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Analyzing Hacker News Users’ Join Dates, Karma, and Profiles

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Re: Analyzing Hacker News Users’ Join Dates, Karma, and Profiles

#4

Post by edw519 »

"I didn’t really expect to find a whole lot of interesting things, and found what I expected."

Which is a great way to conduct research! Nice work.

This reminded me of my senior project in number theory, when I manipulated a large data set, wondering what I'd find. Eventually, I found quite a bit.

Also reminded me of this quote by Wernher von Braun:

"Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I'm doing."

Re: Analyzing Hacker News Users’ Join Dates, Karma, and Profiles

#7

Post by byrneseyeview »

Linear fits? Why? Why?

Karma is a function of time since joining, participation, and quality of contributions. And it starts at 1. 'Participation' can be determined by looking at contributions per length of time. Quality is average score of each submission -- separating it from participation is a useful way to extend this to a more complicated model taking into account the fact that people stop using HN. So the line of best fit should be something closer to 1 + t * q * p, or the sum of 1 + (t0 * q * p0) + .... (tn * q * pn) to describe folks who are off-and-on contributors.

Re: Analyzing Hacker News Users’ Join Dates, Karma, and Profiles

#8

Post by thaumaturgy »

wallflower wrote: post #5

The interesting thing about karma.. I find that I can't/I get tired of posting insightful comments day after day..and take breaks and lurk..edw519 I don't know how you do it. I probably won't make the "leaders" (but I don't think its important)

| (but I don't think its important)

I think that's the crux of it. Somebody could monitor all the various news sites and spend an hour a day here posting comments and stories and so forth, but I suspect most folks would rather spend that time doing something else.

That said, edw519 is a pretty cool guy.

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