Most people find success on social media sites is capricious; not a lot of people read the "new" queue, so your first few organic votes are a matter of luck. Downvotes on reddit make this go double. Even great content can get buried if it doesn't get noticed.
For instance, there's a certain blog on a three letter domain name for which I'll sometimes see two or three posting on the front page at HN. That guy's got a voting ring. You might call it something else, like "I have a twitter account with a lot of followers who use HN", but that's what it is. This sort of practice takes some of the chance and variation out.
An advanced method is to recognize the role of "social proof" in social media. My informant has collected behavioral data sets from certain social media sites and discovered that the C.T.R. on articles increases as the number to the left increases: even if the headline is uninteresting, the high number makes people think that it "has to be good;" in experiments where the number of "ringer" votes was varied, she discovered that the ratio of "organic" to "ringer" votes got better the more "ringers" there were.
the high number makes people think that it "has to be good;"
I will claim guilty to this. Whenever a thing is esteemed by many, especially people respected, I will always contemplate its worth far longer than if I passed by something unannounced and unawares.
"If an intelligent man delights so in this, why don't I?"
Most people find success on social media sites is capricious; not a lot of people read the "new" queue, so your first few organic votes are a matter of luck. Downvotes on reddit make this go double. Even great content can get buried if it doesn't get noticed.
I've seen this happening as well. I've also had several experiences of submitting a link and having it buried at -2 or -3 and then seeing a different link on the same subject up-voted a day or so later.
Most people find success on social media sites is capricious; not a lot of people read the "new" queue, so your first few organic votes are a matter of luck. Downvotes on reddit make this go double. Even great content can get buried if it doesn't get noticed.
I'd go even further and say that most stories have some kind of "weight" behind them that is not available to small-time users. If you follow the 'net news, especially topics about social networking, one sees always the same players getting lots of attention for the stuff they just happen to be doing at the time. I'd argue the system is indeed rigged, even without taking hacks like this one into account.
Also, sometimes you submit an interesting story and it gets immediately downvoted to 0 points, removing it from the subreddit homepage. If you can solve this, a good story has more chances of being picked.
Most people find success on social media sites is capricious; not a lot of people read the "new" queue, so your first few organic votes are a matter of luck. Downvotes on reddit make this go double. Even great content can get buried if it doesn't get noticed.
For instance, there's a certain blog on a three letter domain name for which I'll sometimes see two or three posting on the front page at HN. That guy's got a voting ring. You might call it something else, like "I have a twitter account with a lot of followers who use HN", but that's what it is. This sort of practice takes some of the chance and variation out.
An advanced method is to recognize the role of "social proof" in social media. My informant has collected behavioral data sets from certain social media sites and discovered that the C.T.R. on articles increases as the number to the left increases: even if the headline is uninteresting, the high number makes people think that it "has to be good;" in experiments where the number of "ringer" votes was varied, she discovered that the ratio of "organic" to "ringer" votes got better the more "ringers" there were.