You're talking about probability of upvote, but that needs to be multiplied by the number of people who read the comment, and that depends heavily on where it is on the comment page itself. When I look at my karma on my recent comments they have very little to do with how much time I spent on them or how unique my perspective is... I even wonder if that aspect is gameable sometimes, whether you could guess the probability that with your upvote a comment that has been recently posted 5 minutes ago could be boosted above the top comment posted 5 hours ago, and if the 15 minute ago one was interesting enough maybe it would be self-sustaining up there, and you could potentially produce the second comment in the page by replying to it. But that's a lot of math when probably if you're trying to optimize karma/comment there are better heuristics, “always comment on any post that is on the front page with < 20 points and < 20 comments” or so, just increasing volume of things that are probably in the right place to be upvoted.
For me it's a sign that I need to change something at work, I often flee here because I am making powerpoints, I'd never do it so much if I was writing code more often. At least, that is what I believe.
HN does give me back a lot though: Being understood, by like minded people, confirmation of my opinions that are just too different from my group of friends (none have ever for example installed Linux, or tried to run their own cloud services). I feel at home here. It could be called addiction, it's also just finding a community where you can express thoughts you can't express anywhere else, and expect to have interactions based on those thoughts. I've often changed my mind or apologized for being a dick here, I don't want to be banned but I want to validate and invalidate my believes and it works for me, I hope I provide value for others as well. Maybe I have an HN shaped hole in my heart?
In any event, it's been worth it and it's been a job well done.
Also, I'm surprised and a bit ashamed to be #415 in this list. That's probably a whole side-project's worth of time I could have spent elsewhere. But I guess we all need somewhere to commune, talk shop, make friends or blow off some steam. FWIW I've learned far more from HN in the last year than I've been able to bring to it, and I'm thankful for the avenues it leads me down every day as a reader. I would post a lot less if I stopped drinking but, yeah.
Actually, there are multiple admins. See his response to my question here [0].
That's, of course, not to distract from his great work; as I've stated multiple times already, I really think HN is one of the best moderated communities overall.
I'm sure he does, and I don't know. But that way lies every other site on the internet...
I recognize an hyperbole when I see one, but this one is kinda of a big one.
Even the people who disagree with you here are polite. There are your occasional reddit-style "cool" sounding snarky comments every now and then. But decent overall
I also prefer to keep the guideline commentary separate from any other matter so as not to dilute the message.
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.
"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
upvoted, btw. Thanks for making me wonder what kind of asshole I am.
More useful is knowing
* What were 2021's most upvoted articles?
* Wat were 20201's most upvoted comments?
And here: https://app.whaly.io/hacker-news/public/report/3596f39c-5a56...
- [1] https://whaly.io/posts/top-10k-commenters-of-hacker-news-in-...
Sometimes I break my vow of online detoxing before sleeping; when I find trending topics related to my domain of knowledge, I frantically respond before the comment section gets too crowded. On the other hand, I can think through more diligently during my noontime, but my effort towards quality commenting is not met by karma from otherwise asleep HNers. It seems like reaping karma is not just about knowing the subject well, but being in the right place at the right time(zone).
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.
Maybe that would better highlight what I really enjoy with HN: A story about aviation and suddenly 4 airline pilots appear and share insight, or when some tech legend dies and several colleagues pop in and tell stories about them. Or like the other day when one of the authors of the BLAKE3 algorithm (?) participated in some friendly flame-waring.
A lot can be written while waiting for an incremental build to compile
Thanks for all the substantive entertainment everyone
(Though yes I should probably be more conservative with my comments)
While it seems like a boring manual job, it’s an interesting job if looked at as an automation problem. The need to automate in a non-stupid way would be good to apply here.
