
Hacker News Karma Tracker - freework
http://hn-karma-tracker.herokuapp.com/
======
Xcelerate
This is a cool website. I was wondering about some kind of ranking system like
this.

> Speed percentile: 98.82%

While I have to acknowledge that some instinctive/animalistic part of me is
excited at being in this percentile, it also prompts me to remember that karma
is effectively worthless and I really need to get busy on class work and
research...

It's really strange the impact something silly like karma has, because I tell
myself I'm above accumulating imaginary points on the internet, but obviously,
I don't seem to be.

In some ways, it's curious. My highest rated comments aren't what I would
consider my best. Instead, they are ones that appeal to a wide audience with
some kind of emotional (rather than technical) insight. My last comment, a
quip about about how every programmer thinks they're the best, was worth 64
points. However, a detailed post I wrote on molecular dynamics simulation
where I fact-checked and reviewed the literature was only worth 3 points. Go
figure.

EDIT: After thinking about it some more, I've decided karma isn't entirely
worthless in real life. It is a metric that lets you know how well other
people like your written work. Over time, I've slowly come to realize what
will get upvoted and what will not. This ability could have interesting
repercussions in the way I write about my research, or the way that I craft
something like grant or fellowship applications. Every person is different,
but posting on HN reveals to me that, in the aggregate, there are certain
things you can say that have a certain appeal to others, and the capacity to
recognize this could in fact be useful in many life situations.

~~~
zalzane
>My highest rated comments aren't what I would consider my best. Instead, they
are ones that appeal to a wide audience with some kind of emotional (rather
than technical) insight.

I definitely feel you here. This is a trend I see absolutely everywhere; hell,
I was surprised to find out it even extends into video games that implement
this kind of voting system.

This problem feels like it could be solvable by changing the "meaning" of the
upvote. Right now, the upvote is a tool that allows you to make a comment more
visible and to throw a bone to the author in the form of karma. People
probably feel inclined to "tip" someone who makes a clever or witty comment
with the karma from the upvote. On top of that, people making witty comments
who get upvoted are now encouraged to make more witty and unproductive
comments because they know that they will get karma for it.

The issue is that the upvote represents general approval of a comment, rather
than a nod of the head that a comment is productive or insightful.

Just throwing around ideas - maybe the elimination of the user-karma-tracking
system altogether is a reasonable solution?

~~~
ChuckMcM
In a previous comment on karma systems I suggested a scheme where there was a
voting 'diamond' up, down, left, right, and center. Where up was "good
comment/submission" and down was "not-good comment/submission", left was "less
like this", and right was "more like this" and center was perfect.

That allows you to establish both what you like the site to have in it, and
how you much you liked this instance of it. Perfect would mean simply that
"spot on" or "this."

The second part of the system would then adjust the presentation of your karma
(to you and others) unscaled vector along the line to the 'perfect' site in
the context of the viewer.

To use a simple example, lets say HN was over run with cat pictures, and I
thought they were the _best_ so I vote like this and "+1" (up and to the
right), You the reader _hate_ cat pictures so you always vote down/less like
this.

So we've created virtual root nodes at +loves cat pictures and one at +hates
cat pictures. Now I can plot your karma as negative with respect to mine if we
assume that the center point between your root nexus and mine is 0. Now do
this with enough topics and you get multiple consituencies all in the same
discussion space where your view of their karma will inform you how likely it
is you'll like to read what they wrote :-)

~~~
alanctgardner2
I had an idea to plot comment karma as a function of number of replies, and
upvotes. So the axis would be 'discussion' and 'popularity'. A controversial
opinion is probably unpopular but heavily discussed. Likewise, a pithy one-
liner is popular but not discussed. Then you can see whether you tend to just
parrot public sentiment and spout off-the-cuff remarks, or whether you create
interesting conversations.

------
dave1010uk
Is it easy to separate karma aquired from submissions and karma aquired from
comments? My average comment karma is below 3 and I've only had a few comments
over 20 but most of my karma has come from 2 or 3 submissions of interesting
links, which seems almost like cheating.

I think the most karma I ever got was from being the first to post about
Sublime Text 2. This was interesting but I only got the karma because I beat
everyone else by a few seconds. I feel that's far less valuable than the odd
thing I've spotted which no one else would have ever come across.

In the same way, I wonder how many people have high karma just because they
are one of the first to comment on popular submissions.

Edit: typo (I wonder how proof reading my comment more would have affect my
karma)

~~~
kmfrk
Karma is nothing but an algorithmic parameter. I wouldn't think anything else
of it.

