[ablation]

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.

[minimaxir]

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.