

Hacker News Leaderboard - deepakjc
https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders
I just saw this today, the leaders are suffiently out-of-reach.
======
mjn
This is sort of interesting to look at, but not too reliable: it only shows
users whose profiles happen to be swapped in to the in-memory Arc data
structures whenever the list is regenerated. So from day to day, depending on
post and caching and HN restart activity, different people are included or
omitted. For example, at the moment raganwald isn't on the leaderboard, even
though he has >40k karma, presumably because he hasn't posted in a bit, so his
profile is swapped out of memory. I filed a bug about that but it got a
WONTFIX [1].

I ran into that while putting together a profile of prolific HN posters [2]. I
put it together a bit at a time over several days, and noticed that people
were appearing and disappearing from the list, which seemed odd. I ended up
finding a third-party list on Heroku that was more stable day-to-day [3].
However it seems not to be updating any more– the numbers are now a few months
old.

[1]
[https://github.com/HackerNews/HN/issues/49](https://github.com/HackerNews/HN/issues/49)

[2]
[http://www.kmjn.org/notes/hacker_news_posters.html](http://www.kmjn.org/notes/hacker_news_posters.html)

[3] [http://hn-karma-tracker.herokuapp.com/overall](http://hn-karma-
tracker.herokuapp.com/overall)

------
josefresco
This reminds me of those lists middle school boys and girls would make within
their social circles. "Cutest Boy" or "Nicest Clothes" ... all pointless when
looked upon as an older person, but at the time it was all that mattered.

------
swombat
What's interesting to note here is that the points totals have been removed
for the top 10. It used to show vast differences between the "leading pack"
and the rest... of the order of 20k karma points or so!

I guess the rationale for this change is to stop the silly competition (if
there was any) once at the top of the pack. I'm not sure there ever was such a
competition, mind you. I was #7 once upon a time and it never affected my
posting habits.

~~~
lubos
You can still click on individual usernames to see karma. tptacek has 193,243
and patio11 just crossed 100,000 a week ago.

~~~
tptacek
It's sort of helpful to be able to click a profile and see their karma, to get
a sense of whether they're, I don't know, invested in the site? But it's not
worth the creepiness.

------
tptacek
Getting rid of scores on the top 10 was a step in the right direction, but
ultimately the long-term goal should be to get rid of scores for the top 2000.

Slashdot used to have a thing where your karma would eventually just say
something like, "Lots".

------
throwaway283719
Interestingly, within the top 100 there is a weak positive correlation between
the total karma, and the average karma per comment, implying that the people
at the top of the leaderboard are actually posting quality content, and not
just making up for it with quantity.

The closest power law fit is

    
    
      predicted average score = 0.27 * (total score) ^ 0.25
    

which has a correlation of about 20% with the actual average scores.

~~~
simonster
Either that or people with higher average karma per comment are posting their
comments earlier so they get more upvotes. Or HN's comment sorting algorithm
is privileging users with higher total karma, so those users have their
comments appear above other comments that have the same number of upvotes. Or
users with better name recognition are more likely to get upvoted.

------
dang
I find this slightly embarrassing. It's also broken. For example, I switched
from my old account 6 months ago and it's still in the top 30.

The main reason we haven't done anything about it is that it's not clear what
to do. For example, we could make it use a shorter time window than
"forever"—but do we really want to gamify karma further? I doubt it.

~~~
tptacek
KILL IT.

------
ck2
Just think what we can do with all those imaginary points.

I'd like see some kind of solution where submissions don't disappear so
quicky.

Maybe using tags that become sub-forums of sorts and the front page is just an
aggregate.

Like tags for SSL, ddos, security, centos, payment-solutions etc.

Tags are not hard to implement, there could even be a limited set to choose
from, that only certain users can add to, if there is any concern about new
tag creation abuse.

And then a submission can span multiple tags, it may get buried under one tag
but rank better under other tags.

~~~
3rd3
_I 'd like see some kind of solution where submissions don't disappear so
quicky._

I think it would be great if there was an "old" button next to "new" in the
header, in which submissions of the past month (or so) show up, ordered by a
score that allows for old stories to be bumped back to the top, like

    
    
        points * age * comment rate.
    

It would probably also help if new comments would be highlighted.

~~~
sillysaurus3
[https://news.ycombinator.com/classic](https://news.ycombinator.com/classic)

Not really what you describe, but it's along the lines of "give me an
alternative to the frontpage or /new." I don't know precisely how it works. I
think it gives more weight to votes from older accounts, but that's just a
guess. It does seem to be a slightly higher quality frontpage, but that might
just be confirmation bias. After all, if it were truly better, then /classic
would be the actual frontpage.

There's also [http://hckrnews.com/](http://hckrnews.com/) which shows a time-
ordered list of all submissions that reach the frontpage each day. I prefer it
to HN's frontpage, both because you can scroll back over the past few days and
because there aren't that many submissions that reach the front page each day,
so it's easy to quickly scroll through a list of all of them to pick out
anything of interest.

~~~
3rd3
My thought was that the comment rate factor would allow for old stories to be
bumped back to the top. Highlighting new comments would allow to continue old
threads. I clarified my comment above in that regard.

------
chollida1
I really like the average points tracking in Hacker news.

Its interesting to note that some people got on the leader board via only
commenting when their posts were relevant, the avg. 5+ points people and some
got on their through just making sure their voice was heard, even if they
didn't have anything relevant to say, the people with an avg below 3 points.

I've always treated HN's a bit differently from other message boards in that I
only comment when I think I have something relevant to say, which is probably
driven from the average point tracking system.

I'm actually surprised at the number of leaders with avg scores under 2. I'm
guessing these people treat HN's like a regular message board and just comment
on everything. The average of the top 100 seems to be 4.3 so it looks like

~~~
mechanical_fish
Like anybody, I have a reflexive tendency to feel pride when a number goes up,
but pride in my average-point ranking is tempered by the knowledge that it's a
statistic-of-convenience. It's not necessarily there because it's worth
tracking or optimizing. It's there because the laziest possible stat, "total
points," which tends to scale linearly with tenure and with volume of posts,
became boring. So now we also have the second-laziest possible stat, "total
points divided by total posts".