------
tokenadult
This was interesting initially, when I just "ego-surfed" it when the link was
first submitted, because of the richness of the data displayed. It became more
interesting, as the discussion here in this thread developed, when I realized
I could look up any arbitrarily chosen user, for example the user who kindly
submitted this link, freework, to see the same rich data for that user.

The current user interface on Hacker News proper shows a leader board

<http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders>

and discloses total karma and recent comment karma average on each user's user
profile, e.g.,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tokenadult>

But this interface offers more, and prompts me to look up some fellow users to
see what their detailed statistics look like. As I expected, cwan, who gains
almost all of his karma from submissions rather than comments, has a higher
percentile than anyone else who began participating here in the same month.

AFTER EDIT: Link to an old discussion I tried to stir up, on a topic which
other users are discussing in this thread, "Ask HN: What Kinds of Comments
Should Be Upvoted?"

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1065084>

I'm always interested in how to emphasize the positive by upvoting early and
often when I see good stuff here, so I like to hear opinions from all of you
about what is good stuff.

P.S. By following the links from the submitted site, I am reminded that
patio11 and I seem to have the same join date. I'm honored to be behind him in
any ranking that includes the both of us.

------
akkartik
The beta testers: <https://hn-karma-tracker.herokuapp.com/month/october-2006>.
I had no idea John Resig of jQuery fame is a YC alum.

Then there's a gap of three months months before the early adopters:
<https://hn-karma-tracker.herokuapp.com/month/february-2007>.

~~~
davidw
That's a neat list... a portion of those people were early adopters on reddit
as well and a lot of the names look quite familiar.

That makes 6 years of HN... time flies!

------
lisper
I think you're missing an important metric: karma per submission. People with
high KPS tend to be those who keep their mouths shut most of the time but when
they do have something to say it's generally worth paying attention. I think
this is the kind of behavior that really ought to be encouraged more than
contributions per unit time.

Also, the see-your-data feature fails on Safari.

~~~
dougk16
Not sure if you strictly mean karma per submission, or karma per comment, or
both. As for karma per comment at least, reaching a critical mass of absolute
karma points seems to have a big impact on your KPC, regardless of the
comment's content, thus partly invalidating the value of KPS/KPC.

I just anecdotally see karma peasants post comments that are functionally
identical to comments from the karma kings, and the peasants just get buried
at the bottom. It would interesting to have some kind of NLP-based crawler go
through HN and see to what extent that actually happens though...maybe it's
just my imagination.

------
robomartin
The problem with karma implementations is that they don't always encode for
the best outcome. I am not sure what karma means on HN. There are some topics
where you could very easily fish for karma by going with the prevailing
thoughts in any given community. Post against the grain and loose karma. It's
fairly predictable in most communities.

Then there are effects as I've seen in some of the Stack Exchange sites. One
that comes to mind is ServerFault. Moderators and high-karma members with
elevated privileges have turned that particular site into a nearly unusable
and hostile environment for anyone outside a very narrow definition of what
the "gang" wants.

This is an interesting effect because it encodes what a few privileged users
want as opposed to what --conjecture-- a larger majority might be looking for
out of the site. And, from a strict business view of the problem it reduces
that audience and the applicability of the site/s by a potentially significant
factor.

It's like having a mechanical engineering site where high-karma users have
decided they only want to discuss hex bolts used by aircraft mechanics. You
show-up to ask about hex bolts used on motorcycles and watch out!

Perhaps the ultimate questions --on a site-per-site basis-- might be:

    
    
      - What's the design intent behind karma or user reputation?  
      - What is it you want to encode?
      - How do you ensure that this is, in fact, encoded into the rating?
      - How do you prevent users from polluting or de-valuing karma through
        misinterpretation, petty/spiteful voting, "gang-like" behavior or other
        degenerations?
      - If karma is used to elevate user rights, how does it also affect
        responsibilities?  Does it impose a level of accountability?
      - How do you keep karma "wars" from affecting your community?  By this I 
        mean gang-like behavior by regulars who'll attack outside their pack
        with the only tool they have, karma.
      - How to you keep karma from affecting site business?
      - Short of the benevolent dictator model, is there a better approach to
        encoding user value, participation or relevance?
    

Not an easy problem to solve as most communities have discovered. For the most
part HN seems to regulate rather nicely. We are all guilty of veering off here
and there but eventually things come back to a reasonable center. Maybe it's
because posts age very quickly and it takes a lot to stay in the first page or
two. Other types of sites don't have that advantage.

------
eksith
It's just a number in a database. What you say and how you say it is more
important than what other people think of it. If your words are important to
you and you said them in earnest, why does it matter?

