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Most-favorited Hacker News posts

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Re: Most-favorited Hacker News posts

#171

Post by owenversteeg »

heymijo wrote: post #168
owenversteeg wrote: post #155

I personally find the comments far more interesting than the stories. Does anyone know some HN users with interesting favorited comments? If anyone thinks the list of posts here is very heavy on programming things, feel free to browse my favorited comments. I have quite the mix of all topics. The usual disclaimer applies - these are just my HN favorites, I do not endorse them. Many favorited comments are completely w…

https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=heymijo&p=2&commen... I favorite comments often. I like to scan back through. I generate a lot of ideas and make a lot of connections doing so. Same caveats apply to my favorites as yours.

You have a nice list, thank you! Hopefully other people post theirs as well, I'm very curious what people favorite.

Re: Most-favorited Hacker News posts

#172

Post by reaperducer »

non-entity wrote: post #158
PopeDotNinja wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to favorite a comment on HN?

Yes, click the timestamp on the comment and you'll see the full range of actions.

Yes, click the timestamp on the comment and you'll see the full range of actions.

Very interesting, after the very active recent discussion about discoverability in user interfaces.

It's like HN hired someone from the iOS design team to come up with the notion of "timestamp" = "favorite."

Re: Most-favorited Hacker News posts

#173

Post by SilasX »

heymijo wrote: post #168
owenversteeg wrote: post #155

I personally find the comments far more interesting than the stories. Does anyone know some HN users with interesting favorited comments? If anyone thinks the list of posts here is very heavy on programming things, feel free to browse my favorited comments. I have quite the mix of all topics. The usual disclaimer applies - these are just my HN favorites, I do not endorse them. Many favorited comments are completely w…

https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=heymijo&p=2&commen... I favorite comments often. I like to scan back through. I generate a lot of ideas and make a lot of connections doing so. Same caveats apply to my favorites as yours.

Ditto! I use it for a) things that are worth researching later and b) unusually well-made points and explanations.

https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=SilasX&comments=t

Re: Most-favorited Hacker News posts

#174

Post by sosborn »

reaperducer wrote: post #172
non-entity wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, click the timestamp on the comment and you'll see the full range of actions.

Yes, click the timestamp on the comment and you'll see the full range of actions. Very interesting, after the very active recent discussion about discoverability in user interfaces. It's like HN hired someone from the iOS design team to come up with the notion of "timestamp" = "favorite."

Another way to look at it is that "timestamp" = "permalink", which is a fairly common pattern (I'm not trying to imply that it is intuitive, just that it is common). Once you are at the permalink you have a range of options available to you.

Re: Most-favorited Hacker News posts

#175

Post by ma2rten »

3pt14159 wrote: post #99
oefrha wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I emailed mods to argue that the 'web' button should be restored[1], I was told by dang that he was actually considering removing 'hide' and 'favorite' too, because people rarely use those features. (I routinely use 'hide' but hardly ever use 'favorite'.) Btw, 'favorite' may be lesser-known but it's certainly not hard to use. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23762479

Removing "hide" is the wrong call. People, especially in work environments, need to be able to hide links for all sorts of reasons. For example, if you work at Apple and there is an inflammatory article or if you've recently lost a family member to suicide and there is an article on a famous figure in the tech community committing suicide like Aaron Swartz, you probably don't want to see that on the homepage of HN fo…

I wish you could hide stories by keyword or by domain.

Re: Most-favorited Hacker News posts

#176

Post by ghj »

owenversteeg wrote: post #155

I personally find the comments far more interesting than the stories. Does anyone know some HN users with interesting favorited comments? If anyone thinks the list of posts here is very heavy on programming things, feel free to browse my favorited comments. I have quite the mix of all topics. The usual disclaimer applies - these are just my HN favorites, I do not endorse them. Many favorited comments are completely w…

Dan Luu has a nice curated list: https://danluu.com/hn-comments/

Re: Most-favorited Hacker News posts

#177

Post by pmiller2 »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #121
oefrha wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I emailed mods to argue that the 'web' button should be restored[1], I was told by dang that he was actually considering removing 'hide' and 'favorite' too, because people rarely use those features. (I routinely use 'hide' but hardly ever use 'favorite'.) Btw, 'favorite' may be lesser-known but it's certainly not hard to use. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23762479

I've been missing "web" quite a bit and was just considering emailing him to ask if it was now okay to flag links to inaccessible content!

