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Funny how different people have different understandings of "success" :)

This seems to mention the score and how likely something is to be on the frontpage, none of those things would mean "success" to me.

The value from Show HN isn't from the eyeballs, your website analytics reaching higher than before or the score of the HN submission, the value sits in the conversations and discussions you'll end up having in the comments, how you think about all of those things afterwards and what you end up acting on.

There are few communities where you can (hopefully constructively) criticize a project and also receive proper criticism of your project, usually backed by real arguments rather than just emotional pleas, HN is one of these, and I'd say Show HN is the place where you can really receive good and actionable feedback as long as you're also able to look past and ignore the less thoughtful comments.

[i_love_retros]

Does anyone really get good advice from hackernews or do regulars here just have an inflated sense of self importance?

I think focusing on intended users / customer base for feedback is better than a bunch of students and wannabe entrepreneurs who will never actually buy your product

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> Does anyone really get good advice from hackernews

Yes, absolutely. Over the years I've probably done 10-15 Show HNs that had comments that had direct impact on either features or the whole direction of the project, to great effect. Sometimes it's the comment itself, sometimes it's the thoughts that the comment spawns, doesn't have to be direct.

I think getting feedback from intended users is needed as well, but it doesn't replace more honest and forthcoming feedback which you'll receive from HN, but feedback from HN won't replace feedback from users coming from other sources.

[margotli]

That is true and I agree. I guess in this case the "success" I meant was hitting and staying on the front page so that more people can see your project.

[ranit]

Well, the amount of valuable comments that would form a good discussion is highly correlated with the time a project being on front page, isn’t it.

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Well, kind of but also not fully. Yes for the "global" frontpage, but for the /show list, your submission can stay on the "front" there for almost a full week, and with proper discussions already establish the first day or two, you still get valuable insights after days, even after it drops off.

But I think that requires eager participating from the submitter as well, not just drop your project and not replying to anyone, or not replying with an open mind/required perspective.

[ranit]

>for the /show list, your submission can stay on the "front" there for almost a full week

Good to know this and yes, ShowHN gathers more discussions with the author. One question: is it still true, that a submission can stay for days on /show for days? I read here recently that with the LLM trend of creating software /show became very overcrowded.

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As of writing this comment, this is item #30 (last) on /show:

> Show HN: Live Sun and Moon Dashboard with NASA Footage (lumara-space.app) - 222 points by beeswaxpat 5 days ago | flag | 70 comments

So yeah, definitively possible for it to stick around multiple days. Maybe not a full week anymore like it used to in the past, but still a long time. Conversations and engaged discussions can continue past that too, as authors check for replies then reply themselves, and so on.