one downside: very often, soundbite comments that are naive or wrong get upvoted a lot. [0]

[0] http://danluu.com/hn-comments/

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Re:Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors by c22 on Thursday February 22, 2018 @02:08PM (#16440404)

Anecdotally I find the largest factors affecting number of upvotes are time of day and how recently the thread has been on the front page.

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Re:Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors by bjelkeman-again on Thursday February 22, 2018 @07:02PM (#16442824)

Comments higher up on the page also get more upvotes. Not everyone reads all of the comments and you get this effect.

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Re:Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors by BatFastard on Thursday February 22, 2018 @06:29PM (#16442591)

dat true!

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