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Hacker News Data Analysis
51–60 of 79 posts
Re: Hacker News Data Analysis
#52I think the basis for evaluating the quality of a community lies in the discourse and communication. Submissions are a part of that, but the discussion that follows (i.e. comments) is the most important indicator of change. Personally, there seems to be an influx of reddit-style comments (little substance, meme-oriented) this year, but that could be a general evolution of the English language given the heavy influence of the internet.
That said, evaluating change in the number of comments along with comment upvotes vs. sentiment analysis seems like the only logical way to demonstrate any sort of quality meta analysis. I'm not really versed in qualitative research, so here's my ASK HN: is this even possible?
Re: Hacker News Data Analysis
#53#1 Lesson from all of this: Instead of talking about your product to your prospect, talk about something your prospect cares deeply about to your prospect. I had no idea what you did and didn't really care until you used it in context of something I did care about: Hacker News. Now I know what you do, understand how it applies to me, and best of all, I'm starting to visualize how else I could use it. We should all ap…
Translation for those that missed it: This post is a (very good) sales pitch.
Re: Hacker News Data Analysis
#54Is it really surprising that Hacker News doesn't care about Pinterest?
It's not a YC startup and it's wildly successful.
Re: Hacker News Data Analysis
#55[deleted]
Re: Hacker News Data Analysis
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
The HN Community is fascinated by the outside view of HN and eagerly gazes at the held-up mirror. One of our shared interests is emerging online social structure, of which we're an example. We're also attracted to self referential expression, such as HN comments about HN self-organization, HN self-policing, and HN self-referential comments.
Which really could just indicate that we all have an interest in HN being a good resource for us to read.
I enjoy finding out what I like, and exploring why I like it. I posit that this is an inherent property of appreciation which allows one get more out of something.
The "meta-HN" stuff is an incarnation of this, and shows that HN is appreciated by a critical mass of people. This is a huge boon to the community as it leads to things such as people using Markdown syntax for clarity, proper spelling/punctuation, well thought-out comments, and often (but not always) a positive and constructive viewpoint aimed at advancing the discussion.
Re: Hacker News Data Analysis
#57Actually the reason his posts stopped making it to the frontpage is that the last 3 before this all set off the voting ring detector.
I don't know how accurate his other conclusions are, but it seems unlikely that new signups are down, considering the trend in traffic: http://www.archub.org/hntraffic-17oct12.png
Re: Hacker News Data Analysis
#58"I chose to categorize content by the mention of things like big companies (i.e., Amazon, Google), Hot Startups (i.e. Pinterest, Instagram), Sensationalism (i.e. Best, Worst, First), Programming Languages (everything I could think of), and Profanity (which was fun)." What happens to stories that use sensationalism and profanity? Or sensationalism and a new startup?
I assume those stories would be included in both averages?
The non-exclusive sets may overlap with interesting results, if there is a multiplicative effect. That's a hypothesis worth testing, perhaps through a quick stratification of the data. There is also an issue about multi-colinearity. For example, if one were to consider modifiers vs nouns. Is it the specific noun that is of interest? Or the subset of that specific nouns, delineated by the modifier? what about the modifier generally, applied to a general noun? etc. Are there specific combinations that are significantly different from the average? etc.
Re: Hacker News Data Analysis
#59"If anyone out there suspected that the 'old guard' had given up on HN, this chart proves them wrong." Of the people here since the first year, probably only 25% still participate regularly. Occasionally I'll stumble across some discussion from the early years in Google, and it's crazy how different the site was back then. There are still good comments now, but back then there were entire conversations that were good…
Alex, based on your kind reply to DanBC, you are tired of people calling you out for relying on Google University for your knowledge on controversial subjects. That may be tiresome, but it may also be good for the overall level of factual discussion here.
My general observation of what excites people on Hacker News is that negative metathreads get more upvotes, by two orders of magnitude, than positive metathreads. I would love to see more replies to the old thread "Ask HN: What do you like about the Hacker News community?"
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4399678
from 60 days ago, if people are so inclined. I posted that soon after a metathread that complained about comments that were insufficiently kind and affirming, from someone who has asked advice about external website designs in days past. I figure if I ask for advice about a website, people are very well going to give me advice, and I might as well man up and take the advice. But, yeah, one thing I like about HN is that people look things up in good-quality offline sources in many instances, and ask other participants here to check their facts. And there are other good features of the community here that help me learn and develop in my work, in my community citizenship, and in my family life.
Re: Hacker News Data Analysis
#60Just a heads-up: your site works really poorly on mobile. The text column is too narrow, while the charts are too big, and their interactive features make it hard to scroll the page. They also don't work right (touching a chart seems to mess up the y axis labels), but the impediment to scrolling is more annoying. I only ever read HN on my iPhone, so this is an upvote you're not getting simply because of technical problems with your website.