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There'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 Lockyy 10y ago
There'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 agoThat's probably the biggest reason why we ditched it.
- tikhonj 10y agoHell, I still have that habit. It took conscious effort to break it and respond to this post :). That said, I don't think it was all bad: it definitely incentivized me to write comments that were consistently longer and deeper than they would be otherwise. Looking back through my old comments, a surprising number read like essays. But it also created a bunch of perverse incentives. Apart from disincentivizing conversation it also pushed me towards trying to comment on bigger stories and pushed me away from commenting on stories that had been up for a while and would fall off the front page soon. The downsides of focusing on average votes per comment definitely outweigh the upsides. I wonder if there's some better measure out there that creates fewer weird incentives and isn't as gameable but still has the same positive effects.
- Gratsby 10y agoIt's not the site, it's the people that pay too much attention to it that are a problem. Say what you want to say when you want to say it. Don't worry about points. It's a fun distraction every once in a while (oh hey, another X points and I hit the leaderboard!), but gaming the system in general, or spending any time worrying about it... just no.
- smacktoward 10y agoI actually prefer that list to this one! Mostly because I come out better there :-D
- ericabiz 10y agoHow about a "trending" page that shows users who have gained the most karma in the past x days or months? Here, I would say I prefer comment karma instead of article submission karma, as I don't care who submitted the story about Apple's latest device 5 seconds before everyone else did.
- DanBC 10y agoIt would need to filter out people like me who just post too much. Any list that includes me, but not eg grellas is probably doing something wrong. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=grellas https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=grellas
- tedmiston 10y agoStack Overflow is pretty good at this. They call them Reputation Leagues. http://stackexchange.com/leagues/1/quarter/stackoverflow http://stackexchange.com/leagues/1/quarter/stackoverflow
- DanielRibeiro 10y agoThat's a great idea dang! I'd say to just remove the page altogether, but a suitable replacement could possibly serve as a tool to uplift behavior you'd like to see more of. That's definitely easier said than done, but I'd love to see some experimentation in this area.
- ktRolster 10y agoMaybe start by defining what you'd like to see more of? I'm not actually sure of the answer to that question.
- tptacek 10y agoPlease start by just killing the page. You can figure out something to replace it with later! You can't be more than 7 minutes of effort away from improving the site by eliminating the leaderboard. Do it. Do it! DO IT!
- dang 10y agoHacker News users really don't like having information taken away from them. So my somatic response to your suggestion could be described as Pavlov meets Milgram.
- ars 10y agoStart by splitting submission and comment numbers. End by adding a time filter (let people have a few choices).
- Gargoyle 10y agoIt's as useful as the existing karma system allows it to be. I suspect most of the problems you have with the leader page are an almost direct result of how voting and karma work. It's worth leaving this leader page up as it indicates the system as it stands. The answer lies much more in changing the system than in hiding its results.
- dang 10y agoAlthough it's fun to throw around ideas for major changes to how voting and karma work, I don't believe anybody knows how to make it much better.
- Gargoyle 10y agoI agree. So you should leave this existing feedback page up until you can improve the feedback. If the feedback makes you unhappy, it's not the feedback's fault. It's your system's. :-)
- djsumdog 10y agoIf I had that much karma, I wouldn't want anyone to know I didn't have a life either.
- chm 10y agoJust visit the user's profile and you can see it. tptacek 241986
- andrewclunn 10y agoI like the h-index better. It shows contributions rather than making comments that aren't controversial... So speaking of abortion...
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