Ask HN: Why'd a post about my personal OSS project trending #1 on GH get flagged | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why'd a post about my personal OSS project trending #1 on GH get flagged

1 pointmayeaux7 comments

I hate to be a nuisance but I was really excited for the community response when I made a post linking to Github Trending telling people that it was my open source project that was #1, but it was flagged and removed. This is a lifetime achievement for me and I'm pretty bumbed out about that, any explanation why it happened? Thanks

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Maybe because you've posted this project on HN 6 times in 4 days?

He's talking about it being flagged on Github, not HN.

No I'm talking about being flagged here on HN, sorry if that wasn't clear.

And I apologize but the first few times the post didn't get any traction (really due to the Readme being very sparse). But last time I posted with a nice Readme and it went pretty viral and now I can't post about my lifetime historic moment of reaching #1 on GH trending? I've been working my butt off on this I'm just trying to hustle and show some people (and people are very appreciative so where's the harm?)

Posting a submission multiple times if you don't get traction the first time is OK. However, now that you've had some success, don't bother submitting the same thing again. Most HN regulars have seen it by now and won't want to see it again unless something significant has changed.

> I can't post about my lifetime historic moment of reaching #1 on GH trending?

It's your lifetime historic moment. Something to tell your friends and family about, not the whole world.

> I'm just trying to hustle and show some people (and people are very appreciative so where's the harm?)

I think you're confused about what people here appreciate. A new open-source project tackling a pain point many people have is usually well-received. But there's always some project trending on GitHub and nobody who doesn't know you cares thats it's yours in particular. Hustling too hard to promote things nobody cares about will just make you look desperate for attention.

One mistake people often make is to puff up their submission titles with superlatives and, well, treat it like an ad. It's not. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html has more, but basically, either use the exact page title (as long as it's not misleading or linkbait), or use a neutral, clear description of the content.

In general, this probably isn't a good approach for HN:

> I'm just trying to hustle

Just be a thoughtful and assume everyone else is one too. Don't force it :) Consider actively participating rather than just submitting/commenting on your own stuff; it'll give you a much better idea what fits.

There are only 30 slots on the front page and they are highly prized.

The fact that an earlier submission of your project spent several hours on the front page is a great win. Congrats for that!

But the guidelines [1] and long-established norms [2] of HN are that the same story/project/topic isn't entitled to take up a front page spot a second time so soon after its initial appearance, unless it clearly "gratifies intellectual curiosity" [3] and contains "significant new information" [4].

So it's nothing personal; it's just how HN has to work to stay interesting and allow exposure for as much different content as possible.

You can submit your project again as soon as you've added any interesting new features.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[4] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Also, a submission on the project submitted 3 days ago did get significant traction:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21926666

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