Side note: You may even be unconsciously censoring yourself in fear of losing
karma. It's a similar effect to suddenly having a lot of followers on Twitter.

~~~
Udo
Sure, but karma is an important measurement of the (perceived) quality of your
posts. If a comment gets upvoted that's not only because people agree with you
but also because they think your comment has value. Likewise, if a comment
gets downvoted, that's a fair indicator it did not have a lot of merit.

Of course, HN distorts this somewhat by just having one score for all the
possible reasons a user might have to vote on a comment, and inevitably
superstar posters get upvoted reflexively often drowning out better comments.
But overall, as both a tool for measuring quality and a reward system it works
pretty well.

By voting, we give each other points of a credibility currency that transcends
individual discussions.

~~~
eksith
I just got a measurement of my post, simply because you replied. ;)

Just by talking to me, you've let me know what I said was worth at least a
reply.

This is just opinion, so take it for what its worth... I'd much rather someone
reply to me, email, chat whatever, and let me know what exactly they think
rather than assign my words a value via a mouse click. Wouldn't you?

~~~
nsns
You're confusing a single conversation with the ongoing presence on the forum.
Karma is an imperfect but effective way of assessing a user's position within
the community based on her/his previous actions and reactions. It can be
looked at as a substitute to an auditory/visual first impression in the "real"
world.

------
dfc
I have always wondered what the top karma list would look like if it was
broken down into two lists: comment karma and submission karma. Has anyone
done this?

------
jaredsohn
Some other stats that could be interesting:

Show how many people / what percentage have 500 karma (which presumably is
what it takes to downvote.)

Show how much karma a person would currently need to be at the 25th, 50th,
66th, 75th, 90th, 95th, and 99th percentiles (or whatever percentiles make
sense).

~~~
jaredsohn
The above computed manually (by looking at the monthly lists to finds users at
various karma levels and determining their percentiles):

Percentile for 500 karma: 73%

Rough karma thresholds for percentiles:

25% 12

50% 110

66% 333

75% 575

90% 1760

95% 3100

99% 9700

------
SoftwareMaven
Most interesting thing to me: this month is my fifth anniversary with an HN
account. I actually started lurking before that, in the Startup News days, but
I didn't really have anything to contribute until it broadened scope.

------
mjn
Not sure if it's a bug or my browser is just too old, but on Safari 5.1.7 (OS
X 10.6.8), the "See your Data" button doesn't do anything. Works fine in
Chrome.

------
wahnfrieden
Is there an extension that will hide my karma from me? I habitually glance at
it and it does me no good, it's just noise.

~~~
niggler
I wonder if hiding the comment karma (now that it's been many months) has had
a positive or negative impact ...

------
orangethirty
This is a very good tool to track patterns in the community. Realize that each
of the top 200 users represent a given demographic. If you see the change over
time for each user, you can pinpoint those patterns and adjust to it (if you
are selling something to that market). You can also quickly learn how to
create your own organic circle of upvoters, so that your company posts hit the
front page without needing to email everyone in your network so they can come
in and upvote (which is do not approve of and not do). Its good to create your
own niche audience inside such a powerful community like this one.

------
MichaelApproved
Why are the usernames case sensitive?

michaelapproved is not a valid username when searching but MichaelApproved is.
Does HN allow for different case usernames or is it something that was
overlooked during development of the search feature?

~~~
RKoutnik
HN overall has case-sensitive usernames. Drove me batty until I figured it
out. You can ask pg why he went with that particular design choice.

~~~
martin-adams
Maybe there's no database and it's all just stored as files on a unix file
system, thus inheriting the case sensitiveness.

~~~
dbaupp
Usernames could still be normalized to lower (or upper) case before
creating/reading/writing the file. (Admittedly, the simplest method is without
doing this.)

------
politician
Why is aaronbrethorst ranked both 38 and 39 in the "Overall karma leaders"
list?

~~~
ghiculescu
mtgx is first and second on <http://hn-karma-
tracker.herokuapp.com/superstars>, too.

~~~
freework
Thats because someone typed in that username with a trailing space character
("mtgx ") and it made a new entry for that username int eh database. Nothing a
little .strip won't fix...

~~~
yesimahuman
For an account only 290 days old, mtgx has a ton of karma. Any idea who that
is or where the karma comes from? Don't see many highly rated posts or
comments in their feed.

~~~
biot
Submitting stories. Whoever submitted Bellard's jsLinux story received as much
karma (3000+) for that one URL and title as I had from several years of
comment writing.