Why wouldn't it be? Unless you're trying to flag stuff a year after it's been posted, I would expect at least that a posted link would be accessible to read.

Unless what you mean is "inaccessible" in the sense of "not accessible to people with disabilities," in which case, good luck flagging a large percent of everything that gets posted. :/

Re: Most-favorited Hacker News posts

#178

Post by dang »

The OP says "The most favorited articles by the top 10k most active Hacker News members." How was "most active" defined? (Edit: oh I see - the users who post the most comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24352688). It's an interesting list, and it never occurred to me that by counting the top favorites of different subsets of users you might get quite different interesting lists.

I got curious about what the global most-favorited would be. Here are the top 50. The first column is the fave count. It's interesting how many are Ask HNs, i.e. text posts with no external URL. Sorry that the item ids aren't clickable:

  836 19087418 Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
  783 16745042 Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
  685 16775744 Ask HN: How to self-learn electronics?
  581 21332072 Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
  554 21581361 Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?
  510 18588727 Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
  510 20264911 Ask HN: What do you do with your Raspberry Pi?
  506 22786853 Ask HN: What are your favorite low-coding apps / tools as a developer?
  472 15919115 Machine Learning 101 slidedeck: 2 years of headbanging, so you don't have to
  470 23151144 Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
  463 20916749 Questions to ask a company during a job interview
  461 22299180 Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building projects?
  454 23092657 Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
  448 23904000 Systems Design for Advanced Beginners
  447 22400375 Mathematics for the Adventurous Self-Learner
  444 23588896 Teach Yourself Computer Science
  441 21585235 Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)
  439 17238135 How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team
  439 22105229 Tricks to start working despite not feeling like it
  432 16493489 Machine Learning Crash Course
  425 24351073 Most favorited Hacker News posts of all time
  422 22310813 Gears
  421 20985875 The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company (2018)
  416 19490573 A guide to difficult conversations
  409 24120275 How to stop procrastinating by using the Fogg Behavior Model
  409 21324768 Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?
  406 23229241 Linux Productivity Tools (2019) [pdf]
  398 21712194 Ask HN: Best book / resources on leadership, especially for tech teams?
  396 12702651 Ask HN: What is your favorite YouTube channel for developers?
  381 18805624 Algorithms, by Jeff Erickson
  374 21536789 Build Your Own React
  372 18104814 Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?
  369 23170881 Ask HN: What's your quarantine side project?
  366 22226380 The missing semester of CS education
  365 23053981 Medium-hard SQL interview questions
  364 17163251 The Importance of Deep Work and the 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill
  363 22276184 My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file
  360 22235279 Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
  360 13660086 Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building one project?
  358 14486657 Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I read?
  358 15602538 Ask HN: Where can I find high-end stock images for a website?
  356 19900955 Ask HN: What overlooked class of tools should a self-taught programmer look into
  356 20044876 Advanced Data Structures (2017)
  355 19264048 Immersive Linear Algebra (2016)
  355 12713056 Ask HN: How to get started with machine learning?
  353 23339830 Tools for Better Thinking
  353 21900498 Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
  352 20254057 Startup idea checklist
  347 17999659 Ask HN: Favorite teachers on YouTube?
  347 23276456 Ask HN: What startup/technology is on your 'to watch' list?

Re: Most-favorited Hacker News posts

#179

Post by dang »

asutekku wrote: post #2

Honestly, I’m kind of surprised more people do not use the favorite feature to bookmark interesting links / posts. 96 favorites on the most favorited seems really low.

Those numbers are so low because the user list was truncated, and then restricted only to 30 per user.

The globally most-favorited is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19087418 ("Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?") with 836 faves. You can see the global top 50 here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24355617

Re: Most-favorited Hacker News posts

#180

Post by gumby »

The list will be inherently biased for recency (note that “Ursula LeGuin has died” is high on the list) simply because there are more people around to vote.

Doesn’t make the list meaningless, but it may not surface the “best” articles that might interest you.

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