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Top 100 Users on Hacker News by H-Index
- rm999 10y agoFor anyone wondering, I had to read the wikipedia page and sql code to fully understand what the h-index means in this table: an h-index of n means the user has n submissions (stories, jobs, or polls) with a score of at least n. So, ColinWright has 143 submissions with a score of 143 or more. My h-index is 2 :)
- ilyanep 10y agoThanks for explaining! I was trying to figure out what the analogues to papers/citations were here.
- DonaldFisk 10y agoThat's a similar idea to the Eddington number in cycling: http://triathlete-europe.competitor.com/2011/04/18/measuring-bike-miles-eddington-number http://triathlete-europe.competitor.com/2011/04/18/measuring...
- thisisdave 10y agoNot to be confused with the Eddington number in physics[0] "I believe there are 15 747 724 136 275 002 577 605 653 961 181 555 468 044 717 914 527 116 709 366 231 425 076 185 631 031 296 protons in the universe and the same number of electrons." --Sir Arthur Eddington [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddington_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddington_number
- minimaxir 10y agoNot exactly. The relevant lines in the BigQuery are: [by] author, score, rank() over (partition by [by] order by score desc) item_rank [...] where score >= item_rank The query uses a window function. What's happening is that it's counting the number of submissions with a score greater than or equal to the submissions rank relative to all other submissions by that user, descending. For example, a user has four submissions with scores of 1, 2, 10, 3. Their h-index would be 2. (10 >= 1 true, 3 >= 2 true, 2 >= 3 false, 1 >= 4 false). This is an odd way to calculate h-rank (as a measure of quality), however, the implementation appears to pass the test cases on Wikipedia.
- rm999 10y agoIsn't that what I described? That user has 2 submissions with at least 2 points each. I also think that's a fairly sql-esque way to calculate h-index. I can't think of how else I would do it.
- minimaxir 10y agoYour explanation (user has n submissions with a score of at least n) fails to pass one of the Wikipedia examples. ([25, 8, 5, 3, 3] should result in an h-index of 3)
- rm999 10y agoThere's some confusion here, I do believe my explanation means [25, 8, 5, 3, 3] has an h-index of 3.
- minimaxir 10y agoThere are 5 scores with atleast 3 points. :P
- arjie 10y agoYes, if there are 5 scores with at least 3 points, then there are 3 scores with at least 3 points. Of course he left out the fact that the h-index is the largest number for which the property he mentioned holds true, but that was obvious.
- lvs 10y agoYou seem to misunderstand h-index. :P It is the highest number h for which at least h articles have >= h citations.
- tedmiston 10y ago> So, ColinWright has 143 submissions with a score of 143 or more. I think the way OP wrote it was slightly unclear. This is clearer to me: So, ColinWright has 143 submissions with a score of at least 143 each.
- kefka 10y agoIn effect, this is simply a group-think assay for those whom think in the "Silicon Valley VC mindset".
- dang 10y agoAlmost certainly the vast majority of users on that list are well outside Silicon Valley, as well as its "mindset" (if there is such a thing).
- lvs 10y agoIt very much has a "mindset" that is all the more obvious to those of us not sharing it.
- dang 10y agoObvious is a dangerous word. Some of this is imaginary. The kaleidoscopic filter of media drama affects these perceptions as well as reporting on them.
- lvs 10y agoAll I have to do is read the tablets of your financial gods, cited daily here, to understand how utterly lost you all really are. It's an honest shame that so many brilliant, educated people with bright and positive outlooks have been so thoughtlessly coopted, with their own consent, into routine and pointless profit-seeking under the guise of "changing the world." Let's be clear: SV "startups" are pointless capital ventures that reasonable conscientious people would never support or pursue except for the sole purpose of personal profit-seeking. As you get older, I think you'll see, as a smart person, the curtain will pull back and the difference between substantive pursuits and what you're all doing will be truly revealed. I don't say this to be mean or for any gain whatsoever. I am truly sad about the second internet boom, having seen a bit of the first one. I am just a lamenting academic with no horses in your race. I would only like to see the world truly changed, and I wish all our society's best education were put to use actually doing it.
- minimaxir 10y agoIt should be noted that the Karma scores were added to the table manually, as all karma data is not accessible publicly. You can't simply add Total Points on submissions + Total Points on comments - # of submissions/comments: comment karma is no longer exposed via the API, and total karma counts do not incorporate points earned via suspected voting ring accounts. (while submissions do)
- Lockyy 10y agoThere's actually a built in Top Users page on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders Although it's by Karma rather than by front-page reaching skill, so it's a different metric really. It's odd that it displays Karma for everyone outside the top ten.
- dang 10y agoSome people in the top 10 asked us not to show karma at that point. It's a distraction. Actually I hate that leader page and would like to replace it with something more interesting. There's too much past and not enough present and future in it.
- Lockyy 10y agoA running average of the latest <x> posts/submissions would be a better way to show the current most popular users. However I feel a better metric than popularity, which is all karma really is, might be some way of tracking influence. Response count springs to mind initially but that promotes controversy rather than quality.
- minimaxir 10y agoIncidentally, HN did have that average scores on recent submissions for user profiles back in the old days. It was removed since it offered no insight and was often inaccurate.
- zck 10y agoI think it also caused bad behavior. I found myself not wanting to reply to people's comments if the post was old, as my comment would be less likely to be upvoted, and my average score would go down. This is an example of how people try to maximize numbers, even when they know they shouldn't. You make what you measure.
