RIP #10: What makes a good post? +Long form content is increasing on SN \ stacker news ~econ

Research in Public #10: What makes a good post? +Long form content is increasing on SN¹

Just a quick update on some interesting results. I earlier posted about the determinants of post quality, but the model was pretty opaque. Here is a table distilling the essence of that in an easier to understand form:

\bar{z}

is the average zaps received in the first 48 hours of posting;

\bar{c}

is the average number of comments received in the first 48 hours; and

N

is the number of such posts.

The table shows that:

Link posts with no text are the most common type of post, but the least rewarded.
Long-form discussion posts with images or links in the post body are the most rewarded.
Link posts are less zapped and less commented on in general compared to discussion posts.
Images or links in the post body seem to enhance longer posts, but do not necessarily enhance shorter posts.

One of the main questions of the research project is whether SN's incentives lead to higher quality content. Let's define a "high quality" post as a post that is either:

$>50$ words discussion post
$>50$ words link post with images or links in the post body. (Images or links in the post body of a link post suggest that the post content isn't just a copy/paste of the link itself. Also less likely to be AI generated.)

The graph below shows that the proportion of high quality posts is growing quite linearly over time on SN.

So, the dynamics on Stacker News indeed seem to be incentivizing the types of posts that attract more zaps and engagement. That seems like a good thing! Some people worry about the growth of users on SN, which has indeed been slow, but the quality of the discussion and engagement seems to have been going up over time.

This is a series of public research journals for an academic research project using Stacker News data. Please see #1243188 and #1269944 for more details. ↩

178 sats \ 0 replies \ @Taj 2h

There is a reason Scoresby is so successful with his posts 📫

And like your post here, you've made use of the different formatting of text, which breaks it up and makes it easier to understand

Even Denillapan not only posts FT links but puts some meat on the bones and adds some humour and context to the story, especially since the archive bros are getting shut down more and more

And link only posts are an instant ignore for me. Peak laziness 💤

67 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 43m

It would be neat to put some vertical markers on that graph denoting

When posts started costing sats (I think they were initially free)
When sybil fees were introduced
When posting costs jumped to 10 sats (this was a much bigger deal than people would expect)
When territories were introduced
When territories started setting their own fees (I don't think they could initially)
Million Sat Madness (area not line)

67 sats \ 0 replies \ @Angie 1h

Qué bien me viene está explicación yo hice mi primera publicación solo para probar a parte de dar comentarios, y pues no resulto tan mal eso creo, pero ahora debo enriquecerlo mejor, gracias

67 sats \ 0 replies \ @Sandman 2h

There is an increasing number on post interaction.

Footnotes