As always, the lawyer wins ;) (hint: avg 52+)
I hope he has another account to post mildly relevant/interesting stuff.
My prediction is that he can't write anything uninteresting.
Hacker News Leaderboard
51–59 of 59 posts
Re: Hacker News Leaderboard
#52Earlier 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 had a significant career advancement as a result of my activity on HN. And I am sure that I am not alone.
Re: Hacker News Leaderboard
#53I 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…
Like anybody, I have a reflexive tendency to feel pride when a number goes up, but pride in my average-point ranking is tempered by the knowledge that it's a statistic-of-convenience. It's not necessarily there because it's worth tracking or optimizing. It's there because the laziest possible stat, "total points," which tends to scale linearly with tenure and with volume of posts, became boring. So now we also have t…
Hopefully there's no way to live that really depends on HN in any way. :)
Re: Hacker News Leaderboard
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, pg was on the leaderboard for years. But, yes, his name was eventually removed, and while it was on the leaderboard, it was typically the top username by a very wide margin.
I thought the same thing and had to check the wayback machine. He wasn't on the leader boards, at least at that URL. http://web.archive.org/web/20070302084140/http://news.ycombi... http://web.archive.org/web/20090722153500/http://news.ycombi...
Oh, sorry, I was thinking of nickb. :) Thank you for checking the Wayback Machine. I must have been aware of pg's karma totals by looking at his individual profile.
Re: Hacker News Leaderboard
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
That's right.
Re: Hacker News Leaderboard
#56I find this slightly embarrassing. It's also broken. For example, I switched from my old account 6 months ago and it's still in the top 30.
The main reason we haven't done anything about it is that it's not clear what to do. For example, we could make it use a shorter time window than "forever"—but do we really want to gamify karma further? I doubt it.
Re: Hacker News Leaderboard
#57I find this slightly embarrassing. It's also broken. For example, I switched from my old account 6 months ago and it's still in the top 30. The main reason we haven't done anything about it is that it's not clear what to do. For example, we could make it use a shorter time window than "forever"—but do we really want to gamify karma further? I doubt it.
KILL IT.
Re: Hacker News Leaderboard
#58What's interesting to note here is that the points totals have been removed for the top 10. It used to show vast differences between the "leading pack" and the rest... of the order of 20k karma points or so! I guess the rationale for this change is to stop the silly competition (if there was any) once at the top of the pack. I'm not sure there ever was such a competition, mind you. I was #7 once upon a time and it ne…
You can still click on individual usernames to see karma. tptacek has 193,243 and patio11 just crossed 100,000 a week ago.
It's sort of helpful to be able to click a profile and see their karma, to get a sense of whether they're, I don't know, invested in the site? But it's not worth the creepiness.
Re: Hacker News Leaderboard
#59If given the choice to target users based on GMail data or targeting users based on Facebook data, I would take the former. GMail data would provide you with a much clearer and nuanced profile of someone, even if GMail has only 1/3 - 1/2 the user base. Facebook should do well with consumer brands though.
Wrong thread? :)
Damn! And no delete.