Comment by kaycebasques | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kaycebasques | Hacker News Reader

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> Stripe and YC effectively co-run the most important media asset in Silicon Valley: Hacker News.

A few of my articles [1] have made the front page so I can weigh in on this a (tiny) bit.

> The readers know: any time Stripe comes out with a new product, it’s #1 on the site

I do believe that "the mods" have the ability to boost articles at their discretion so I would not be surprised if YC companies frequently get a boost. This is a separate admin feature from the open role posts that YC companies post (which cannot be commented on and which drop from page #1 over a fixed timeframe I think). I will have to dig for the source on that but I believe dang has publicly commented on it here. That does indeed feel somewhat shady IMO if correct (and let me be very clear that I could be incorrect here).

Edit: let me elaborate on this because I'm sure dang will see it and possibly take it the wrong way. dang, isn't there a feature where you can boost "interesting" articles? I believe it was described as "articles that are probably interesting to the HN community but have not gotten enough attention" (bad timing, etc.) Are you the only one with the permissions to do that? That feature is never used to boost YC company posts? I.e. it's only used for intellectually stimulating content where no YC-related conflict of interests is possible?

But on the other hand, if you have a huge name like Stripe (or Chrome DevTools) it really isn't as hard to make it to page #1 as the Bolt person is making it out to be. The hardest part IMO is crafting a title that succinctly summarizes how new feature X is a big deal.

> Getting a #1 ranking is INCREDIBLY difficult and generates millions of views.

Millions of views sounds like a stretch. 250K to 1M sounds more accurate to me.

[1] I wrote the Chrome DevTools docs for 3 years. DevTools docs made the front page probably 10-15 times. I also was content lead for https://web.dev for a couple years. Those docs made the front page another 10-15 times. I've also had 2 or 3 personal articles make page #1.

Dan has said repeatedly that YC companies do not get artificial boosts. He's said that on this thread, as well. Ranking is definitely not a strict function of votes; HN does a bunch of stuff to groom the front page. But, according to Dan, none of that involves giving preference to YC companies.

> He’s said that on this thread

Permalinks:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30067683

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30067919

I have no knowledge except what I read here, but this is obviously false. Or perhaps not obviously but at least suspiciously. As apparent by the "_YC_STARTUP_ is hiring" posts, that don't even take comments, as well as the "work at a startup" (YC's hiring portal) posts, that are commonly on the front page. Without publication of the ranking algorithm, I would be _very_ hard pressed to believe these are organic. I mean even if all YC alums mass voted for those topics, vs the total number of users voting that has to be a small fraction.

So there are at least a couple classes of topics that seem to be artificially promoted, in preference of YC companies.

The specific types of posts that are treated specially are well documented, including in this thread. It's 'suspicious' mostly because you (seemingly) haven't had a chance to look into it.

I didn't mean 'suspicious' with a negative connotation, just to be clear. Indeed, I didn't care enough to look it up, ie I could care less how posts are ranked. That's YC and HN's business. I have nothing at stake.

Given this well documented information, and my basic belief that the principals here aren't sociopaths, I see no reason to believe Stripe posts would be artificially promoted, well normal SEO (done right) aside.

But, even though I don't really "care", I do think it's great that HN has so many defenders of their impartiality. I can't really tell how many are insiders but it feels like most (all but 1 or 2) are just regular users. It speaks highly of HN and is worth defending. HN ain't perfect, that's for sure, but I know I couldn't make it better. [well i would get rid of the newish prev and next links -- they make the byline a bit long on mobile. i prefer folding, so when i free scroll i can see better where i was. that's not the kind of better i am referring to. just a throwaway complaint]

Yes, the YC startup is hiring posts work differently than other posts on the front page, they're also explained in the FAQ ("Can I post a job ad?" and "What's the relationship between YC and HN?").

The grandparent comment of your comment also called this out, so I'm assuming the post you replied to assumed that those weren't worth calling out in their statement.

One thing that I suspect is true, but sort of hard to avoid and not really anyone's fault (although, potentially part of the "deliberate" value of HN) is that HN dwellers tend to be pre-disposed look up to YC companies, implicitly favor them, etc.

Ie, "brand halo" as it relates to ease of getting to #1 on HN is by its nature based on "brand halo in the eyes of HN dwellers", not "general tech brand halo."

I'm not saying that makes HN dwellers think that Stripe can do-no-wrong or whatnot. Just that their prior on how interesting an eng blog post on $topic will be is probably higher for a well-known YC co than it would be for a generically equivalently well-known non-YC co.

It sounds like you're thinking of the second-chance queue, which is a very different mechanism than "boost articles": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380

> Millions of views sounds like a stretch.

Your suspicion is supported elsethread by this estimate of 100K or less: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30067872

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