[HN Gopher] Show HN: Inflation-adjusted Hacker News
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Show HN: Inflation-adjusted Hacker News
Author : Aaronmacaron
Score : 292 points
Date : 2021-05-22 18:30 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (instruments.digital)
(TXT) w3m dump (instruments.digital)
| the_cat_kittles wrote:
| this is a wonderful topic that i have always kinda wondered about
| informally. a slightly adjacent question ive had is how much does
| the rank of a post feeback into votes. my assumption is that the
| higher the ranking, the higher the absolute number of votes the
| ranking itself (independent from the actual article) generates.
| coupling some kind of way of compensating for that with your
| historical inflation adjustment would give you a fairly uniform
| metric for gauging public reception to submissions i think.
| eatonphil wrote:
| There's a similar issue on reddit. For a growing sub (which most
| interesting subs are) sorting by top of all time and top of this
| year is the same thing. I wish there were a way to sort by top by
| year on a sub (and HN too of course).
| JonathanMerklin wrote:
| For HN, you should know about:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=custom&page=0&prefix=false...
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| The Lists on HN are also useful.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/lists
| [deleted]
| srathi wrote:
| https://redditsearch.io may help a bit with these types of
| queries. Bummer that there is no native way to do so.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| You'd think this is the kind of issue reddit could solve
| instead of figuring out how to spam you with emails faster or
| creating snoo avatars.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Like most social networks, history is largely irrelevant to
| how they make money. They need to keep you clicking on the
| new, the ephemeral, and the unusual, serving up ads and
| collecting information about your interests, hobbies, habits,
| and biases to refine the ad targeting.
|
| After a year or two "most popular" no longer means much for
| those sites.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The problem with useful history is that it reminds people
| that information quality can be time-independent. I can
| read something written 20 years ago... anytime in the next
| decade, without a huge difference.
|
| Which tends to directly clash with the temporal rat-race
| design used to keep customer eyeballs glued to apps for
| 100% of the day.
| dheera wrote:
| Another effect to consider is that given that the number of
| "slots" on the front page hasn't changed, the time you have to
| rack up threshold upvotes to hit the front page will have
| reduced. New posts fall off the "new" page much quicker.
|
| Might be interesting to plot the number of new posts per day
| over the years as well, if that data is accessible. I would
| guess it would inflate at the same rate.
| webmaven wrote:
| It would be interesting to see a 'best' page based on inflation-
| adjusted scores:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/best
|
| That would require indexing the inflation adjusted scores of
| every post (or at least, every post that has ever made it to the
| front page, or maybe just every day's #1 if you assume that no
| day's #2 and below could ever outrank any other day's #1) rather
| than adjusting the score of posts on the current page, which is
| more than can reasonably be expected from an extension, so I'm
| not actually making a feature request... unless you feel like it.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I bet you see a lot more comments on average on popular articles
| as well.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| This happens on most sites, including reddit, but the opposite
| happened on stack overflow. I started posting there when I was in
| uni, but mostly stopped when I got a job.
|
| Yet because the traffic has grown, those comments keep (or kept)
| accumulating karma. More interesting, because I answered some
| questions that became highly popular, I get a much larger share
| of the karma than others who have had to spend more time
| researching.
| williesleg wrote:
| Carter misery index 2.0
| datameta wrote:
| I have noticed the opposite happen on Dwitter.net (a visual
| creative coding community) - I think it takes more thought, time,
| and effort to come up with new code tricks (or use existing ones
| in a new interesting way). Similarly, certain visual motifs have
| been explored and seen by those who have been on the site for a
| while. There is still a steady influx of people so I think it is
| the nature of lower-hanging fruit becoming less impressive to the
| average dweet enthusiant.
| gnicholas wrote:
| This is cool, and it would be fun to see top stories by year, and
| top Show HNs by year.
|
| I posted a Show HN [1] when I was new-ish here, and I didn't
| realize how unusually successful it had been until I saw we were
| getting web traffic from a site (now defunct) that listed the top
| 10 Show HN posts of all time.
|
| I've periodically used the HN search function to see what the top
| HN posts have been, but with the point inflation it's become
| difficult to make meaningful comparisons across time.
