

The best of $user on HN, with eBook export - redpill27
http://bitovod.com/hn/best-of

======
pella
The best of Hacker News !

[http://bitovod.com/hn/best-
of?username=&limit=100](http://bitovod.com/hn/best-of?username=&limit=100)

( just empty username field )

TOP5:

#1, 368 points by btilly |on: Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn?
Surrender to This Algorithm

#2, 296 points by mechanical_fish |on: Why Your Startup Shouldn't Copy
37signals or Fog Creek

#3, 282 points by norvig |on: Ask PG: Lisp vs Python (2010)

#4, 261 points by grellas |on: So A Blogger Walks Into A Bar…

#5, 260 points by jrockway |on: Osama bin Laden Is Dead

------
evanrmurphy
Nice job!

Feature request: Make the queries linkable. I think people would appreciate
being able to have permalinks for themselves or HN leaders like tptacek,
patio11 and jacquesm.

It would also be very interesting to see how the results for edw519 size up
against his own curated comment list: <http://edweissman.com/53640595>

\--

 _Update:_ Thanks to bitovod for implementing the feature. There's now an
ongoing list of the HN leaders at
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2662721>

~~~
redpill27
Done.

[http://bitovod.com/hn/best-
of?username=tptacek&limit=75](http://bitovod.com/hn/best-
of?username=tptacek&limit=75)

~~~
evanrmurphy
Impressive turnaround! :)

This is also good for your site. You'll get more links now because people can
link to the particular things they're interested in rather than just the
homepage.

------
Alex3917
A more accurate headline would be "Witty quips and pithy one-liners by $user,
and ASCII art by edw519"

~~~
Locke1689
Yup. My top comment is a one-liner aphorism about the US and China, while one
of my favorite comments (encouraging people to get into OS & kernel
development <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=740718>) is way down at the
bottom. C'est la vie.

------
jdietrich
Hands up if the first thing you did was search your own name.

Yeah, me too.

------
swombat
I'm kind of disappointed by <http://bitovod.com/hn/best-of?username=swombat>
\- most of my highest-voted comments are short and snappy.

~~~
stevenj
What's wrong with clear and simple?

------
David
A note, HN's user system is case sensitive and this is not, which at first led
to some great confusion for me. me:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=David> not me:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=david>

------
mahmud
If you used GET for the username parameter, it would show up in the URL &
encourage cut-and-paste virality.

------
edw519
This is excellent! I had envisioned doing something like this but never got
around to it. Thank you!

A few ideas for enhancements:

\- the ability to sort comments by a user defined formula using karma points,
number of comments in thread, and date (Later comments get too many points
because the site has grown so much.)

\- a few formatting options

\- a service than prints hard copies...

AFAIC, anyone who has submitted 100 good comments to Hacker News has
effectively "written a book". You may not realize it, but you are an author
and an authority on _something_. You should have hard copies of your pdf (in a
pamphlet or handout of some sort) and you should carry a half dozen of them
everywhere you go.

It may seem kind of silly, but if you've contributed value here, you should
not be ashamed to share it with others, whether they be customers, prospective
employers, or anyone you meet networking.

Your top 100 comments (The best of <xxx>) says volumes more about who you are
than any resume or business card. You should be proud to share it.

------
Shamiq
This is a disconcerting self-community interaction analysis tool. I don't like
my top comments at all.

~~~
trickjarrett
I was surprised by this as well, my top comments were on the whole, rather
forgettable.

~~~
hugh3
Apparently the best thing I've ever said was a complaint about an inaccurate
headline.

The seventeenth-best thing I've ever said was that "Gorillas aren't monkeys"
with a somewhat later edit in which I complain about how many people are
modding me up for such a pointless nitpick.

And the fortieth-best thing I've ever said was:

 _Of all the fantasies I've ever heard which involve a hotel room, a comely
young lady, fifteen thousand dollars and all-you-can-drink cranberry juice,
that's the dullest, I'm sorry._

I have no idea what the context was, but it sounds _way_ better out of
context.

Really though, the biggest problem with this is that it overwhelmingly
contains recent comments due to karma inflation.

------
pak
I commend you for using <map> to link the markers to the items. Image maps...
wow that takes me back to 1999. I can't believe people still remember how to
use them. Of course you can't do any rollover effects with them, but otherwise
it seems like a pretty quick and effective solution for the interface you
wanted to make. When I first saw this I thought the Google Chart API had maybe
changed to add JavaScript-based interactions.

~~~
redpill27
Well, the Google Chart API actually supports JS-based interactive charts:
<http://code.google.com/apis/chart/index.html>

However, I use the static image version + <map> since the JS version of the
scatter chart is missing some features (no alpha channel, fixed marker size).

------
encoderer
I checked a few of my own comments -- there was for example one that I have
score of 89 but this tool shows 21.

Is it something other than straight upvote count?

------
tzs
What does it mean by "best"? I would have guessed highest rated, but a little
experimenting shows that this is not the case.

------
jjcm
Given that point values of comments are hidden now, how does this determine
the comment score? Just curious.

~~~
redpill27
The point values are available through the search API (except the last five
days).

------
gjm11
The server currently appears to be serving everything up as text/plain. Has
been doing (for me, at least) for at least the last 5 minutes or so.

[EDITED after redpill fixed the server: yup, it's fine again now.]

~~~
redpill27
I have just updated the http headers the server sends. Please, could you check
now?

------
curtin
What will be really cool is to see how the "hide comment scores" effect looks
using this (assuming at some point they will be able to collect that). I think
the one liner type comments might show a big drop.

~~~
mirkules
The switch happened in mid-May, 2011 (I don't remember the actual date). My
scores went up slightly, but using this tool it's impossible to tell (since
the limit is 100). I tried to change the limit in the HTML file using firebug,
but I guess there's a server-side check for that (good!). Anyone care to hook
against the API?

------
dpcan
Wow, kind-of depressing (but I still love it).

Apparently I'm extremely average in every way. About 3 or 4 times in the last
year I said something worth reading.

1% interesting, 99% average. Hum.

------
solipsist
None of the data points are appearing on the chart when I look at it. I'm
using Safari 5. Sounds like a cool idea - but right now it's a pain to have to
keep downloading the PDF to see the chart.

~~~
redpill27
Most likely the problem is with parsing the date string. I can fix it if
anyone knows which Date string format Safari 5 supports.

~~~
solipsist
I'm not sure, but this thread might be of help:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4310953/invalid-date-
in-s...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4310953/invalid-date-in-safari)

------
crocowhile
When did PG remove the scores from comments again? This tool can tell if
people upvote less when scores are hidden. Doesn't seem to be the case on a
few random test names I tried.

------
angusgr
Feature Request: Quick optional filter for "minimum length", rather than
having to look for the big dots. The short comments are pithy, but many seem
to be context-specific.

------
a-priori
Bug report: I can't generate a PDF for my username. I think it's barfing on
the hyphen.

~~~
Alex3917
I think you need to capitalize the first letter of your username or else it
doesn't work.

------
Estragon
How are you extracting the points for each comment?

~~~
redpill27
[http://api.thriftdb.com/api.hnsearch.com/items/_search?filte...](http://api.thriftdb.com/api.hnsearch.com/items/_search?filter\[fields\]\[username\]\[\]=Estragon&filter\[fields\]\[type\]\[\]=comment&sortby=points%20desc&pretty_print=1)

------
redouane
excellent stuff :) cant wait to see the other contest entries

