Chasing Show HN Oblivion

We've pretty bad at posting on HN. But can we figure out how to do worse? The goal of a Show HN post is usually to get visibility and feedback. We can use score as a proxy for that.

So what's the worst way you can post?

You could post on a Thursday about your project in Swift. You could post it on Christmas Day, when apparently no one has.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves - let's look at the data

A low-effort Guide to the Worst Possible Time, Day, and Title to Post on HN.

Because if your fate is ruled by chance you might as well try to control your destiny - in either direction.

Tips

There is no attempt to provide causation, only correlation. There's also no attempts at statistical rigor here. You can do better by importing this dataset (all queries provided as examples) in Trilogy Studio and hack around yourself.

Our data

We're going to primarily use the BigQuery Hacker News dataset, which contains all posts since 2006.

We will pull in Bigquery github data, though this data is stale. If you have a better source, please reach out! (issue on trilogy-public-data would be great).

For purposes here, we'll typically filter to the below. You can view each query for details.

type = 'story'
Titles starting with Show HN
2024–2025 only
Excluded deleted/dead items

Where should you host your app?

Definetely not GitLab. People upvote that all day.

Host Query


import post;

where 
    type = 'story' 
    and is_show_hn 
    and not deleted and not dead
    and create_time.year>2024
select
    domain,
    avg(score) as avg_domain_score, 
    count(id) as sample_size
order by 
    sample_size desc
limit 25;

📅 Best (Worst) Day to Post - Any Day That's Not Fool's Day?

Findings:

Presidents. People love them. Great time to post to get ignored.
Fools: rush in and upvote. Is your post a joke? Skip this.
Not trying to post on holidays? Thursdays are your jam. You'll only get upvotes from the dedicated crowd.

Which Day Query

import post;
import std.date;

where type = 'story' and is_show_hn and create_time.year>2024 and not deleted and not dead
select
    CASE 
   # New Year's Day
    WHEN create_time.month = 1 and create_time.day = 1 THEN 'New Years Day'
    # Valentine's Day
    WHEN create_time.month = 2 and create_time.day = 14 THEN 'Valentines Day'
   #Presidents Day (3rd Monday in February)
    WHEN create_time.month = 2 and create_time.day_of_week_name = 'Monday' 
         and create_time.day >= 15 and create_time.day <= 21 THEN 'Presidents Day'
    # St. Patrick's Day
    WHEN create_time.month = 3 and create_time.day = 17 THEN 'St. Patricks Day'
   #April Fools' Day
    WHEN create_time.month = 4 and create_time.day = 1 THEN 'April Fools Day'
   #Memorial Day (last Monday in May)
    WHEN create_time.month = 5 and create_time.day_of_week_name = 'Monday' 
         and create_time.day >= 25 THEN 'Memorial Day'
    # Independence Day
    WHEN create_time.month = 7 and create_time.day = 4 THEN 'Independence Day'
   # Labor Day (1st Monday in September)
    WHEN create_time.month = 9 and create_time.day_of_week_name = 'Monday' 
         and create_time.day <= 7 THEN 'Labor Day'
   # Halloween
    WHEN create_time.month = 10 and create_time.day = 31 THEN 'Halloween'
    #Veterans Day
    WHEN create_time.month = 11 and create_time.day = 11 THEN 'Veterans Day'
    #Thanksgiving (4th Thursday in November)
    WHEN create_time.month = 11 and create_time.day_of_week_name = 'Thursday' 
         and create_time.day >= 22 and create_time.day <= 28 THEN 'Thanksgiving'
    # Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving)
    WHEN create_time.month = 11 and create_time.day_of_week_name = 'Friday' 
         and create_time.day >= 23 and create_time.day <= 29 THEN 'Black Friday'
    #Christmas Eve
    WHEN create_time.month = 12 and create_time.day = 24 THEN 'Christmas Eve'
    # Christmas
    WHEN create_time.month = 12 and create_time.day = 25 THEN 'Christmas'
    # New Year's Eve
    WHEN create_time.month = 12 and create_time.day = 31 THEN 'New Years Eve'
    else create_time.day_of_week_name
    end::string::day_of_week_name as fun_label,
    id.count,
    avg(score) as avg_score,
order by avg_score desc;

🕰️ Dead Times of Day

Observations:

Honestly, no idea what to make of this.
There's a few bad times. Pick one.

Time of Day Query

import post;

where type = 'story' and is_show_hn and create_time.year>2024 and not deleted and not dead
SELECT
  create_time.hour,
  id.count,
  avg(score) as avg_score;

🪦 Post Length: Brevity is the Soul of Sorrow

That looks like it might go up and to the right - let's call it a positive correlation with length. 0 is the classic link only.

So the sweet spot - 0-100. Keep it brief enough, and you can avoid those upvotes!

Length Query

import hacker_news;

where type = 'story' and is_show_hn and create_time.year>2024 and not deleted and not dead
select
  round( len(text) /100, 0) as size_bucket,
  avg(score) as avg_score,
  count(id) as sample_size
having sample_size
>5
;

The Non-Popular Words

Repeat offenders:

"Marketing" - Huh, not a winner.
"Crypto" – Dated ideas are a good one.

Keyword Query

import hacker_news;

auto title_word <- unnest(
    split(lower(title), ' ')
    );

where type = 'story' and is_show_hn and create_time.year>2024 and not deleted and not dead
select
  title_word,
  avg(score) as avg_score,
  count(id) as sample_size
having sample_size
>25
order by avg_score asc
limit 25
;

Warning

The bigquery data used for GitHub is pretty stale, so these queries use a longer lookback - all data since 2015. Let's hope people's preferences are timeless.

Does Your License Matter?

People love Creative Commons? Stay away from that.

License Query

import github as github;
import post;

property id.github_base_url <- lower(REGEXP_EXTRACT(url, '(https://github\.com/[^/]+/[^/]+)'));
property id.text_github_url <- lower(REGEXP_EXTRACT(text, '(https://github\.com/[^/]+/[^/]+)'));

auto any_github_url <- coalesce(github_base_url, text_github_url);

# not all posts have github URLs
merge github.repo_url into ~any_github_url;

where 
    type = 'story' and is_show_hn and not deleted and not dead
    and create_time.year>2015
select
    github.license, 
    avg(score) as avg_license_score, 
    count(id) as sample_size
;

Does Your Language Matter?

Whatever you do, don't post something related to Rust. In Rust you can trust to get upvotes.

Language Query

import github as github;
import post;

property id.github_base_url <- lower(REGEXP_EXTRACT(url, '(https://github\.com/[^/]+/[^/]+)'));
property id.text_github_url <- lower(REGEXP_EXTRACT(text, '(https://github\.com/[^/]+/[^/]+)'));

auto any_github_url <- coalesce(github_base_url, text_github_url);

merge github.repo_url into ~any_github_url;

where type = 'story' and is_show_hn and not deleted and not dead
and create_time.year>2015
select
    github.language, 
    avg(score) as avg_language_score, 
    count(id) as sample_size
order by 
    sample_size desc
limit 25;