Title: I&#x27;ve recently been seeing many comments on Hacker News complaining that their submissions don&#x27;t receive any points. As a result, they believe that vote manipulation techniques such as begging friends for votes on social media and using sockpuppet accounts to counteract this injustice are justifiable and that &quot;everyone&#x27;s doing it&quot;. While blatant voting manipulation may be the status quo at a certain other startup-oriented link aggregator, it is never good because it breaks the integrity of the service.<p>However, the lack of upvotes is just how link aggregators work.<p>The goal of many HN posters is to hit the front page. If you&#x27;ve received 10 points, you&#x27;ll probably have hit the front page. However, depending on time of submission, you have a 10% to 20% chance of hitting 10 points: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;MdUvMB9.png<p>That&#x27;s low, even if your blog post or startup is the Next Big Thing.<p>However, what&#x27;s the typical behavior for HN submissions? Here&#x27;s a chart of the median points for HN submissions at each timeslot: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;SN5BuAJ.png<p>The median is either 1 (no upvotes) or 2 (just 1 upvote), which reinforces how the typical behavior of HN really is.<p>Yes, it&#x27;s possible for submissions to slip through the cracks. HN allows resubmission of links if they haven&#x27;t had any discussion (as long as you don&#x27;t delete-then-resubmit to obfuscate the fact that it&#x27;s a report). If your submission doesn&#x27;t get points, submit again later.<p>(Code and data for the two charts are available in this GitHub repository: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;minimaxir&#x2F;hn-heatmaps)
Upvote: