The Hacker News Experiment

andyking · on July 1, 2009

What does it take to write the ultimate newsworthy article?

Stick the words "Hacker News" in the post title and you're well on your way.

InkweaverReview · on July 1, 2009

Good point.

I didn't even think about that. ;)

mattmaroon · on July 2, 2009

I think the moral here is pretty simple, if you want points here just write about current hot button topics.

If you could make a tutorial for programming an iPhone app that searches for Tweets about Michael Jackson you'd get 100 points easy.

ErrantX · on July 2, 2009

I guess you just found that the oddest of articles can prove popular. I submitted a couple of my own pieces that I found really interesting and they just, well, died instantly :) And a recent off-hand analysis of modern cyber security brought in 1500 views...

One thing I do think is obiovus: unlike reddit and slashdot et all HN doesnt care if it is a self-submission. I avoid self-submitting elsewhere but deliberately take time to do so here. If it's not a popular article it will die quietly but no one will bitch about the factyou submitted it :)

InkweaverReview · on July 2, 2009

Good point.

On Hacker News you can submit your own articles simply because the community really does take the time to judge whether or not the article is any good.

I've received some really helpful feedback and suggestions from Hacker News members, and that is what I like most.

redorb · on July 1, 2009

I think this post was a experiment in recursion -

"will an article work, that talks about what makes a article work"? hmmmm - now how about 3x an article about this article that is of course about his 2 other articles. Fun.

InkweaverReview · on July 2, 2009

Very good point. You are the first one to figure it out. ;)

indiejade · on July 1, 2009

This might be more aptly titled "The Hacker News Linkbait Experiment".

PieSquared · on July 1, 2009

Why? What did he do that was so linkbait-y?

From what I can understand, his aim was to create an article interesting to read for the community around Hacker News. This article itself was an observation about what the community finds interesting, as well as a note about an anomaly he observed. Is there something wrong with that?

socratees · on July 1, 2009

We don't even know who the authors of that site are. Just having an about me section on the site would make the site more credible.

xenophanes · on July 1, 2009

the title is designed to be linkbait

chris11 · on July 1, 2009

Sure it seems like he is intentionally gaming HN, but I don't really see anything really bad in this case.

Sure, I guess the post about his initial observations on the Iphone SDK didn't say a lot, but I don't really think it was linkbait. I personally am not really interested in the Iphone SDK because I'm not doing any programming on the Iphone right now, and I probably won't start soon.

But he was interested enough in why the article did well to do some research and write an article he thought filled a need. I didn't realize that the Iphone was missing a basic tutorial, so if I wanted to start programming on the Iphone, I probably would have wasted some time looking for a good intro. Now I know where to find one.

So if he keeps writing informative and interesting articles like the Iphone programming introduction, I'll be happy. Even if he is writing the articles partially because he wants to figure out what will do well on HN.