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To Paul Graham

news.ycombinator.com

141–150 of 162 posts

Re: To Paul Graham

#141
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now it also considers among other things the average comment score of the submitter. Does this create a rich-get-richer type scenario, where users with high averages get more exposure, thus leading to higher averages?

You can check by looking at the average comment scores on http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders (the second column). They haven't changed much as far as I can tell.

They probably wouldn't change much if the commenter had a long history to be averaged in. You'd want to look at the delta of the delta (2nd order stats) to see if any noticeable effect was occurring.

Re: To Paul Graham

#142
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate apartment search. It's so so painful. Their data model is all wrong. Location is the most important thing about an apartment in my opinion. That should be the primary method by which you search. And they've tried, but you end up searching within these broad "neighborhoods" in the bigger US cities. And a lot of people mischaracterize their apartment's location in order to make it seem nicer or whatever. Why is…

Check out padmapper.com does a nice maps mashup of craigslist plus other sources. May still not work if the data in your city is too poor, but works great for me.

Heh thanks for the plug. And to grandparent, PadMapper basically strips away all the listings which don't have an address, which incidentally gets rid of a lot of the spam.

Re: To Paul Graham

#143
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can check by looking at the average comment scores on http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders (the second column). They haven't changed much as far as I can tell.

What is your average comment score? Any exception for your account? I don't think there needs to be one, just curious.

http://top.searchyc.com/users_by_average_points_per_comment

http://searchyc.com/pg

(you will notice the numbers are different on the HN leaders page for people, I think perhaps searchyc is an all-time average?)

Re: To Paul Graham

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might. But that's only an issue if the rich don't deserve to get rich.

Exactly, in this, the rich only get richer if they continue posting valid comments. Otherwise they get poor real fast.

No, they get poor based on how many previous comments are being averaged in.

So someone with a huge number of highly rated comments, could make a lot of dumb comments before it started hurting them.

I'm sure pg will come up with an appropriate formula.

Re: To Paul Graham

#145
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your average comment score? Any exception for your account? I don't think there needs to be one, just curious.

http://top.searchyc.com/users_by_average_points_per_comment http://searchyc.com/pg (you will notice the numbers are different on the HN leaders page for people, I think perhaps searchyc is an all-time average?)

SearchYC seems to be off on its karma counts--some of my comments, HN and SYC disagree on the score.

Re: To Paul Graham

#146
I guess the success of "hacker news" is largely due to:

1. the name "hacker news" is a cool name 2. simple hacker-friendly web interface w/o ads.

Re: To Paul Graham

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mr. Graham, I think we all owe you a great deal of thanks for HN, and I certainly think that we may not share this sentiment enough. Thank you, Mr. Graham. Simplicity in design truly is elegance, and I feel that--sometimes--too much flashy Web 2.0-related cruft tends to distract from the content (as the submitter points out). Certainly the Twitters and Facebooks of today and tomorrow have their uses, but I'm not so s…

Oh please, stop the ass kissing already. A simple 'Thank you' would suffice.

What went through my mind as I read the submission and subsequently decided to write my own post was the realization of how much easier it is to say "this sucks, I hate it" than it is to say "thank you, I appreciate it." I also think it's important to enumerate what I happen to like about something, because I think it's important to encourage it.

Still, it's unfortunate that explaining why one happens to appreciate something like HN is considered "ass kissing" these days. My post wouldn't read any different even if Mr. Graham were someone completely different. I appreciate HN for what it is.

Posts like yours, sadly, give me pause for thought that perhaps I jumped the gun too early, but then I am reminded that certain subsets of the community generally frown upon verbose thank yous.

I'll be more cautious in the future with regards to my praise. Thanks for correcting me.

Re: To Paul Graham

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh please, stop the ass kissing already. A simple 'Thank you' would suffice.

Ha! I chuckled because I assumed he was making good-natured meta-humor about the rising levels of PG appreciation going on... I guess what I like about HN is the high expectations it allows us to keep.

I wish I were that clever. Unfortunately, I'm too honest to be clever. ;)

Re: To Paul Graham

#149
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't unordered lists make more sense than divs in this case?

dl might make more sense here---meta information about the post in a dt and the post itself in a dd.

Although I don't think a post would be considered the term and the responses the definition.

Re: To Paul Graham

#150
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can check by looking at the average comment scores on http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders (the second column). They haven't changed much as far as I can tell.

They probably wouldn't change much if the commenter had a long history to be averaged in. You'd want to look at the delta of the delta (2nd order stats) to see if any noticeable effect was occurring.

IIRC averages are calculated over a set of your most recent posts - so it can go up or down quite quickly depending on your current comment quality.
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