
Show HN: Search for a domain expert on Reddit - lettergram
https://redditprofile.com/
======
yorwba
If you want to find mods and bots, try searching for "please". It works on the
HN version to pick out dang and sctb and it seems to work on Reddit as well.

There are some false positives, however. E.g. a comment saying "Zuck Fuck"
being interpreted as discussing "please" might be due to uncleaned word
vectors.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/85y46f/facebooks...](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/85y46f/facebooks_stock_tumbles_again_value_drops_by_more/dw1bxc4/)

~~~
jwilk
I tried
[https://hnprofile.com/author_profiles?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search=...](https://hnprofile.com/author_profiles?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search=please)
to no avail; there's neither dang nor sctb on the first 5 pages.

~~~
lettergram
So.. the system learns what the subject of a sentence is over time. It's since
learned "please" is not a subject, so I imagine that's what's dropped them in
the results.

Still appear first for YCombinator, because that's the links they constantly
post

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ketralnis
Fortunately I'm not the kind of person people would be searching for, but this
just seems impolite. Posting to an internet forum on a topic that interests
you is not an opt-in to have random internet people or reach out to you asking
for free advice. If I were a domain expert I wouldn't _want_ to be searched
for on Reddit using a tool like this because the implicit goal is to then be
spammed about it. If I wanted to be reached out to, I'd say so on a web site
somewhere

~~~
megamindbrian2
Neither is it proof of being an expert.

~~~
scopecreep
But semi-anonymous posts on social media are?

If so there's a lot more Navy SEALs than I was lead to believe.

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wingerlang
When I searched for my own account, it didn't show up. When I searched for a
topic, it showed me a user with the same name as the topic. When I did find
some users claimed to be experts, I found their mood over the year and the
main link was to a HN comment of them.

I am not sure how to use this, what makes a user a domain expert?

It's all kinda confusing.

~~~
lettergram
I only show accounts that were active in the past year (in the subreddits it’s
tracking).

Do you have examples of the errors? I’d love to try and figure out the issue.

Regarding a domain expert it’s identified by the terms a person uses and
related terms people are interested in. The learn more section might help
clear some of that up.

~~~
wingerlang
Not tracking all subreddits makes sense I guess. But I searched for
"Jailbreak". But got a user with that username.

Searching for "ios programming" shows me some guy wyager and the discussion
link is to HN, not reddit.

~~~
lettergram
Thanks for the heads up -_-

The full blown system creates what I call "metaprofiles" merging profiles
across various domains. Basically, it can identify people based on
conversation (regardless of username or domain). One thing I do, is create
these "metaprofiles" and will return the first linked account.

Apparently, I forgot to add a "data source" as an input to the function, thus
you may get some of the cross profiles.

------
DanBC
I searched for "suicide". I got a list of people back who had interesting
opinions in a thread about suicide, but who are not domain experts.

It's an interesting idea though, and it worked a lot better than I was
expecting it to. The limitations are clear from the description on the page
("note we only track a small number of subreddits").

------
thethirdone
A few characters (' ) ( :) (And probably more) lead to an error screen:

[https://redditprofile.com/author_profiles?utf8=%E2%9C%93&sea...](https://redditprofile.com/author_profiles?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search=%27)

[https://redditprofile.com/author_profiles?utf8=%E2%9C%93&sea...](https://redditprofile.com/author_profiles?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search=%28)

[https://redditprofile.com/author_profiles?utf8=%E2%9C%93&sea...](https://redditprofile.com/author_profiles?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search=%29)

[https://redditprofile.com/author_profiles?utf8=%E2%9C%93&sea...](https://redditprofile.com/author_profiles?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search=%3A)

~~~
lettergram
Thanks for catching the error!

Should be fixed now, for reference the error was because I was estimating the
count. Turns out that couldn't handle _only_ special characters.

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jwilk
The same thing but for HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17942981](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17942981)

------
CarVac
I searched for photography and none of the regulars on /r/photography
(including myself) came up.

~~~
lettergram
FYI the system just looks at a subset of subreddits:

/r/dataisbeautiful

/r/news

/r/worldnews

/r/technology

/r/programming

/r/cars

/r/stock market

/r/cryptocurrency

/r/all

Basically didn't want to build an insanely large database for a simple demo.

~~~
chx
Well that kills it. The gems of reddit are to be found in small subreddits.
For example, awesome bag advice can be found in /r/onebag/ (41k subscribers)
/r/ManyBaggers/ (783 only but don't let that fool you, the knowledge in that
place is astonishing) and somewhat on /r/BuyItForLife/ (500k). Even that 500k
is very small.

