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HN discussion when this was originally posted 471 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8828543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8828543

• 13of40 11y ago
  I need to get on that hacker news api and figure out what the half life of a HN user is, so we can tell whether 471 days is a meaningful value. I suspect a large number of people reading this weren't around then. (I think I measured that 2/3 of posters here don't have at least 501 karma, so you can use that as a ballpark figure.)
  • chrishacken 11y ago
    "I measured that 2/3 of posters here don't have at least 501 karma", is that a meaningful piece of data though? I've been lurking on here for years; rarely comment, never posted.
  • quacker 11y ago
    Some users are lurkers. I created this account 1921 days ago but have only 201 karma. That said, I don't remember the previous posting of this article, so linking to previous comments is useful. It lets me compare the discussions and see how opinions do or don't change.
    • 13of40 11y ago
      You know, maybe I'm wrong, but I read the comment as a cheap way to register superiority over the OP - essentially saying "we already talked about this, so move along." That's not as valuable when "we" changes over time, and (as you pointed out) a lot of "us" don't participate in every discussion. IMHO we'd be better off if we didn't have to hear about it every time an old topic got resurrected.
      • simoncion 11y ago
        > ...I read the comment as a cheap way to register superiority over the OP... Whose comment? fjarlq's comment? If so, I also might be wrong, but I read it as "Here's old discussion on the topic. Might be worth reading to see if what you want to talk about today has already been hashed out, or if there's discussion that you might find interesting.".
        • fjarlq 10y ago
          Yeah, I merely wanted to reference the old discussion in the hope that it might improve the discussion today. I think it's fine when a story gets discussed multiple times.
        • neverknowsbest 10y ago
          Seconded; I'm a casual browser but when a topic grabs my attention it's great to see there's been multiple well-trafficked threads and have links mentioned to backtrack to alternate discussions
      • e12e 10y ago
        What? Links to old discussions (especially when they were informed) is always good. And sometimes it'll avoid a redundant rehash of points. When it comes to software like TLS/ssh, it's also very interesting to see if things that were true/important a year ago are less true/important now. I see where you're coming from, but I think everyone is well served not always looking for ulterior motives where there are none. A link to a rich previous discussion on a topic is almost always both relevant and informative, and saves others from having to go an search for the relevant thread(s). If there's one great failing of computer science as a field, it is the lack of history -- people just don't know what was, or how things came to be. And so we have a lot of effort wasted on recreating yesterdays mistakes, today, rather than building on old solutions to create better ones for tomorrow (to partly paraphrase Alan Kay).
  • beefhash 11y ago
    Sometimes, people are also just asleep/on vacation and will miss the previous submission, even if their acount age is greater than the "X days ago".
  • craigmccaskill 11y ago
    I made this account 1979 days ago, have 230 karma and have probably averaged over 7 visits a week. Some people just spend way more time reading than commenting.