
All Hacker News Evergreen Stories Ordered by Score - 10001110101
http://contextly.com/blog/2014/11/hacker-news-evergreen-stories-ordered-score/
======
minimaxir
Don't put the low-point stories in your list because it makes the load times
incredibly high for your page.

Additionally, there's a flaw with your definition of evergreen: a large
portion of the (YYYY) submissions are made in order to provide ironic
juxtaposition with current events, which makes the submission meaningless
outside of that context.

~~~
jboynyc
Agreed. But I got a laugh out of the fact that the least valuable "evergreen"
is called "Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce." So _that 's_ what that guy is
on...

~~~
kissickas
His grandmother spent 10,000 hours making it every Sunday.

In all seriousness, this list, however flawed, is nice to take a look at as I
see I've missed a few of these. But a cutoff would probably make more sense,
at least on the main page.

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scott_s
To me, an "evergreen" story would be one that has been posted multiple times
throughout the years, always getting significant points. That's more of a
squishy definition, through, which means it will be a bit harder to write a
script to find. (Need to pick a number of submissions, number of points while
taking into account inflation, and do some URL dupe-checking.)

~~~
wozniacki
Strongly second this.

"Evergreen" is a misnomer for this.

    
    
      An evergreen story is any story where the difference 
      between the submission date of the story and the 
      publication date of the story is two years or more.
    

These stories need not necessarily be any more interesting than your average
high-ranked ones on the front page.

Plenty of important stories go unnoticed, if they aren't picked up and
submitted instantly after their inception, to various news outlets, with even
bigger subscriber bases than HN.

Once a story is no longer fresh, it is highly rare that it retains its
relevance, reader-interest or uniqueness.

If a story, despite not attracting much attention in it's 'first release', is
periodically submitted by various people at various times, then it indicates
timelessness.

However the fact that some very worthy stories get lost and never really see
traction or virality, is in itself cause for constant fine-tuning of the way
stories get weighted, ranked and thrust onto the first page(s) of not just HN,
but just about every other similar news board out there.

Personally, I'd like to see a 'second chance' ticker that continuously scrolls
the most feverishly upvoted AND downvoted non-front page, stories of the hour,
occupying a sliver of real estate at the top of the page.

Whether on HN or Twitter or on the most trafficked general-interest blog out
there, recycling older content should not be frowned upon.

A content recycling and re-purposing program should be part of a comprehensive
publishing plan for any digital outlet that rapidly generates content.

It is the responsible thing to do.

Stellar content is missed by readers for a whole host of reasons. This happens
even when that content is widely shared by friends or coworkers.

This brings us to the deconstruction of what stellar content really is.

Information ( and thus content ) is judged by not just the truth value or the
interesting-ness of the insights therein, but also

    
    
      * the timeliness of those insights and more importantly
      * the perspective a fresh ( and a keen ) pair of eyes brings 
        to those very same insights
    

It is interesting to observe how in an age of countless distribution channels
and dissemination models, a thoroughly flat world for information access of
all kinds with very few old-world gatekeepers and in an age of roaring
democratization of most content[1], we cannot escape the tyranny of the hive
mind and groupthink. If anything, it seems to have gained fresh legs.

I don't know if this recycling, second-chancing and re-purposing of content is
the perfect antidote to hive mind and groupthink, but it certainly is a step
in the right direction.

[1] I say _most_ content because if you are not an English speaker or if your
content is exclusively in Saami (of the Uralic language family) or in any of
the hundreds of languages with few bi-lingual speakers in those languages,
your content and the profound insights contained therein - gleaned from the
tradition of oral histories passed down from generation to generation - is
mostly lost, at least for now. In that sense, the digital divide is still very
much here.

~~~
rsingel
Ryan Singel here from Contextly (my co-founder wrote the blog post).

I think you are absolutely right on with the insight that stellar content is
missed by readers for many reasons.

We are part of a solution for publishers that want to have a re-purposing
program. Some of that can and should be very editorial, but it can also be
complemented or informed by a service like ours that works on a publisher's
own domain.

Our definition of "evergreen" for the purposes of the study of the HN archive
differs from the one we use for our publishing clients.

That said, I do think it would be interesting to see what stories continually
get re-submitted, as that may well show off the most unchanging evergreen.

(Defined in that case as a story that continually has a fairly high value for
a substantial number of people over a steady amount of time. Compare that to
say David Sedari's SantaLand Diaries, which is also an "evergreen," but I
would strongly suspect a highly seasonal time of interest.)

------
10001110101
Author again.

I am hoping to update this resource every month or so. If you have suggestions
that you think might make the resource better I would love to hear them. I
will try to include them in the next pass. Thanks!

------
crypt1d
I just skimmed thru the list and found dozens of very interesting stories that
I missed, mainly because I haven't been with HN for that long. Looks like I
have some catching up to do tonight :) thanks a lot!

~~~
10001110101
You are very welcome!

"skimmed thru the list and found dozens of very interesting stories that I
missed" <\-- me too.

------
nhayden
Looks like there was a recent update to the JustFab drama and class action
lawsuit:

[http://abc7news.com/shopping/online-retailer-
fined-$18m-for-...](http://abc7news.com/shopping/online-retailer-
fined-$18m-for-misleading-consumers/365678/)

(They had to pay out 1.8MM)

------
zkhalique
Finally I can see what kind of post attracts the most karma :)

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happimess
This is a great list for my "while integration tests run" bookmark folder.
Thanks!

Quick feature request: It would be great to see the number of comments on the
HN page.

~~~
10001110101
Welcome!

"Quick feature request: It would be great to see the number of comments on the
HN page." <\-- I will add it in the next pass. Thanks for your feedback!

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at-fates-hands
A bit or irony how the stories about Obama and warrantless wiretaps and the
open letter to Condoleezza Rice are only separated by around 70 votes.

~~~
joshuaheard
I don't understand how an anti-war screed to Condi Rice over the Iraq war is
"evergreen".

------
sidcool
The first one, about the slacking guy, absolutely mesmerized me. The writing
was so fluent and descriptive. It has a good literary value.

------
alexissantos
Derek Sivers is incredible. It's no wonder he's in the top 20 (at least)
twice.

