// the find
minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented
Some of the hidden norms about Hacker News not otherwise covered in the Guidelines and the FAQ.
A single-file reference document cataloguing HN's undocumented mechanics: karma thresholds for downvoting/flagging, shadowban behaviour, the second-chance pool, flame-war detection, and a list of hidden API endpoints. It's maintained by one person and sourced from years of dang's comments and community observation. Useful for anyone who posts to HN regularly and wants to understand why their submission died.
The karma thresholds are specific and actionable (501 for downvoting, 31 for flagging, 251 for top-bar colour) — the kind of thing you'd otherwise only learn by stumbling across a comment thread. The hidden endpoints section (/latest, /pool, /invited, /over?points=) is genuinely useful and not obvious from the UI. The BigQuery dataset pointer saves hours of scraping setup. The voting-ring section is honest about what 'tricks' don't actually work.
It's a markdown file with two screenshots — no tests, no automation, no way to know if any of this is still accurate short of manually verifying each claim. The BigQuery dataset is noted as only current to November 2022, which is years stale. There's no changelog or date-stamping per entry, so you can't tell which rules were updated after major HN changes. The 'To-Do' section has sat at 'add more images/citations' since forever, suggesting active maintenance has essentially stopped.