

Ask HN: Any HN stats analysis been done? - lifeisstillgood

I was just thinking of some questions about HN discussions - things like what does the average discussion look like? How long between replies is common &#x2F; polite  (I seem to let the other end hang for hours)<p>I don&#x27;t particularly care about best time to post (that&#x27;s defined by me as when I am struck by something) but there are many interesting questions one could ask the corpus<p>(Which leads to the other question - is there a good way to get hold of the corpus?)
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jcr
There's the main HackerNews API [1] via firebase.com, and there's also the
Algolia HN Search API [2]. Over the years I've seen quite a few collections of
data [3, 4, 5, 6], but how complete they are and whether or not they've been
maintained is unknown.

[1] [https://github.com/HackerNews/API](https://github.com/HackerNews/API)

[2] [https://github.com/algolia/hn-search](https://github.com/algolia/hn-
search)

[3]
[https://archive.org/details/HackerNewsStoriesAndCommentsDump](https://archive.org/details/HackerNewsStoriesAndCommentsDump)

[4]
[https://ia902503.us.archive.org/33/items/HackerNewsStoriesAn...](https://ia902503.us.archive.org/33/items/HackerNewsStoriesAndCommentsDump/)

[5] [http://shitalshah.com/p/downloading-all-of-hacker-news-
posts...](http://shitalshah.com/p/downloading-all-of-hacker-news-posts-and-
comments/)

[6]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7835605](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7835605)

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danso
There was this last week: a dump of the 10M comments and posts so far:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10002791](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10002791)

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Aeolus98
I particularly like Andrej Karpathy's analysis:
[https://cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/hn_analysis.html](https://cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/hn_analysis.html)

------
minimaxir
I have a repository of scripts for downloading all Hacker News data using
Python and storing in PostgreSQL: [https://github.com/minimaxir/get-all-
hacker-news-submissions...](https://github.com/minimaxir/get-all-hacker-news-
submissions-comments)

------
gwern
Here's a list of relevant links I've compiled over the past year or two:

\- [http://nathanael.hevenet.com/the-best-time-to-post-on-
hacker...](http://nathanael.hevenet.com/the-best-time-to-post-on-hacker-news-
a-comprehensive-answer/) \- [http://minimaxir.com/2014/02/hacking-hacker-
news/](http://minimaxir.com/2014/02/hacking-hacker-news/) \-
[http://minimaxir.com/2014/10/hn-comments-about-
comments/](http://minimaxir.com/2014/10/hn-comments-about-comments/) \-
[http://karpathy.ca/myblog/2013/11/27/quantifying-hacker-
news...](http://karpathy.ca/myblog/2013/11/27/quantifying-hacker-news-
with-50-days-of-data/)
[https://cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/hn_analysis.html](https://cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/hn_analysis.html)
\- [http://metamarkets.com/2011/hacking-hacker-news-
headlines/](http://metamarkets.com/2011/hacking-hacker-news-headlines/) \-
[http://danluu.com/randomize-hn/](http://danluu.com/randomize-hn/) \-
[http://www.bayesianwitch.com/blog/2013/why_hn_shouldnt_use_r...](http://www.bayesianwitch.com/blog/2013/why_hn_shouldnt_use_randomized_algorithms.html)
\- [http://camdp.com/blogs/multi-armed-bandits](http://camdp.com/blogs/multi-
armed-bandits) \- [http://gkosev.blogspot.com/2012/08/fixing-hacker-news-
mathem...](http://gkosev.blogspot.com/2012/08/fixing-hacker-news-mathematical-
approach.html) \- [http://blog.rjmetrics.com/2012/10/17/surprising-hacker-
news-...](http://blog.rjmetrics.com/2012/10/17/surprising-hacker-news-data-
analysis/) \- [http://blog.rjmetrics.com/2012/10/24/how-to-get-on-the-
front...](http://blog.rjmetrics.com/2012/10/24/how-to-get-on-the-front-page-
of-hacker-news/) \- [http://blog.datadive.net/which-topics-get-the-upvote-on-
hack...](http://blog.datadive.net/which-topics-get-the-upvote-on-hacker-news/)
\-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8790134](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8790134)
\- [https://porter.io/blog/hackernews-cheaters-catch-me-if-
you-c...](https://porter.io/blog/hackernews-cheaters-catch-me-if-you-can/)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9332889](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9332889)
\- [http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-
really...](http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-
works.html) \-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9336759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9336759)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9333611](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9333611)
\- [http://www.almostinfinite.com/other/hacker-news-new-page-
scr...](http://www.almostinfinite.com/other/hacker-news-new-page-scroll-of-
death.html)?