------
tzury

        pg (129961)
    
        As of: Mon Feb 04 2013 07:34:16 GMT+0200 (IST)
        Among all active users
    
        Total users: 13431
        Total users with less karma: 13430
        Your rank: 1st
        Overall karma percentile: 100.00%
    
        Average karma increase per day: 56.260
        Total users with slower increasing karma: 13427
        Your speed rank: 4th
        Speed percentile: 99.98%
        Among active users from your registration month (October 2006)
    
        Total users: 9
        Total users with less karma than you: 8
        Your rank: 1st
        Percentile: 100.00%

------
DanielRibeiro
That is interesting. If you want more information on them, including photos
and twitter info, you can see it on <http://www.hnwho.com>

------
Alex3917
It would be nice to see the list by comment karma only. That's the one list
that I haven't actually seen anyone create so far.

~~~
akkartik
Hard to do, now that comment scores are no longer public.

I can also think of some useful analyses if user votes were public. It might
also help control gaming by surfacing voting rings and so on.

~~~
Alex3917
"Hard to do, now that comment scores are no longer public."

Submission scores are still public, so all you'd have to do is subtract
submission karma from total karma.

~~~
dasil003
It's a hell of a lot more crawling though, given that old submissions can be
upvoted indefinitely.

~~~
Alex3917
Fair enough, I don't think it would need to be updated more than every few
months though.

------
Capricornucopia
Does anyone have advice about improving my karma? I'm roughly 42nd percentile.
I suppose lurking doesn't help.

~~~
untog
I know this is going to sound preachy, but the best way to improve your karma
is probably to stop thinking about how to improve your karma.

That is, just post your thoughts on a topic, written as best you can. At
least, that's worked well for me and probably most other high percentile-ers.
Don't start pandering to what you _think_ will attract a lot of upvotes- karma
is meaningless after all.

------
DanBC
I like this!

Is there any way of fitting some kind of averaging in there? There is karma
per day, so perhaps posts per day?

Also, (<http://hn-karma-tracker.herokuapp.com/superstars>)

98 and 99 appear to be duplicates.

------
whalesalad
The fact that this is not using Twitter Bootstrap makes me so happy. It's
delightfully refreshing to see something that uses even just the barebones
rails scaffolding styles.

------
thesis
Neat. One thing I noticed though... my karma isn't correct even though it
states it was last updated today. I haven't commented in almost a week prior
to this comment.

~~~
freework
The site pulls data from the HNSearch API, which only updates user's karma on
their end when the user submits a post.

------
xijuan
I really like the website. I have currently got interested in getting more
karmas. Anyone has any suggestion as to how to increase karmas quickly?

------
rhapsodyv
Very cool website!! I predict some people watching this site just to keep an
eye on your position... It's tempting!

------
motters
Not that I care much about these karma values, but ideally something like this
should be part the HN site itself.

------
TommyDANGerous
This is pretty cool haha, it tracks and it gives accurate data. Very very
quickly to. Great job.

------
buzzkillr2
Today I learn that I am not the worst karma gaining person from my
registration month.

------
ColinWright
No surprise, but it doesn't seem to work on the BlackBerry browser.

------
hu_me
it lists total users as 11777 that looks like a very small number for hn which
sends 10-20k visits if a site hits top spot. or are there a lot of lurkers who
never signup?

~~~
freework
Since HN doesn't publish a userlist, this site gets its data by crawling the
"latest posts" HNSearch API every ten minutes. That 11,000 users includes all
users who have made a post on HN since January 25th. Thats right, 11,000
unique users have means post on Hacker News in the past 2 weeks.

~~~
pyre
It's not entirely accurate because of this. HNSearch API allows you to list
users ordered by karma. According to that, I'm ~120. According to this site,
I'm 94. Heh.

------
seferphier
very cool piece of work.

Would be even cooler if I could get stats of my most popular threads and
comments. It would be also interesting to see pg's most popular thread and
comment.

~~~
jaredsohn
You can do this via hnsearch. pg's most popular comments:
[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=pg&...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=pg&sortby=points+desc)

------
tbatterii
Sweet, now I can tell who the popular kids are.

------
pla3rhat3r
SMH

------
martinced
Cool...

But it would be nice if all these "small" (not criticizing in any way here)
websites allowed either query parameters in the URL or directly "short URLs"
(like bit.ly etc.) so we could share links.

(maybe I missed it?)

~~~
mwill
Now that you mention it, it's sort of surprising that there's not a url for
each user.

It's not quite as useful, but a quick look at network activity shows the data
gets pulled from /user/[name].json, like:

<http://hn-karma-tracker.herokuapp.com/user/martinced.json>

/user/[name] without the .json hits an error, unfortunately.

~~~
freework
You can now view the page without the .json and it should show the the data in
a html page.