- dang 10y ago
- daveguy 10y agoInteresting. The top 3 do not have a submission in the last 100 days. danso (number 4) and shawndumas (number 5) both have recent submissions.
- shawndumas 10y agoI am broken; apropos of addiction.
- ivanca 10y agoHey, I'm "broken" too but my addiction involves alcohol and bad girls, at least you are addicted to something sane and educational. And you work at Google, that's awesome.
- shawndumas 10y agocould not have gotten the job apart from all that I've learned on hn
- daveguy 10y agoWow, your account averages almost 24 internet points per day. That is pretty intense. Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery. I thought I was spending too much time on HN with ~5pts/day. I hope you are able to get it under control (probably meaning kick it all together). My dad had a problem with Tetris in the 90s -- but that was better than the alcoholism he dealt with in the 70s and 80s (30+ years sober now). So, ivanca has a good point that it can be worse. However, there is no doubt that internet/games/etc can be addictive. Good luck.
- shawndumas 10y agotruthfully, I use hn as a sort of delicious replacement.
- daveguy 10y ago
- djfm 10y agoI would also be interested in seeing a ranking in terms of articles read by the user. While h-index and karma are great to measure, well, measurable contribution to the community, it fails to capture the contribution to the community that consists in (and this is true of a lot of other if not of all "karma policies" too): - sharing what one sees in this community, and spreading it through other channels - or even just using the knowledge gathered here - or, in the best case, using the inspiration found in this community to help build a better world I for one read HN articles and comments about 2 hours a day every single day even now at 5am on a Sunday morning after a party. This made me a better programmer, dreamer, and probably a slightly better person too. Yet I speak little and have only a little under 300 karma. I believe, though, that I contribute somehow more to the community than what my karma shows (e.g. by spreading the word about a cool and useful technology at work - say functional reactive programming for instance - and seeing it being adopted or experimented with). I think attendance matters, too :) EDIT: list formatting EDIT2: added bit about FRP cuz, you know, redux
- signa11 10y ago> While h-index and karma are great to measure, well, measurable contribution to the community, it fails to capture the contribution to the community... i really don't know how any of the stuff that you have mentioned is empirically verifiable or in other words, as you have so rightly indicated, measurable. how would you rank things based on stuff that you cannot even measure ? e.g. if 'sharing what one sees in this community, and spreading it through other channels' is something that is looked at as a measure of contribution, how would you go about doing it ? i could probably think of couple of ways. none of which will not appear 'creepy' e.g. one very obvious approach might be that we start linking up things like facebook/reddit/g+ etc. accounts here and start tracking things ? thereby, generating over a period of time, metrics which measure node (that's you !) centrality etc...
- holri 10y agoWe have just discovered that rankings are useless. The world is not only what is measurable.
- MonadQueen 10y agoWe're one big popularity contest where the most popular ideas win!
- cossatot 10y agoNavel analytics
- xer0x 10y agoIt's fun to see this. I'm surprised to see some of the names here.
- dang 10y agoSome users get a high h-index by submitting tons of stories. For the sake of argument, suppose that of two users with the same h-index, the one who submitted fewer stories is a higher-quality submitter. What would be the best way to modify the h-index to incorporate this?
- dkopi 10y agoAn H index provides a trade off between quality and quantity. It attempts to measure both impact (citations in the case of academics, or upvotes in the case of HN), and quantity. You'll have a low H index if you have lots of low quality submissions, and you'll have a low H index if you have very few ultra successful submissions. From wikipedia: The definition of the index is that a scholar with an index of h has published h papers each of which has been cited in other papers at least h times.[4] Thus, the h-index reflects both the number of publications and the number of citations per publication. The index is designed to improve upon simpler measures such as the total number of citations or publications.
- akavel 10y agoBut IIUC, if one submits 1000 links and 10% of them get 100+ votes, while the rest get <100, then one's h-index is the same (100) as if one submitted 100 links, but all of them got 100+ votes. So, it doesn't measure "spaminess". That's what the question was about, I believe - is there a way to take this into account, while not losing the good parts of h-index.
- dorfsmay 10y agoThe median would solve the spamminess, but it'd completely eliminate the high scores. That's why a lot of people like to look at more than one number when looking at a set summary, but you can't compare and classify these as easily. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-number_summary https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-number_summary
- venomsnake 10y agoGetting lots of karma on HN with submitting social justice related/SF housing articles is like shooting a fish in a barrel. Or being the first to comment on them. So is with Apple/MS PR events. I would suggest for certain kinds of submissions/topics to add logarithmic instead of linear influence on the h-index. Or to add some form of handicap. After all SF housing is something that the community is obviously interested and passionate about - you can easily get 200 comments/upvotes on any article on the topic. So you check if this article contributes to the h-rank by removing the baseline upvotes/comments an article about SF housing gets. TL:DR - for some topics your contributions should count towards the h-rank only if they engage the community above average.
- hbbio 10y agoThis is interesting, but I suspect there is a bias. Submissions, when they succeed, tend to get many upvotes. Comments also get upvotes, but in average an order of magnitude less. The same applies to replies in comment, which I would guess generally get fewer upvotes (or subcomments to comments other than the top comment). It seems that the Top 100 users here are the one who are posting stories and that comment rarely, as that would optimize the "leverage" to get a higher H-index.
- rav 10y agoThe H-index is designed such that posts with few upvotes cannot decrease the H-index. Since it is defined as the largest n such that you have ≥n posts with score ≥n, adding another low-scoring post doesn't decrease the H-index.
- rajeemcariazo 10y agoGithub is the wikipedia for hackers