
Hey psst, wanna know your HN #userid ? - jacquesm
http://hntags.com/
======
buro9
Seems like it would be more accurate if it were based on their profile page
and the "created X days ago" bit.

Once you've grouped by day you could then look at participation to provide a
little more granularity over the course of the day (put everyone at 23:59 on
the day and if a bit of participation can proven to have been earlier in the
day move the person to that time).

Then the chronological result is your list and a better indicator of the
potential userid.

Not that I think this is accurate, I run a community that does use userids and
when you account for the accounts deleted because they were spammers you end
up with a sparser set of users. Someone isn't the nth person on the site,
they're just the nth id allocated by an autoincrement counter.

The utility is a little pointless though. Whilst a userid is one of a number
of useful metrics of social status (ah, an early member! or ah, a n00b!) on
their own they are pretty useless.

You do need to put these metrics in context, they're useful when you're on
slashdot because they're visible as part of the comment stream so you can
factor them in to your reading of the comments and easily compare the various
indicators of authors visually.

If the function to get the metrics is elsewhere and not easily comparable, the
usefulness as one of a collection of metrics is far lower than if it were
visible.*

All that said, I prefer the equality of usernames. I like the precept that
"time registered" isn't a major factor and that your words and thoughts are
worth more than just having signed up early.

* Perhaps you want to make a greasemonkey script?* *

* * You could do one for tagging too so that tagging over there is transparently part of the site here.

~~~
jacquesm
There are roughly 20,000 HN users, and < 2000 days since it started so I think
this method is more accurate.

If someone signed up very recently then they aren't in the db yet.

Anyway, it's just a gimmick but I thought it was a fun one.

The tagging feature is quite useful actually, feel free to help out by tagging
stuff.

~~~
Retric
If you wanted accuracy you would have used days and then first post, so people
that registered a day early would always have a lower ID.

~~~
Retric
Sorry, _would_ should be _could_.

------
rms
Oh, come on people, let's play along. Remember, it's not the number of your
epenis that is important, it's how you use it.

I'm #140.

~~~
jgrahamc
I'm #1910, but I have excellent Slashdot Karma, my own (four-digit) assigned
port number and a three character domain name.

"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

~~~
dmd
I'm too new to be in the database.

But, my Slashdot UID is # 404 (though I haven't posted or even visited in
years).

And I have a 2 character domain name. (3e.org)

And I'm in enterprise-numbers, but I have no idea why or how I got there.

~~~
CWuestefeld
My webcam site, which existed only to let me make sure my puppy didn't get
into trouble while I'm at work, got listed in WebSense as "adult content".
That makes me sorta famous, right? (It was true that my puppy was naked)

------
Tichy
Why would I want to know it?

~~~
chanux
In my case, it was good to know mine is #13378 :).

~~~
Tichy
Does that have something to do with Star Trek? Google & Yahoo don't show
anything.

~~~
Torn
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet>

------
p0ppe
I've been a member for close to 1000 days, yet the system couldn't find me.
Bug?

~~~
jacquesm
more than likely!

I'll look in to it.

------
david
#20515

created: 1067 days ago

I guess that's what I get for lurking...

------
roundsquare
Anyone want to guess what number pg is? I'll post the answer in 24 hours.

P.S. No cheating.

~~~
Sukotto
#2 (most people I know do it that way. #1 is the admin account, #2 is the
first user account)

~~~
mahmud
rtm is #0. naturally.

~~~
ananthrk
rtm is #40

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petercooper
But, but.. the only number that really counts is your position on the leaders
page, right? :-)

------
edw519
_This userid was based on when the first posting or comment of this user was
made on Hacker News, it is possible that the user signed up earlier but never
posted or commented, so this user id may be off because of that._

    
    
      Dauntless     created: 1067 days ago   #65
      nostrademons  created: 1066 days ago   #77
      iamelgringo   created: 1066 days ago   #80 
      rms           created: 1064 days ago   #140
      davidw        created: 1067 days ago   #195
      edw519        created: 1066 days ago   #739
    

So I guess that I must have lurked a while before my first comment.

That makes sense because I was still bashful back then. hn helped me bust out
of my shell.

~~~
barrkel
Interesting. My account is 1055 days old, but #360.

~~~
icey
I lurked for a while, my account is 1054 days old, but I'm #2685.

~~~
fortes
1008 days / #4390 -- I too was a lurker

------
rokhayakebe
#718 here.

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cabalamat
#5887 FWIW

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pronoiac
Yeah yeah, userid number, yeah. The real story:

Hell yeah tags! Duplicate stories suck!

