Ask HN: What should a newcomer know to get started on Hacker News?"

4 Elaris 6 5/14/2025, 7:49:11 AM

Hi everyone

I’m new to this community and still trying to understand how everything works. I’ve read some posts and searched online for the rules and guidelines, but there are still a lot of things I’m unclear about!

I’d like to ask those of you who have been here for a while, what should a newcomer like me know to get started smoothly? Are there things I should pay particular attention to when posting, or any unspoken rules I should be aware of?

I really appreciate any advice or tips you can share.

Comments (6)

0xEF · 8h ago

* Leave meaningful comments that contribute to or prompt discussion.

* Links should be of technical interest to the community at large although politics will sneak in from time to time.

* Assume most everyone here is smarter than you or has good info to contribute. Get in the student mindset, open to learn while you interact, then engage.

* The voting system is not an "agree/disagree" button. Vote up thoughtful and informative, discussion-worthy contributions, vote down personal attacks or inflammatory stuff. It is also not necessary to vote on every comment or post you read, or at all. It's just a way for the community to collectively encourage better engagement.

* dang is busy, so just be good

theGeatZhopa · 8h ago

Try to get as much karma as possible ASAP so you can down vote things and comments you don't like

/Sarcasm

Have you already visited https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ?

valunord · 8h ago

Be careful and remember the demographics if you want points. If you automatically fit in, you won't have friction, but if you don't match the demographics you may find yourself happier elsewhere.

austin-cheney · 7h ago

* High quality comments tend to populate in high quality subjects. Anything related to social commentary/policy, mental health, general statistics, psychology, and such tend to produce very low quality comments. Some subjects really demonstrate Dunning-Kruger effect. For example there is a lot of passion around privacy and most of that passion, in the comments, seems to come from people most ignorant about privacy related policy/laws.

* When you read enough on here, given the size of population and rate of activity, you will notice shifts in behavior with regard to the trendiness of a subject.

* Don’t be afraid to be disagreeable so long as that disagreeability is limited to the subject of discussion and not the people discussing. Diverse opinions appear extremely welcome in high quality subjects but are shunned in low quality discussions that attract cult like followers, such as Julian Assange discussions.

* Be aware that not everybody will share your level of education and worldly experience. Comments/replies to that effect sometimes surprise me both positively and negatively.

actionfromafar · 7h ago

Stay away now while you still can or you'll get hooked.