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6335784
| brntsllvn wrote:
| Love the web app, but my browser extension space is so limited
| I'm not sure I want to add another with such marginal (however
| interesting!) value. Thank you for posting.
| MattRix wrote:
| Seems like it would be interesting to see an inflation-adjusted
| top 100 stories of all time.
| soheil wrote:
| Not only this but also the number of votes from users who were
| active years ago is also a very interesting metric to see. No
| doubt HN audience has changed over the years and votes from
| original users are diluted by votes from new comers. It won't be
| easy to do but one could aggregate "favorites" from all users on
| a daily basis and only count the votes from users with an old
| registered date.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| Interesting chart. What happened in April 2012?
| crazygringo wrote:
| I'm curious how closely this would match overall HN traffic -- if
| only very loosely, or if almost pixel-for-pixel.
|
| Only @dang could tell us!
|
| (It's not at all obvious to me that as HN has grown more popular,
| whether the proportion of voting to non-voting users would have
| changed as well.)
| ineedasername wrote:
| Pretty soon 100 karma won't even buy you a gallon of milk, much
| less the small 2-bedroom colonial home it used to back in '08 or
| '09. (Not counting east or west coasts... Hard to find anything
| under 300 karma there.)
|
| At least it's still harder currency than FB likes or Twitter
| retweets. Those internet points might as well be $5 billion
| Zimbabwe notes.
| [deleted]
| nolok wrote:
| The really funny part being of course that there is an actual
| business out there out of fb likes, instagram followers and
| retweets
| abnry wrote:
| The shape of the curve is fascinating. You see exponential growth
| in the early part, which makes sense, but then it sort of
| converges to a bumpy linear function. Network effects would
| suggest power law growth, which linear fits into, but this just
| seems too linear. Normal currency inflation is usually measured
| as a percentage per year, which implies exponential growth. What
| is the current %points change per month, for instance?
| ammar_x wrote:
| Nice and interesting analysis. Thank you for sharing.
|
| I now think HN and Reddit and others should consider inflation by
| default when you search for top posts of all time for example.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Top contributor lists should probably have a date-based window
| [option?], so they show scores for the last 12 months, say.
| shoto_io wrote:
| The two dips in 2013 and 2014 are interesting. It's definitely
| not a straight line up.
| crackercrews wrote:
| > It's basically the average point count of the top 100 stories
| of each day.
|
| How sensitive are the results to changing 100? Using a smaller
| number would be more accurate for the top posts.
|
| You could also use an algorithm that uses different calculations
| based on the popularity of the original post.
| wheybags wrote:
| > The extension is available for Firefox and Chrome.
| Unfortunately the extension is only available as a direct
| download for Chrome because I didn't bother paying Google money
| to publish this extension. The Firefox extension is available in
| the official Add-On store.
|
| This is so sad... I knew they required a paid account to submit
| to google play, didn't realise that applied to the browser
| extension repo as well. Oh well, just another reason to stay on
| Firefox :p
| rnotaro wrote:
| It's a single 5$ registration fee per account. Nothing huge.
|
| Once you paid the fee, you can publish as many extensions as
| you want.
|
| https://developer.chrome.com/docs/webstore/register/
| late2part wrote:
| Look at Mr. Moneybags over here, "a single 5$ ... Nothing
| huge."
| PaulBGD_ wrote:
| Relatively, they're correct. Compared to other app stores
| like Apple where the fee is $100/year, which personally I'd
| consider huge. To get on Steam, the fee is a one-time $100
| with the ability to get it back after $1000 in sales. It's
| even low compared to Google's other marketplace, the Play
| Store, which has a $25 one-time fee.
|
| While $5 can be a lot for certain people, relative to the
| market it doesn't deserve the title of being "huge".
| bredren wrote:
| This is probably a very light anti-spam measure?