I have nothing against the simple stats -- why waste time on complex
pseudoscience when basic pseudoscience will do? -- but the risk is that we'll
design a stats page by adding numbers one at a time, in laziest-first order,
until the screen starts to look cluttered, at which point we'll pick the most
promising pattern we've spotted so far and start trying to optimize it. This
is a great way to generate Powerpoint slides with lines that move up and to
the right, and a lousy way to measure value. The micromanagement of
statistical placebos is the occupational hazard of our age, and we should try
to push back.

It's easy, too easy, to game my average-points ranking. I should contribute
only popular thoughts to popular posts. I should assiduously avoid commenting
on anything that's not on the homepage, or replying to people who are not near
the top of a thread. I should make sure to comment within the newly-arrived-
on-the-home-page time window, which is presumably now measured in
milliseconds. I should certainly avoid giving advice to people on Ask HN.

That's no way to live.

~~~
tptacek
Hopefully there's no way to live that really depends on HN in any way. :)

------
chdir
As always, the lawyer wins ;)

(hint: avg 52+)

~~~
kubiiii
I hope he has another account to post mildly relevant/interesting stuff.

~~~
wglb
My prediction is that he can't write anything uninteresting.

------
gokhan
Any idea on the non-native/native English speaker ratio of that list? US /
Rest of the world?

~~~
mjn
I tallied locations ~9 months ago [1]. Of the top 100 posters, I could
determine the location of 81. Those broke down as 54 US, 27 non-US. Mostly
from English-speaking countries: US/Canada/UK/Australia together accounted for
69/81 (85%).

[1]
[http://www.kmjn.org/notes/hacker_news_posters.html](http://www.kmjn.org/notes/hacker_news_posters.html)

------
jmatt
An aside, pg isn't on the leaderboards, and never was, since he was always far
ahead on points. But, it looks like tptacek has finally passed him.

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

~~~
tokenadult
Actually, pg was on the leaderboard for years. But, yes, his name was
eventually removed, and while it was on the leaderboard, it was typically the
top username by a very wide margin.

~~~
jmatt
I thought the same thing and had to check the wayback machine. He wasn't on
the leader boards, at least at that URL.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20070302084140/http://news.ycombi...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070302084140/http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders)

[http://web.archive.org/web/20090722153500/http://news.ycombi...](http://web.archive.org/web/20090722153500/http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders)

~~~
tokenadult
Oh, sorry, I was thinking of nickb. :) Thank you for checking the Wayback
Machine. I must have been aware of pg's karma totals by looking at his
individual profile.

------
droob
What's the motivation behind posting these? Is there a way to say "these are
the kinds of posts that are good for the community" without tacking a number
on it?

~~~
mjn
I would guess it correlates highly with number of posts, so I just think of it
as a proxy for "highly active long-time users". Another measure could just be
postcount. Karma is like a slightly "corrected" postcount that is supposed to
boost people who post highly regarded posts, and downrank those who post a lot
but mostly junk. But I would guess just raw number of posts is still the main
explanatory factor in the ranking (I don't have the data to test this guess,
unfortunately).

------
wickedOne
is this supposed to be some kind of incentive?

------
deepakjc
Just saw this today, and the "leaders" are far out of my reach...

~~~
petercooper
Trivia: It used to be one of the main links at the top of the page about 2+
years ago.

I set a goal several years back of getting into the top 100, then top 50, and
so on, and was commenting and posting loads. I guess they didn't like that too
much and it disappeared onto the Lists page ;-) I don't post as much now but
that's probably a good thing for me.

~~~
crusso
_I set a goal several years back of getting into the top 100, then top 50_

Why? Oh, why? I look at my own HN posting as a personal weakness that does
nothing to advance my career, general happiness, or sense of personal
development. The really successful people I've known in my life don't get
caught up in tussling in Internet forums. They stay focused like a laser on
goals that are much more recognizable as "success".

And that reminds me to close my browser and think about what I really want to
accomplish today!

~~~
petercooper
_Why? Oh, why?_

Because, like Everest, it was there :-)

My time on HN has not been as negative as I infer yours has been though. It
benefits me and I enjoy it. That back-handed airy-fairy malarky about what
"really successful" people do sounds like a load of preachy cobblers to me
though.

------
rdlecler1
Is there a decay function on these points?

~~~
mikeryan
Not for points but I believe there is for karma.

~~~
Igglyboo
I've kept track of my karma and it only ever drops for downvotes.

------
idlewords
Ew

~~~
tptacek
Yep.

------
rdlecler1
If given the choice to target users based on GMail data or targeting users
based on Facebook data, I would take the former. GMail data would provide you
with a much clearer and nuanced profile of someone, even if GMail has only 1/3
- 1/2 the user base. Facebook should do well with consumer brands though.

~~~
CWIZO
Wrong thread? :)

~~~
rdlecler1
Damn! And no delete.

