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Hacker News Leaderboard

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Re: Hacker News Leaderboard

#31

Post by ck2 »

chollida1 wrote: post #25

I really like the average points tracking in Hacker news. Its interesting to note that some people got on the leader board via only commenting when their posts were relevant, the avg. 5+ points people and some got on their through just making sure their voice was heard, even if they didn't have anything relevant to say, the people with an avg below 3 points. I've always treated HN's a bit differently from other messa…

Not really. Go back and look on archive.org, I had 6 in January and it is just 2 now.

Submissions get buried quickly now because of the sheer volume.

Points are silly though. People who join today are never, ever going to catch up to someone who joined five years ago.

Re: Hacker News Leaderboard

#32

Post by mathattack »

crusso wrote: post #21
petercooper wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trivia: It used to be one of the main links at the top of the page about 2+ years ago. I set a goal several years back of getting into the top 100, then top 50, and so on, and was commenting and posting loads. I guess they didn't like that too much and it disappeared onto the Lists page ;-) I don't post as much now but that's probably a good thing for me.

I set a goal several years back of getting into the top 100, then top 50 Why? Oh, why? I look at my own HN posting as a personal weakness that does nothing to advance my career, general happiness, or sense of personal development. The really successful people I've known in my life don't get caught up in tussling in Internet forums. They stay focused like a laser on goals that are much more recognizable as "success".…

I hate to admit it, but this is true. In a sense, I would be less likely to hire me if I saw too high a karma score. :-)

Re: Hacker News Leaderboard

#33

Post by mathattack »

ck2 wrote: post #5

Just think what we can do with all those imaginary points. I'd like see some kind of solution where submissions don't disappear so quicky. Maybe using tags that become sub-forums of sorts and the front page is just an aggregate. Like tags for SSL, ddos, security, centos, payment-solutions etc. Tags are not hard to implement, there could even be a limited set to choose from, that only certain users can add to, if ther…

Perhaps they could be used as voting rights to changes on the site?

Re: Hacker News Leaderboard

#34

Post by DanielStraight »

chollida1 wrote: post #25

I really like the average points tracking in Hacker news. Its interesting to note that some people got on the leader board via only commenting when their posts were relevant, the avg. 5+ points people and some got on their through just making sure their voice was heard, even if they didn't have anything relevant to say, the people with an avg below 3 points. I've always treated HN's a bit differently from other messa…

I do not think this is a fair characterization. Lots of valuable comments don't get a lot of votes.

Giving feedback on a less popular "Show HN" is a good example. In most cases, you'll just get one vote, from the person who posted the story. Sometimes they don't even bother giving a vote, so you'll get nothing. If they ask a follow-up question and you reply, you probably won't get any votes at all because your comment won't be generally useful, just useful to the person with the question. For example, this series of comments, for which I received not a single vote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8009176

It also goes the other way... here's a comment where I received 13 points for doing arithmetic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7720950 (Actually, I didn't even do the arithmetic, Wolfram Alpha did.)

Re: Hacker News Leaderboard

#35

Post by [deleted] »

crusso wrote: post #21
petercooper wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trivia: It used to be one of the main links at the top of the page about 2+ years ago. I set a goal several years back of getting into the top 100, then top 50, and so on, and was commenting and posting loads. I guess they didn't like that too much and it disappeared onto the Lists page ;-) I don't post as much now but that's probably a good thing for me.

I set a goal several years back of getting into the top 100, then top 50 Why? Oh, why? I look at my own HN posting as a personal weakness that does nothing to advance my career, general happiness, or sense of personal development. The really successful people I've known in my life don't get caught up in tussling in Internet forums. They stay focused like a laser on goals that are much more recognizable as "success".…

[deleted]

Re: Hacker News Leaderboard

#36

Post by petercooper »

crusso wrote: post #21
petercooper wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trivia: It used to be one of the main links at the top of the page about 2+ years ago. I set a goal several years back of getting into the top 100, then top 50, and so on, and was commenting and posting loads. I guess they didn't like that too much and it disappeared onto the Lists page ;-) I don't post as much now but that's probably a good thing for me.