| swiley wrote:
| Oof you have to pay Google to publish extensions (and they
| still can't manage the spam?) That's some brain damage.
| berniemadoff69 wrote:
| firefox now requires developers to 'sign' their extension with
| mozilla, and has disabled the ability to side load extensions
| manually for more than just temporary use, unless you are using
| some special developer version of firefox. chromium still
| allows users to side load their extension. it's ironic that
| google would allow more freedom to the user than mozilla.
| jlokier wrote:
| I rarely use Chrome. About once a month to make invoices
| (Firefox PDF output isn't correct), or rarely for some site
| that's not working in Firefox or Safari, just Chrome.
|
| Even with that low usage I had to side load an extension
| recently to add some functionality. Thank goodness it's still
| possible.
| luke2m wrote:
| Maybe that's good to reduce spam submissions.
| andrewljohnson wrote:
| Seems like a good way to prevent a lot of bad actors spamming.
| Google has a lot of problems with people automating free
| signups for computing and distribution resources... if you give
| someone any amount of free computing power, abusers will come.
| oogabooga123 wrote:
| There is no inflation. Stop it with these dunning kruger
| conspiracies. Trust the experts
| jkuria wrote:
| The other consideration is that the traffic (and submissions)
| have grown likely 50x plus but the front page still only has 30
| slots, and so the 'needle eye' is a lot smaller.
|
| One could argue that a story that makes it to the front page
| today is much higher quality than one that did so years before.
|
| You get more for 100 points, just like in economic inflation
| terms, you get more for a consumer electronic that has stayed
| roughly the same price but quality and features have increased
| considerably.
| bastijn wrote:
| Maybe. Though one should then also account for the likely case
| that early adopters were more niche and deeper into the
| content, being part of an early community. When communities
| grow it attracts all sorts of people which may decrease the
| quality of content but because there is more a few gems will
| still occur. Because they would be hidden behind the "crappy"
| content they need to be given more points to arise the mass. A
| prime example is Stack Overflow which almost died due to its
| own fame (for the early adopters).
| sbagel wrote:
| Agree with the 'needle eye' being smaller but
|
| > One could argue that a story that makes it to the front page
| today is much higher quality
|
| This assumes that quality of content is the driving factor in
| success on Hn or any social network which isn't the case.
| Timing, attention grabbing title and an engaging subject are
| arguably more important.
| swyx wrote:
| fyi dang has disclosed traffic details on a semi frequent basis
| - it is currently at 6m requests a day, up from 4m requests a
| day in 2018.
|
| https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1371586759578984450
| caslon wrote:
| The front page has definitely gotten worse over time. More
| people doesn't actually imply better judgement in story
| quality. The moderators have admitted that their goal is to
| _slow_ the inevitable decline in the quality of the site that
| comes with a bigger audience; they have no illusions that the
| site would somehow manage to break the only replicable rule of
| the internet, that any site will get worse with a wider
| audience.
| shaicoleman wrote:
| FYI: If you read Hacker News via RSS, check out
| https://hnrss.org/ , which allows you to filter the feed by
| points/comments.
|
| e.g.
|
| https://hnrss.org/frontpage?points=100&comments=25
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| I'd love to see a list of top stories of all time - where the
| ranking was inflation adjusted!
| ipaddr wrote:
| A list per year works and would be easy to use to gage the
| inflation if you wanted an all time list.
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| I'd be interested to see a "top of all time by adjusted score"
| list of posts.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Brilliant work. And it makes me think - we produce tools, that
| are part of two phase spaces - the idea and the knowledge of how
| to create it. Firstly I simply would not have thought of it,
| "like button inflation" is a pretty off the wall concept. On top
| of which I don't know where to get an HN data feed or how to make
| a chrome extension etc. Yesterday I was on a call with a collegue
| and the conversation turned to a useful feature we did not have
| (internal use) - and 30 minutes after the idea we had coded it up
| - because we had the knowledge but only lacked the idea till that
| moment.
|
| Without that knowledge even the best idea moves the process from
| "yeah let's do it" to "I should schedule some time and make a
| project plan and ..."