------
jsonne
Interesting. As someone who has a marketing subreddit dedicated to my content
that's about 3k people I wish this was a bit more inclusive outside large
subreddits. There's a lot of value in the "longtail" subreddits as it were.

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dewey
Can you just use the name “Reddit” in your Domain like that?

~~~
chatmasta
Probably Reddit could technically make a trademark enforcement claim, but it
seems they are unlikely to, given the long existence of sites like
redditlist.com

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dimitry12
@lettergram In lettergram.com, when it says "{} opinion ({}) in {} separate
discussions" \- are these discussions from Reddit and HN?

~~~
lettergram
It’s what ever is fed into the system. So currently it’s monitoring 12 or so
data sources. I could monitor more, but I figure I’ll scale it with interest.

~~~
dimitry12
Cool! What are they?

Have you considered adding the feature of listing the conversations which
contributed to the score?

~~~
lettergram
100% of the conversations on this website come from subreddits (main ones
listed in another comment here). Overall I also monitor some forums, hacker
news, and others for [https://projectpiglet.com](https://projectpiglet.com)
which identifies company insiders then recommends trades. So I don't feel
comfortable with sharing exact sources.

Regarding the score - The paid version I'm offering to companies has said
feature. It also has a bunch of other items as well, find duplicate accounts,
automated related project notification, etc.

~~~
dimitry12
Thanks! I will consider trying paid version.

~~~
lettergram
> The paid version I'm offering to companies has said feature.

Should note! That is not the projectpiglet.com version (that wont show you any
user information, don't want you to pay unnecessarily). I'm offering the paid
version which can be hosted and deployed by a given company internally. To do
that you'll need to contact direct via email.

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mothsonasloth
Interesting stuff, how do you calculate a users "mood". Are you willing to
explain your algorithm?

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klohto
Everyone I searched for have an unhappy mood...

~~~
forgottenpass
Semantic analysis belongs to the third category in "lies, damn lies, and
statistics."

I'm sure it's slightly better for Metacortex's real use case - which is an
employee surveillance system - because people won't use strong language,
hyperbole, share their real opinions, or talk about certain topics as much in
professional communication. But I still find the whole domain to be a fraud
with just enough signal in the noise to trick people.

------
dsfyu404ed
This tool is interesting but it is fundamentally an exercise in turd polishing
because Reddit is a completely terrible place to get "expert" advice. It's
designed to be a place for show and tell with commentary and false appearance
of consensus.

If you want expert advice you should be asking for it somewhere that's
properly formatted for long form discussion. You should also seek out advice
in a specialized community, not a general one like Reddit. For every piece of
good advice on Reddit there's ten pieces of terrible advice and ten pieces of
mediocre advice you could find yourself on Google offered up by the riff-raff
that happen to be passing through that day. Reddit is just polite 4chan. If
you want expert advice to somewhere where only people who are interested in
the topic you want advice on are (usually forums).

Edit: Also this tool thinks I am an expert in hipsters. I like to think I'm an
expert in calling people hipsters.

~~~
fhood
Sigh. Reddit is not a completely terrible place to get expert advice. Yes,
there is a great deal of awful advice to be found there. But there are also a
fair number of subreddits that are the primary gathering place for that
community, and thus the best place to go for advice on that topic.

When I google something non-programming related, the correct answer is very
frequently found in a Reddit post.

Reddit isn't usually the absolute best place for advice on a topic, but
painting it as "completely terrible" seems like hyperbole to me.

~~~
PascLeRasc
Reddit's the best way to get lots of real people's opinions of stuff. Search
for "best Windows backup tool" and you get a pile of sponsored pages and fake
recommendation sites, and probably some malware. Search for "best Windows
backup tool site:reddit.com" and you get people posting in sysadmin
communities having real discussion.

~~~
Kagerjay
"site:reddit.com {{tool name}} vs ______" is something I use fairly
frequently. Its not perfect by any means due to astroturfing, but its better
than nothing

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indentit
isn't "domain expert" and "reddit" contradictory?

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josefresco
Searched for "trump", site returned PoppinKREAM so this seems pretty accurate!

~~~
mfoy_
Love his write-ups. Shame the people who don't want to hear his message can
just say "fake news" and carry on... :(

------
known
[https://redditprofile.com/author_profiles?utf8=%E2%9C%93&sea...](https://redditprofile.com/author_profiles?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search=HFT)