I set a goal several years back of getting into the top 100, then top 50 Why? Oh, why? I look at my own HN posting as a personal weakness that does nothing to advance my career, general happiness, or sense of personal development. The really successful people I've known in my life don't get caught up in tussling in Internet forums. They stay focused like a laser on goals that are much more recognizable as "success".…

Why? Oh, why?

Because, like Everest, it was there :-)

My time on HN has not been as negative as I infer yours has been though. It benefits me and I enjoy it. That back-handed airy-fairy malarky about what "really successful" people do sounds like a load of preachy cobblers to me though.

Re: Hacker News Leaderboard

#37

Post by 3rd3 »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #23
3rd3 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like see some kind of solution where submissions don't disappear so quicky. I think it would be great if there was an "old" button next to "new" in the header, in which submissions of the past month (or so) show up, ordered by a score that allows for old stories to be bumped back to the top, like points * age * comment rate. It would probably also help if new comments would be highlighted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/classic Not really what you describe, but it's along the lines of "give me an alternative to the frontpage or /new." I don't know precisely how it works. I think it gives more weight to votes from older accounts, but that's just a guess. It does seem to be a slightly higher quality frontpage, but that might just be confirmation bias. After all, if it were truly better, then /classic would…

My thought was that the comment rate factor would allow for old stories to be bumped back to the top. Highlighting new comments would allow to continue old threads. I clarified my comment above in that regard.

Re: Hacker News Leaderboard

#38

Post by chimeracoder »

ck2 wrote: post #31
chollida1 wrote: post #25

I really like the average points tracking in Hacker news. Its interesting to note that some people got on the leader board via only commenting when their posts were relevant, the avg. 5+ points people and some got on their through just making sure their voice was heard, even if they didn't have anything relevant to say, the people with an avg below 3 points. I've always treated HN's a bit differently from other messa…

Not really. Go back and look on archive.org, I had 6 in January and it is just 2 now. Submissions get buried quickly now because of the sheer volume. Points are silly though. People who join today are never, ever going to catch up to someone who joined five years ago.

> I had 6 in January and it is just 2 now.

I'm fairly certain they changed the ranking algorithm for comments around April/May. My average used to be 10 (it's 4.5 now), and this meant that I could comment on a thread and it would essentially always be the top comment, even if it only had 1 point and the comments below had more.

This created a positive feedback loop - because the top comments get read more, they also get voted up more (as long as they're not blatant trolls/spam). So once you had an average of about 6 or more, it was very easy to maintain and rack up points.

They seem to have changed the algorithm them - I remember when they did it, because I noticed the effects almost immediately (not just on my own account, but on others' accounts, like tptacek and tokenadult).

Overall, this is probably a change for the better, since it mitigates the "rich get richer" effect of commenting frequently while still rewarding people who consistently contribute valuable comments.

Re: Hacker News Leaderboard

#39

Post by mjn »

gokhan wrote: post #28

Any idea on the non-native/native English speaker ratio of that list? US / Rest of the world?

I tallied locations ~9 months ago [1]. Of the top 100 posters, I could determine the location of 81. Those broke down as 54 US, 27 non-US. Mostly from English-speaking countries: US/Canada/UK/Australia together accounted for 69/81 (85%).

[1] http://www.kmjn.org/notes/hacker_news_posters.html

Re: Hacker News Leaderboard

#40

Post by simonster »

throwaway283719 wrote: post #24

Interestingly, within the top 100 there is a weak positive correlation between the total karma, and the average karma per comment, implying that the people at the top of the leaderboard are actually posting quality content, and not just making up for it with quantity. The closest power law fit is predicted average score = 0.27 * (total score) ^ 0.25 which has a correlation of about 20% with the actual average scores.

Either that or people with higher average karma per comment are posting their comments earlier so they get more upvotes. Or HN's comment sorting algorithm is privileging users with higher total karma, so those users have their comments appear above other comments that have the same number of upvotes. Or users with better name recognition are more likely to get upvoted.
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