|
| The difference is important somehow. And most of our working
| lives would be better if we stopped with the project plans and
| just built useful stuff.
|
| Edit: To try and clarify - exploring a new and uncharted phase
| space is _exploration_ - it cannot be planned in advance, or
| driven in a particular direction. Sun-Tzu teaches that Climate,
| Landscape and doctrine all affect our success as much or more
| than mission and leadership - so we should stop trying to control
| and actually find the flow.
|
| I think we search for product-market fit, we do not _decide_
| product market fit.
|
| One tool I realise i have been trying to build on and off is a
| post-hoc reporting tool that makes it look like my exploratory
| development style was actually planned (it's always something
| like, I am going to explore this inferring hill over there, and
| just make sure the roadmap, docs and timesheets are up to date.)
| This way I don't get people bothering me so much. It works better
| than grumpy.
| paulpauper wrote:
| >The number of points a story has accumulated on Hacker News is a
| good indicator for how relevant and overall how good the story
| is.
|
| Sorta. I think it is also demonstrative how much effort there is
| or how popular the subject is, but this does not mean it is good.
| If I could change things, it would be that some stories do not
| stay on the front page so long. Stories about apple news tend to
| get a lot of points but I don't think they are the most
| interesting, at least in my opinion. I think there are too many
| science stories, from maybe 3 science sources(quanta magazine,
| nautilus,and one other).
| the_only_law wrote:
| I end up having to block a lot of the crap that reaches the
| front page because it otherwise floods the _comments_ link with
| low quality bickering when I'm trying to hunt for interesting
| threads.
| dang wrote:
| What are some examples of crap and how do you go about
| blocking them?
| Taek wrote:
| Curious if you have a list of topics that
| uniquely/surprisingly stand out as high or low quality
| p1necone wrote:
| Anything that's controversial in the current USA political
| environment attracts a lot of disingenuous arguments.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I'm looking forward to having an AI that blocks all the "this
| animal I keep locked up is cute" posts, they do nothing for
| me; I just don't want to see them.
|
| A Slashdot style -30% of points for posts tagged 'cute' would
| probably do it too.
| p1necone wrote:
| I upvote based on how interesting/valuable I think the
| discussion will be, not necessarily the quality of the article
| itself.
| greesil wrote:
| The 500 point karma limit should probably be inflation adjusted
| as well.
| zepearl wrote:
| But then probably it should rather be the points that get
| assigned that would have to be adjusted rather than the
| thresholds?
|
| Reason: if I e.g. got 1 point 2 years ago, that point had at
| that time more value (less users than today) than the 1 point
| that I might get today? (therefore today I should maybe get
| just 0.5 points per upvote instead of the 1 point that I got 2
| years ago, depending on the difference of active users
| throughout time)
|
| The other approach of just raising the thresholds would on the
| other hand impact all my points independently from "when" I got
| them, which sounds wrong to me.
| midasuni wrote:
| Many years ago I learnt the difference between less and
| fewer, and now I can't read or hear someone saying "less
| than" when it 'should be' "fewer than"
|
| It's like Roko's Basilisk. Or The Game (which I just lost),
| living rent free in my mind, offering nothing of value, yet
| immune from bleaching - indeed alcohol if anything heightens
| it's power (and causing rambling asides, I think ki should go
| back to torturing myself with Lithuania's Eurovision entry)
| zepearl wrote:
| > _now I can't read or hear someone saying "less than" when
| it 'should be' "fewer than"_
|
| Thank you! I love such corrections. I'll try to keep that
| in mind :)
|
| > _i should go back to torturing myself with Lithuania's
| Eurovision entry_
|
| Hehe, I have that show running in the background - I was
| just thinking that the presentation of the songs got more
| extreme compared to previous years... . Sorry, I overlooked
| Lithuania.
|
| Edit: saw a few seconds of replay of Lithuania - it seemed
| okay-ish (better than others).
