
Top 100 Users on Hacker News by H-Index - anton_tarasenko
https://github.com/antontarasenko/smq/blob/master/reports/hackernews-top-authors-by-h-index.md
======
djfm
I would also be interested in seeing a ranking in terms of articles read by
the user.

While h-index and karma are great to measure, well, measurable contribution to
the community, it fails to capture the contribution to the community that
consists in (and this is true of a lot of other if not of all "karma policies"
too):

    
    
      - sharing what one sees in this community, and spreading it through
        other channels
      - or even just using the knowledge gathered here
      - or, in the best case, using the inspiration found in this community 
        to help build a better world
    

I for one read HN articles and comments about 2 hours a day every single day
even now at 5am on a Sunday morning after a party. This made me a better
programmer, dreamer, and probably a slightly better person too.

Yet I speak little and have only a little under 300 karma. I believe, though,
that I contribute somehow more to the community than what my karma shows (e.g.
by spreading the word about a cool and useful technology at work - say
functional reactive programming for instance - and seeing it being adopted or
experimented with).

I think attendance matters, too :)

EDIT: list formatting

EDIT2: added bit about FRP cuz, you know, redux

~~~
signa11
> While h-index and karma are great to measure, well, measurable contribution
> to the community, it fails to capture the contribution to the community...

i really don't know how any of the stuff that you have mentioned is
empirically verifiable or in other words, as you have so rightly indicated,
measurable.

how would you rank things based on stuff that you cannot even measure ? e.g.
if 'sharing what one sees in this community, and spreading it through other
channels' is something that is looked at as a measure of contribution, how
would you go about doing it ?

i could probably think of couple of ways. none of which will not appear
'creepy' e.g. one very obvious approach might be that we start linking up
things like facebook/reddit/g+ etc. accounts here and start tracking things ?
thereby, generating over a period of time, metrics which measure node (that's
you !) centrality etc...

~~~
holri
We have just discovered that rankings are useless. The world is not only what
is measurable.

~~~
ktRolster
That reminds me of the weekly metric emails I get from Slack. I have no idea
what to do with the information they give me.

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rm999
For anyone wondering, I had to read the wikipedia page and sql code to fully
understand what the h-index means in this table: an h-index of n means the
user has n submissions (stories, jobs, or polls) with a score of at least n.
So, ColinWright has 143 submissions with a score of 143 or more.

My h-index is 2 :)

~~~
DonaldFisk
That's a similar idea to the Eddington number in cycling: [http://triathlete-
europe.competitor.com/2011/04/18/measuring...](http://triathlete-
europe.competitor.com/2011/04/18/measuring-bike-miles-eddington-number)

~~~
thisisdave
Not to be confused with the Eddington number in physics[0]

"I believe there are 15 747 724 136 275 002 577 605 653 961 181 555 468 044
717 914 527 116 709 366 231 425 076 185 631 031 296 protons in the universe
and the same number of electrons." \--Sir Arthur Eddington

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddington_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddington_number)

------
Lockyy
There's actually a built in Top Users page on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders](https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders)

Although it's by Karma rather than by front-page reaching skill, so it's a
different metric really.

It's odd that it displays Karma for everyone outside the top ten.

~~~
dang
Some people in the top 10 asked us not to show karma at that point. It's a
distraction.

Actually I hate that leader page and would like to replace it with something
more interesting. There's too much past and not enough present and future in
it.

~~~
ericabiz
How about a "trending" page that shows users who have gained the most karma in
the past x days or months? Here, I would say I prefer comment karma instead of
article submission karma, as I don't care who submitted the story about
Apple's latest device 5 seconds before everyone else did.

~~~
DanBC
It would need to filter out people like me who just post too much.

Any list that includes me, but not eg grellas is probably doing something
wrong.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=grellas](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=grellas)

------
minimaxir
It should be noted that the Karma scores were added to the table manually, as
all karma data is not accessible publicly.

You can't simply add Total Points on submissions + Total Points on comments -
# of submissions/comments: comment karma is no longer exposed via the API, and
total karma counts do not incorporate points earned via suspected voting ring
accounts. (while submissions do)

------
dang
Some users get a high h-index by submitting tons of stories. For the sake of
argument, suppose that of two users with the same h-index, the one who
submitted fewer stories is a higher-quality submitter. What would be the best
way to modify the h-index to incorporate this?

~~~
dkopi
An H index provides a trade off between quality and quantity. It attempts to
measure both impact (citations in the case of academics, or upvotes in the
case of HN), and quantity.

You'll have a low H index if you have lots of low quality submissions, and
you'll have a low H index if you have very few ultra successful submissions.

From wikipedia: The definition of the index is that a scholar with an index of
h has published h papers each of which has been cited in other papers at least
h times.[4] Thus, the h-index reflects both the number of publications and the
number of citations per publication. The index is designed to improve upon
simpler measures such as the total number of citations or publications.

~~~
akavel
But IIUC, if one submits 1000 links and 10% of them get 100+ votes, while the
rest get <100, then one's h-index is the same (100) as if one submitted 100
links, but all of them got 100+ votes. So, it doesn't measure "spaminess".
That's what the question was about, I believe - is there a way to take this
into account, while not losing the good parts of h-index.

~~~
dorfsmay
The median would solve the spamminess, but it'd completely eliminate the high
scores.

That's why a lot of people like to look at more than one number when looking
at a set summary, but you can't compare and classify these as easily.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-
number_summary](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-number_summary)

------
hbbio
This is interesting, but I suspect there is a bias.

Submissions, when they succeed, tend to get many upvotes. Comments also get
upvotes, but in average an order of magnitude less. The same applies to
replies in comment, which I would guess generally get fewer upvotes (or
subcomments to comments other than the top comment).

It seems that the Top 100 users here are the one who are posting stories and
that comment rarely, as that would optimize the "leverage" to get a higher
H-index.

~~~
rav
The H-index is designed such that posts with few upvotes cannot decrease the
H-index. Since it is defined as the largest n such that you have ≥n posts with
score ≥n, adding another low-scoring post doesn't decrease the H-index.

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daveguy
Interesting. The top 3 do not have a submission in the last 100 days. danso
(number 4) and shawndumas (number 5) both have recent submissions.

~~~
shawndumas
I am broken; apropos of addiction.

~~~
daveguy
Wow, your account averages almost 24 internet points per day. That is pretty
intense. Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery. I thought
I was spending too much time on HN with ~5pts/day. I hope you are able to get
it under control (probably meaning kick it all together). My dad had a problem
with Tetris in the 90s -- but that was better than the alcoholism he dealt
with in the 70s and 80s (30+ years sober now). So, ivanca has a good point
that it can be worse. However, there is no doubt that internet/games/etc can
be addictive. Good luck.

~~~
shawndumas
truthfully, I use hn as a sort of delicious replacement.

~~~
daveguy
That's a good thing then!

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xer0x
It's fun to see this. I'm surprised to see some of the names here.

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rajeemcariazo
Github is the wikipedia for hackers

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cossatot
Navel analytics