Near the end of the list, it’s sitting at around a hundred accounts for each number, yet 70 comments has only 18 accounts listed before the 10000 cutoff is reached. Presumably some 80 or so more accounts were also at 70 comments, but are not mentioned. How wewre items ordered? Not by username, not by creation date, not by karma, I guess it’s just random? Alas for the ~⅘ of the 70-comments-per-year users who were excluded by capricious randomness!
I'm also surprised that my name shows up. Like another poster said, small world.
It would be nice if there was a "solving the world's problems" tag and an rss feed without it ;)
I guess this is because HN de-emphasises usernames.
Not sure I agree, HN makes the username visible right next to the post? What I think (granted, I grew up with mailing lists and forums without images), is that we're so used to associating people online with pictures nowadays, that when there is no picture, why don't pick up the usernames anymore. Because I do recognize a lot of the usernames in the top 100, some even from just one comment I read but had an impact on me, and my memory made of flesh is really crappy most of the time.
Yes, but grayed out, in the background, so to speak. I usually do not notice the username at all (capableweb, hi! this is the first time I've noticed you...). Especially the usernames next to topics/stories are completely ignored by my brain's eyes.
If you're really trying, you can accumulate over a hundred points in a day without posting any articles.
The site is basically a game if you're optimizing for points, and it's better designed than reddit because you have to actually know things to get them.
Have a niche programming language you like? Talk about it! Have a weird subset of computer science you wrote a thesis on? Write a few paragraphs a day on it! Have domain knowledge for something that isn't computing? "Debunk" all of the articles you see on it. Avoid controversial topics, because these don't grant you as many points. Go solely for uncontroversial deep dives into subjects you know about; it's far better for achieving as many points as you can possibly get as fast as possible.
You also have to have a particular style of writing. Detached, yet (at least on the surface) quite thoughtful. Use commas and semicolons rather than writing choppy sentences, and pay attention to your spelling; presentation is half the battle, and you'll have a hard time getting anywhere if you use less than stellar English. Otherwise identical comments will perform drastically different if there is a single misspelled "at least."
If you master these two steps, you, too, can farm Hacker News for points, get bored and eventually make another account when you want to feel the beautiful feeling of your words having attention focused on them once more, the sweet point-ticker on the top right of the screen offering you slow doses of dopamine throughout your workday that just doesn't hit the same if you're on an account with over ten thousand points.
I don't play this game anymore, as anyone can probably tell from this account and my willingness to break every rule I listed in this comment on it. It's fun to play, though, and I would recommend doing it if you have an aptitude for it; more people talking about more things deeply is always better.
Somehow, I find the opposite to be true. Probably I spend too much time on HN (as evident by the #66 ranking in this list), but most comments are just off-hand thinking/reactions to the submission itself. Some comments do come from being an experienced software developer who never had troubles finding work (which, I guess speaks to something but unclear exactly what, technical capabilities or be-able-to-bullshit? We don't know yet).
The times my posts do gets downvoted, I can mostly understand why, as I made the comment in anger/too emotional place. Maybe your comments are the same? The only time I really get downvoted without really understanding why (exception the emotions of the downvoter) is in various cryptocurrency discussions. HN seems very divided as soon as it comes up.
One can have better luck in getting noticed if you are early on the thread.
In a way those members who pickup new threads for discussion are pivotal for a community to thrive.
Sometimes this can be a signal about the content of your comment, other times it can be a signal about the content of the thread/topic.
There's a fun HN data mining project waiting to be done on voting/flagging trends, including cross-community topic sentiment surveillance within specific time windows.
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.
I post too much crap here :s Ill be more careful posting since it's easier to stand out than reddit then !
I appreciate that HN is a kind of a community where people post when they actually have something to say. I mean, I often write a comment and then delete it before posting it if I figure it doesn't really add anything to the discussion.
I actually feel like doing it for this comment too.
HN is such a good community though... No other place like this exists on the internet.
Reading over the top few names, even though HN doesn't emphasize usernames at all, I recognized quite a few of them. Quite fascinating and a compliment to their comment quality.