| waiseristy wrote:
| I think that the downvote mechanism should just be removed and
| the flag cap moved to 500. It's just become a mechanism to
| remove controversial topics from conversation. HN used to have
| some very off-the-wall libertarian voices which incited some
| interesting conversations. Now everything just gets downvoted
| into oblivion unless you are Mainstream Approved
|
| Another interesting point as I sit here and watch this comment
| literally 'fade' into the echo chamber. Why is it that HN
| signals immediately when comments go below the 1 point
| threshold, yet hides upvotes? It seems like HN encourages the
| bandwagon effect on downward pressure only
| nanidin wrote:
| > I think that the downvote mechanism should just be removed
|
| Why? I think this approach makes an assumption that everyone
| is upvoting everything that they would not downvote. I upvote
| things I find interesting or insightful, and I do my part in
| terms of moderation by downvoting comments that don't have a
| good fit for HN.
|
| What I see on Facebook and Twitter is that the inability for
| the hivemind to have some kind of downward pressure mechanism
| on comments encourages/enables polarizing comments by vocal
| minorities to rise to the top. I see this frequently in the
| comments on the posts of local political figures. The top
| comments shown are almost always controversial and
| unhelpful/unproductive - things like whataboutism, blatantly
| racist remarks, etc. Eventually I got tired of constantly
| catching myself up in arms over FB comments and stopped
| participating.
|
| The only way I see to counteract this as a rank-and-file user
| is to upvote/like every single comment except for the ones
| that are hurting actual discourse. IMO this will drive away
| people that you ultimately want to be participating on HN.
| waiseristy wrote:
| You have an interesting point, that I think comes from our
| ill definition of why we have downvotes on HN and why we
| have flagging. Flagging, from what I can tell is for "a
| comment that breaks the HN guidelines" or "a story does not
| belong on HN". It seems like your downvotes for comments
| that "don't have a good fit for HN." would actually be
| better moderated by flagging, no?
|
| Flagging blatant racism and other destructive argument
| tactics is also fair game. So what are we actually
| downvoting for?
| sokoloff wrote:
| I rarely downvote, but when I do it's almost always for
| something that seriously detracts from a curious and
| open-minded discussion or is factually wrong about its
| main point (not "doesn't match my opinion" but "provably
| doesn't match the facts").
|
| I flag almost never. I probably vouch about half as often
| as I downvote.
| waiseristy wrote:
| I think I also downvote/moderate under similar
| circumstances, though I also fall prey to the exact kind
| of behavior that I'm calling out (flippant downvoting).
|
| You point out a super important part of forum moderation
| : trolling and posts which "provably do[n't] match the
| facts". Aka. Flame-Bait
|
| Downvoting is one way to moderate these posts, but the HN
| FAQ also mentions this type of behavior (suggesting
| Flagging as a solution) :
|
| > Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them
| instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you
| did.
|
| Downvoting is a great tool to moderate posts, especially
| for users who wield the power wisely like a longtime user
| like yourself. But I don't think the 500 comment
| threshold is enough to sort out the wheat (you) from the
| chaff (me).
|
| What's funny, is that HN voting is such a problem, it
| also dictates in the FAQ to not even complain about it!
|
| > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It
| never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I go on and off with having downvote arrows hidden by
| default: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26165960
|
| Makes for one extra step if I want to downvote.
| Taek wrote:
| I do think the downvote button contributes considerably to
| shutting down things like pun threads and low effort comedic
| jabs. It's always sad to see someone who is making a good
| faith effort to have an interesting conversation get drowned
| in downvotes, but on the net I think the downvote does more
| good than harm.
| waiseristy wrote:
| From Dang :
|
| > The purpose of flagging is to indicate that a story does
| not belong on HN. Frivolous flagging--e.g. flagging a story
| that's clearly on-topic by the site guidelines just because
| one personally dislikes it--eventually gets an account's
| flagging privileges taken away.
|
| > Flagging of comments is important, too. If you see a
| comment that breaks the HN guidelines, such as by being
| uncivil, you should flag it. But there's one extra hoop to
| jump through in the comment case: you have to click on the
| comment's timestamp to go to its page, then click 'flag' at
| the top. That's a speed bump to dampen impulsive flagging.
