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by Houshalter 3990 days ago
I think this is a bad idea. Last week I posted a link here and by random chance no one saw it, and it didn't get any points.

A few days later the same story ended up at the top of /r/machinelearning. At least 10 different people tried to post it. They all ended up at my post which was days old and dead. If HN just allowed resubmissions, it probably would have ended up on the front page that day.
1 comments
moridin007 3990 days ago
how do you know that?
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Houshalter 3990 days ago
Posts with >5 upvotes tend to go to the front page for at least a few minutes. More than that many people tried to repost it.
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dang 3989 days ago
What was the post? I'd be curious to look into it, if you don't mind saying. (Edit: might be best to email hn@ycombinator.com.)
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Houshalter 3989 days ago
It was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9856637
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dang 3988 days ago
Ok, there was another factor. When a site is the source of many stories marked lightweight, it eventually gets penalized as a lightweight site. We have software that does this, plus moderators do it.

This was the case here: that site has been the source of, not spam exactly (which is why it isn't banned), but a lot of unsubstantive and/or derivative articles. The post you submitted is an example of the latter, since it was derived from a Reddit thread.

The penalties I'm talking about don't make it impossible for a story to get traction, but they do set the bar higher. So you were right that it was randomness, but the randomness was also skewed.

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DanBC 3990 days ago
If people try to submit an already posted URL their submission is blocked and they are redirected to the original URL which gets an upvote. So if you see a flurry of upvotes on one of your old submissions it's possibly because people have started trying to post the URL.

I think thT's how it works.

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