Upvote begging (and knowingly using the /newest trick) is pretty unethical, although fortunately uncommon in HN.
I'm working on a blog post about the problem of upvote begging. Usually, it's in the minority of users, although some websites don't explicitly enforce it well. (Case in point, Product Hunt makes upvote begging part of the status quo, which compromises the integrity of the site as a whole.)
It's common because the likelihood of escaping /newest on the basis of "intellectually interesting" alone is miniscule. The traffic just doesn't work that way.
Solve that, and you have much more traction to complain about what people should or shouldn't be doing.
What? No it isn't. (See my submission history for URLs to minimaxir.com, and I have negligible influence in the tech world)
Even then, two wrongs don't make a right. It comes down to luck, and sometimes it doesn't pan out. "Growth hacking" to correct bad luck is not necessarily ethical.
On the other hand, we can't act like the front page is a meritocracy either when there is a significant element of luck involved. Would be be "growth hacking" if I analyzed upvoting patterns to determine the "correct" time to make a submission to maximize the chance of hitting the front page? Don't I gain an advantage over someone that sees an interesting link and just immediately submits it to HN?
I'd be interest to know if "upvote begging" actually works beyond a small amount of users who see the "beg" and know the person "begging". I'm not so sure the majority of people bother going on to a site to upvote something just because they were asked. People are extremely lazy.
Unfortunately, that's impossible/infeasable to prove quantitatively without access to the raw data. In the HN case, however, I've seen a number of submissions which get 10+ points in a few minutes (which will get you on the front page quickly), but the submission was on the second or third page. A quick Twitter search shows they were asking for upvotes.
People are lazy, yes, but when there's monetary/reputation values tied to placement, the incentives change.
what /newest trick? do upvotes count for more if they're made from the new page rather than the front page? (and if so, does it track state when you click through to the comment page first, then open the article in a new tab, read it, and then upvote from the comment page?)
The inverse: upvotes are penalized if the voter comes from a direct link from a non-HN source (e.g. Twitter), so people direct others to vote via /newest.
So, I see a submission I think is interesting and direct link it from my Twitter account; the submission is penalized on every upvote it receives through my link?
That just seems like a silly thing to do. Especially since there's an obvious way around it.
Not if I wanted to get people to engage in the discussion about the submission. Most of the time I'm just as or more interested in the discussion than the article. It's why I participate instead of using HN as a news feed.
Interesting. How smart are they about this? My HN flow involves always voting from the comments page, even though I got there from the front page or /newest. Does that mean I'm triggering the penalty?
While vote begging has been around since the first site that supported comment voting, the "Like this on Facebook" thumb-up icon really entreched this in people's minds as a common and accepted thing to do.
I am afraid it does not work that way in practice. I have been using HN since its inception, or very close to it, when it was all about startup news and products. Yet I rarely visit the New posts page. If everyone were like me, the front page would be static. Heck I do not even go past the first 30 links. There is a lot of great content I am sure that never makes it to the homepage because it is not getting upvoted. Asking for upvotes is unfortunately the solution to this issue until we have built systems which are intelligent enough to surface quality content even when it is not being upvoted. In theory some content should find their way into the top 5 links as soon as shared, but that is not the case. Waiting for upvotes is like saying "If you build it they will come." They won't unless you market and yell it.
I try to go /newest on once a day, i.e. "do my duty". I don't spend a lot of time there, but I do scan through everything. I've definitely gotten to see some cool things because of it.
When I see this I immediately flag the submission.
This is why I left digg and reddit. The upvote circle of promotion with armies of article upvoters and comment upvoters/downvoters ruined these sites for me.
Only if we assume all submitters only submit because of how interesting / important / relevant an the submission is, and are not influenced in their decisions by imaginary internet points, pride in getting to the front page, etc.
For a sufficiently small community this assumption is fairly safe though even then not always true. As communities grow their population trends towards the average (for many characteristics) and the average human is more likely to be driven by the latter motivations than the former, at least as I understand psychology, though I would be very interested to learn otherwise.
tl;dr: I think the assumption that a submitter is motivated more by wanting to make a good contribution over having their HN submission 'win' is shortsighted.
I'm working on a blog post about the problem of upvote begging. Usually, it's in the minority of users, although some websites don't explicitly enforce it well. (Case in point, Product Hunt makes upvote begging part of the status quo, which compromises the integrity of the site as a whole.)