|
| I honestly think the opposite, downvotes are the perfect
| target for our knee-jerk lizard-brain response to things we
| don't like. Flagging and reporting are a much more
| community focused approach to moderation, requiring people
| to actually think about why they are removing a person from
| the conversation
| gnicholas wrote:
| Karma doesn't accumulate linearly. I don't know exactly how it
| works, but certainly for articles I've posted it's true. It
| might get 300 points but your karma only increases by 200. I
| don't know if this non-linearity has changed over time, but it
| could certainly be used to achieve this effect.
|
| And to be clear for others who are wondering what happens at
| 500 points, it's a threshold for being able to downvote, not a
| limit per se.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| All 1 point show as 2 points. Shouldn't those be 1 point
| regardless of date since it's the base and it means some specific
| post had no upvotes?
| hawski wrote:
| Very nice realization of the idea. The extension is a sweet perk.
|
| I was thinking about something like this some time ago. I also
| wonder how it compares with comment count per post and
| score/comments ratio in time.
| miguelrochefort wrote:
| I thought this would be about compensation figures.
|
| It's about HN points.
| neogodless wrote:
| I've accumulated a lot of HN points, and at no point did I
| discover some way to turn that into compensation!
| krapp wrote:
| The true karma was the friends we made along the way.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| I once saw a comment here that some people put their HN
| usernames on their resumes.
|
| I was shocked; seems like that is more likely to be taken as
| a negative signal than a plus. "Here, look how good I am at
| wasting time on this web forum!" :-)
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I think for some low information recruiter/companies it
| would seem valuable; here's my stackoverflow account (top
| 33%), my github account (something or other notable), my HN
| account (big points) results in recruiter thinking oooh big
| nerd, big in nerd community, yes push this guy.
|
| I mean this of course all plays into the assumption that
| hiring is anyway a big circus where nobody actually knows
| anything and are just guessing. But I do seem to see a lot
| of that assumption being made.
| robocat wrote:
| I get paid interest on stackoverflow: I have gone up in
| rank without doing _anything_. I was top 10% a few years
| ago when I stopped, and I am now top 8% (without doing
| any work at all!).
| mbg721 wrote:
| It depends what that user did; a really really good account
| could be more problem-solving than time-wasting.
| krapp wrote:
| It's more likely the negative reputation this forum has
| would taint you by association.
| pizza234 wrote:
| I'd personally take a CV with a big grain of salt, as I
| personally wouldn't see value in a high karma due to
| publishing popular stories.
|
| On the other hand, I wouldn't discard it in principle. The
| comments history of a user says a lot about the user's
| ideas and approach to discussions/debates.
|
| HN shaped the way I discuss/debate more than anything else
| in my life, so there can be a significant value in it.
| jlokier wrote:
| I've been approached (though rarely) because of HN
| activity, and I've also found great temporary work via HN
| occasionally. So I would say it's a net positive, and I
| include it in my LinkedIn profile.
|
| I use a resume/CV sometimes, but I have found that those
| places which require one take a long time to process
| applications and enquiries compared with those places that
| don't require one, with the result that the latter places
| have ended up hiring me while the former places are still
| working up to their third interview or whatever.
|
| In the end the resume/CV is good to keep going as a hedge,
| and multiple applications are good for peace of mind, but
| (maybe it's just by chance) it hasn't ended up used by
| places I ended up working for for some years now.
|
| I figure having a searchable track record is one of the
| reasons it's working out that way, and HN is part of that.
| Other public locations similarly, such as dev mailing
| lists, issue comments, etc. It's not why I write here, but
| it is a motivation to write thoughtfully while keeping it
| real, and I am mindful that a future employer may read what
| I write :)
| ingve wrote:
| It's not quite compensation per se, but rsync.net will give
| you a very nice discount just for being a HN user. (I don't
| think they check how many points you have accumulated
| though.)
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