It would be fun if there were rankings and statistics for karma/upvotes/submissions for all users and from all available years. I'm sure there must be a web page for it somewhere :-)
BTW, I barely made it to the list in #9279 with 77 comments. I agree that we're a somewhat niche community here but there are more readers than users and most users just read/vote and rarely submit and comment.
Top Hacker News commenters of 2021
61–70 of 138 posts
Re: Top Hacker News commenters of 2021
#62It would really scare me if dang wasn't the first one. But at the same time, I feel immense pain thinking about what he has to deal with on a daily basis. Literally the entire functioning of the last somewhat civil, fully moderated, independent, anon-friendly board on the internet in 2021 on the shoulders of one admin. I'd like to say how a million flowers should bloom from this shining example, but it seems more lik…
"Also, I'm surprised and a bit ashamed to be #415 in this list."
"humblebrag, transitive + intransitive: to make a seemingly modest, self-critical, or casual statement or reference that is meant to draw attention to one's admirable or impressive qualities or achievements" -- https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/humblebrag
Re: Top Hacker News commenters of 2021
#63Only 70 comments to be in that top 10k. I was expecting more than that.
And it seems that something like the 90-9-1 rule is in effect - with over 7,000 comments, the top non-dang contributor is more than 100x as prolific as contributor #10,000.
Quick calculations... 2735447 total comments in that top 10k.
The top 20 percent represent 1519843 of the total comments, or just over half (55.56 percent).
Though at the top 2k, you're still writing 359 comments per year which is a lot, so I guess the real list going down to comment count = 1 might look a lot more like an 80/20 split.
Would love to know the distribution by karma as well, yeah.
Re: Top Hacker News commenters of 2021
#64It would really scare me if dang wasn't the first one. But at the same time, I feel immense pain thinking about what he has to deal with on a daily basis. Literally the entire functioning of the last somewhat civil, fully moderated, independent, anon-friendly board on the internet in 2021 on the shoulders of one admin. I'd like to say how a million flowers should bloom from this shining example, but it seems more lik…
> independent, anon-friendly board on the internet in 2021
There is a lot of stealth censorship on HN that occurs behind the scenes. After I wrote a post that was critical of Stripe, all of my new posts are automatically shadow banned. This place won’t survive for much longer, I don’t think.
Edit: And before dang posts some dumb response, I will tell you that he said “the algorithm” decided that my posts were “self promotion.” Anyway, maybe this is a good way of ending my commenting on this forum — time to help those who want to create something new.
Re: Top Hacker News commenters of 2021
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been accused of shilling a product I genuinely enjoyed, because of the english I used. :) I think it seemed too exaggerated. But I'm no native, so what do I know. In the end who cares about upvotes.
I shilled my own product once and it didn't get downvoted, but that day people started signing up with thousands of stolen credit cards. Dealing with the fraud that was a result of that post was probably one of the most interesting things in my career though, so I dunno, I guess HN delivered as always.
if you ever post your project on HN ...
[[sucking in air]]
...
just be sure you don't know of any way it can be hacked. It will be hacked, and that's what you'll learn from the experience. But HN is like putting out to sea in a canoe. You can't go back, and it's going to leak, so be more than ready.
Re: Top Hacker News commenters of 2021
#66Re: Top Hacker News commenters of 2021
#67It would really scare me if dang wasn't the first one. But at the same time, I feel immense pain thinking about what he has to deal with on a daily basis. Literally the entire functioning of the last somewhat civil, fully moderated, independent, anon-friendly board on the internet in 2021 on the shoulders of one admin. I'd like to say how a million flowers should bloom from this shining example, but it seems more lik…
By now, there should be enough data to automate dang? On a more serious note: Is he really doing this all by himself? If so, I am sure he could train some junior people to off-load the work.
I was thinking that dang is going to be one of the most represented voices in GPT-4 and later. Hopefully you can retrieve him from the mix by nickname.
Re: Top Hacker News commenters of 2021
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is an art to it. Although if a new account got negative karma early on, I would just abandon it. Selective evolution towards an account with comments that hit well enough.
No, it's selective evolution towards comment that appease the majority of the commenters, which is different. It's how you end up with reddit-like echo chambers.
That's not exactly the truth.
The majority of Hacker News users can't downvote, and because of that, you're almost certain to get more upvotes than downvotes, unless your comment has few redeeming qualities.
The majority of Hacker News also doesn't really upvote much. Your typical front page post has under a thousand votes, and posts are the easiest things to upvote. Comments rarely get over a hundred, and almost never get over three hundred.
A single vote can change the outcome of a thread. A reply, even a vicious one, can increase your chances of getting votes; there's a phenomenon in which people will upvote comments they dislike and or disagree with in order to have their response be higher up.
This does mean that HN punishes certain styles of particularly offensive or non-contributing comments, but most won't be punished at all. It's, like vmception pointed out, a system that encourages comments that do "well enough." Because there's no punishment in making a mediocre comment, there's always reason to post. Even people saying absolutely rancid things ideologically aren't likely to get downvoted unless they frame their comment wrong.
HN is about style more than it is substance; it's not an echo chamber, because it doesn't select on ideology. It selects on how pretty your words are.
Re: Top Hacker News commenters of 2021
#69I was hoping I wouldn't be on this list. Lots of time spent here. Maybe too much.
HN is such a good community though... No other place like this exists on the internet.
Re: Top Hacker News commenters of 2021
#70[deleted]