No, just by observing the various postings and how they appear and disappear on the homepage.<p>I think this is one of the main reason why plenty of Ask HN style threads are gone before anybody gets a chance to look at them.<p>They're unpopular by definition, after all they ask the audience to do something (answer a question), this adds to that.<p>Then today I saw an Ask HN that was doing exceptionally well, and I noticed that the only thing that caused it to be ranked so high was that it was an external link.