How Hacker News ranking works: scoring, controversy, and penalties (2013)

How Hacker News ranking works: scoring, controversy, and penalties (2013)righto.com

The basic formula for Hacker News ranking has been known for years , but questions remained. Does the published code give the real algorithm...

205 points•theanonymousone•11 days ago•110 comments•

#ranking #scoring #controversy #penalties #ranking works #basic #formula #remained

110 comments

kens11 days ago

Author here. I don't know why this popped up 13 years later, but hi :-)

doginasuit11 days ago

Would you say it is still roughly the same?

> It's unclear if these penalties result from HN administrators or from flagged articles.

Any answers or insights on this within the last 13 years?

0xbadcafebee11 days ago

The mods are much more sensitive now to anything they consider flame-bait, flame-baiting, or controversial. Much quicker to intimidate/threaten, de-emphasize posts, flag-kill, etc. I presume because HN may be influencing/affecting some billion dollar bottom lines now and they can't afford a bad look

caaqil11 days ago

> I don't know why this popped up 13 years later

Maybe we the HN nerds are recomputing your proposed formula and quirks, and seeing it in real time, which may have worked since it's #1 now and I can prophetically reassure everyone it's gonna disappear in a few hours, per the article. Self fulfilling prophecy as they used to call it.

Barbing11 days ago

Performing well https://news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=49770293

I look when I comment on something that suddenly disappears from the front page.

efilife11 days ago

#2 now

tclancy11 days ago

Just so they could penalize it, obviously.

Oscalemor9 days ago

Eager for the update! I assume there's already a couple of early hypotheses on the system.

Even more interesting to know when X.com, famously published its algorithm. Perhaps someday we'll find the fairest of them all

Barbing11 days ago

Still relevant! Very interesting topic.

compiler-guy11 days ago

Not sure when it started, but the second chance pool has moderators putting stories that didn’t get much attention when they were submitted directly on the front page.

There may be some survivor bias here, but second-chance stories seem very front-page sticky to me. At least those I have recognized.

js211 days ago

It was started in late 2014 and dang explains how it works here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308

brudgers11 days ago

I think I started getting Second Chance emails about ten years ago...give or take a couple of years.

Liftyee11 days ago

The penalties are interesting. It shows that the design goal is not to maximise interactions otherwise "controversial" posts should stay up. Still though, I wonder what's the point of deranking said posts. Minimise the potential for a flame war to hit critical mass? Stop people from perceiving HN as an argument-filled forum?

consumer45111 days ago

> It shows that the design goal is not to maximise interactions otherwise "controversial" posts should stay up.

What I believe to be a less human-moderated version of the front page still exists on HN. It is interesting to compare it to the default. Both have their benefits.

https://news.ycombinator.com/active

stackghost11 days ago

> the design goal is not to maximise interactions

The design (not sure about its goal) maximizes incentive for medium-complexity ideas being expressed in comments with at most a handful of replies.

The “comments on a submission with ranking based on votes” model is fundamentally unsuited for in-depth, thoughtful discussions. Everything we write in this comment section will be mostly forgotten by tomorrow because there is no notification system for when someone replies to your comments.

Zero people are going back through old submissions more than a day or two old and looking for insightful comments to reply to.

aworks11 days ago

For those of us scanning Hacker News by RSS, this additional feed is helpful

https://hnrss.github.io/#reply-feeds

Karrot_Kream11 days ago

HN is already perceived as an argumentative forum. Now imagine if the ratio rule wasn't there. FWIW I find it just as effective on Bluesky and Twitter for myself. Ratioed threads are usually more heat than light.

Forgeties7911 days ago

Interesting I didn’t perceive it that way (I see the irony lol)

I’ve always seen it as a place that is quick to tell people to back off/treat each other with respect

swat53511 days ago

Actually HN is a great place if you have different opinions than the majority.

As long as you make a good argument that's not flippant or rude, people will engage with it.

I hold very controversial points of views and never really experienced personal attacks (perhaps sometimes downvotes but that's not a deal breaker for me) when I express them here.

More to it, I tend to upvote comments I disagree with it.

firesteelrain11 days ago

Controlled narratives

skew-aberration11 days ago

Yep. Particularly obvious with comment ranking too.

SilentM6811 days ago

Yup, with just enough of an unmistakable ideological slant to force posts with differing views to take a Kharma nose dive. It seems that the addition of Kharma is proportional to posts that align with the overall narrative of the board post sentiment. In my case, I've noticed that some of my posts don't appear as originally created. Can't really confirm if this is inherent to the algorithm or just internal interference. The latter would be my guess. :(

doginasuit11 days ago

> It shows that the design goal is not to maximise interactions otherwise "controversial" posts should stay up.

It seems like there is a direct explanation, HN doesn't show ads.

syngrog6611 days ago

I concluded long ago that voting rings are active here, along with paid/inauthentic upvote farms.

vforgione11 days ago

What led to that conclusion? Genuinely curious.

scamaltman211 days ago

He runs a voting ring.

dotancohen11 days ago

I independently came to that conclusion after noticing that my comments on some controversial subjects will slowly acquire upvotes, then nose dive 2 or 4 votes very quickly. At first I thought that some mods might have double-value votes (Hi Cowboy Neal!) but then I realized it's sometimes 4 successive downvotes, not only 2.

culi11 days ago

Read the full thread on Hacker News →

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