[wyldfire]

> I don't believe anyone is really evaluating new submissions

No doubt it's dominated by a few brave/power-hungry souls.

> I don't believe it's possible to get exposure on hacker news without a voting ring.

At least in my experience, I see ~15-20% of my submissions rocket to the top of HN. It's usually a function of just how much of a draw there is from the title.

> can we really trust that hacker news is surfacing the best content?

shrug, aside from some possible missed yet-greater-HN opportunity, it seems like it works well enough.

[krausejj]

do you feel like the 20% of your submissions that go to the top are your best submissions?

for me, my submissions that get attention are not my best submissions, IMO.

i can spend a long time on a really thoughtful idea or product, and get zero clicks from a hacker news submission, whereas sharing a poorly researched press article with a clickbaity headline goes to the front page.

it's really disappointing.

[yesenadam]

Well, it is called Hacker News, not Hacker Show. Looking at the Show page (which I rarely do), most of even the top page has hardly any comments. People come here for news, to discuss things...For me, some of the best things are on AskHN. Mostly when I've asked questions, I get little or no response. They're things I would comment on if I saw them asked, I eagerly await answers, but usually..not much response. (I didn't post "Is Hacker News broken?" asking why HN ignored my fascinating questions, saying how HN doesn't know quality etc. That would've been weird, don't you think.)

People are busy with their own stuff. News, I guess, being generally informed, comes under "one's own stuff"; checking out other's peoples' stuff, especially the new and untested, is something else. Probably mostly not worth bothering about.

Why assume the voting would be accurately proportional to the quality of the submission? Although you seem to be comparing News clicks with Show clicks - apples with oranges. It's hard to put oneself in the shoes of an imagined HN reader, what would make them want to click through to something. Probably it's good that people can't guess - if it was the total 'echo chamber' it's accused of being, people would share more similar taste, I guess.

[amingilani]

I agree. I've felt like that similarly, but I realize that I'm biased in certain ways. Things that appeal to me don't necessarily appeal to everyone.

I religiously watch and post Kurzgesagt videos, but they've never been upvoted. Every year, I've posted a story on how someone took over a .int domain. These are brilliant "hacker" topics but what makes it to the front page are my submissions on "www vs apex domain" and criticisms of the GPL.

You've got to realize: HN isn't a superset of what every hacker loves, it's a subset. Most of the time, what we like doesn't get voted up.