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Most popular links in Hacker News comments, 2006–2015
- digi_owl 10y agoSo a bunch of Graham, a bunch of XKCD (top one being the one on standards), and a bit of joel.
- raldi 10y agoPlus fullmalls.com -- any idea why?
- infocollector 10y agoIs there any hope of separating Ycombinator and Hacker news?
- jacquesm 10y agoThey are already quite separated. It would be good if they were separated even further from my point of view (because the value of HN for me outweighs the value of YC tremendously), but since HN does not have a monetization strategy it currently needs support in the form of employees generously paid for by YC. You'd need to at least begin to solve that problem before you can ask for more separation than there already is. And from a community perspective I think Daniel and others are doing a pretty good job at keeping an even keel when it comes to not giving YC preferential treatment. The only bit left is the job postings, which is probably a fair way to pay back for what YC does for HN.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- LeafStorm 10y agoI have seen xkcd #927 used to dismiss discussions of standards on HN so many times that it is the only xkcd comic I can recognize by number.
- 0942v8653 10y agoSame with 538 for me, though it's more often a mention of the "$5 wrench" than a link.
- nv-vn 10y agoYep, going into the list it was the first xkcd link I saw and I immediately knew what it was before even seeing the number.
- ZenoArrow 10y agoI don't recognise it by number, but I knew exactly which one it would be. The thing I find slightly annoying about those that use xkcd #927 as a response is that it ignores how new standards can push things forward, it's mostly/always used in a dismissive way. Also, if the new standard is enough of an improvement on the old standards, it can largely cause development using the old standards to stop, causing a consolidation in the market rather than splintering the market further. Hopefully one day more people will realise xkcd #927 isn't that insightful, it's just a simplification of the issue to make it a better joke.
- igravious 10y agoI've started downvoting comments that are XKCD links and nothing more to encourage context-giving and discourage needless repetition.
- digi_owl 10y agoYeah the way i see it, the reason we get so many "standards" is because commercial interests always want to build silos. A "standard" is, imo, worthless if you have to supplicant yourself to corporation A, B or C to implement it. Sadly the consumer world is more and more willing to do just that. Observe how while IBMs attempt at siloing the PC with MCA went nowhere, "we" were all too willing to embrace Apple's proprietary "standard" regarding device docking.
- Matt3o12_ 10y agoFunny, I would have thought that the wrench comic would have been more popular. But maybe it has become more popular in the recent few years thanks to the advance of cryptography.
- minimaxir 10y agoIt is strongly worth nothing that there has been a shift in comment sentiment/quality over the years. In early HN, comments were more hostile and would definitely be killed by the modern mod team. (it's where the HN stereotypes originated) See my old list of the Top Comments for each month of HN since 2006 and note the difference between the old comments and recent comments: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZwonVX_KlDYhuhPnAAnVpdVRgu4LxldP74-c_kvOd5k/ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZwonVX_KlDYhuhPnAAnV... At the least, there is no situation nowadays on HN where commenting with http://xkcd.com/386/ http://xkcd.com/386/ would be considered appropriate.
- api 10y agoThis might be the only online forum I've ever seen get less hostile over time.
- oolongCat 10y agoFor some odd reason if anyone is missing the hostility, there's always IRC, one of the best places to learn but also one of the best places to get flamed.
- mrdrozdov 10y agoI'm not sure how to get started with IRC. Could you recommend any general channels?
- j_koreth 10y agoSort by the largest and start from the bottom
- throwanem 10y agoGeneral-purpose channels on IRC seem to fall into two categories: on the one hand, small and populated by mutual acquaintances who view un-vouched-for outsiders with suspicion; on the other, gigantic, purposeless, and either dead idle or too busy to keep up with. Starting from scratch, you're better off looking for channels relevant to your specific interests, and branching out from there.
- waiseristy 10y ago#13 is a spam bot, looks like the site got shut down or something
- GICodeWarrior 10y agoMost of these look like things I'd expect. However, number 13 is an obvious spam link if you look at the mentions. I wonder how HN protects against this type of spam and how this particular spam got through. The most recent mention was 4 years ago, so it would appear this particular issue is fixed in the current software.
- hmate9 10y agoGoogle appears twice. 92 and 82. Makes me wonder how good this list really is.
- minimaxir 10y agoThat is due to some Google links having www and some links not (I double-checked by running the query). It is a easy-to-miss fidelity issue that does not warrant passive-aggression.
- klibertp 10y agoOMG, talk about being overly sensitive as a community :) If you skim the comments here you'll see that there are also other problems with this list and there's no aggression in pointing out that those issues lower the level of trust one has for it.
- smitherfield 10y agoJust reread the 2003 Paul Graham post about PR firms, which is of course a great insight (hence all the reposts), but I had to chuckle at the last part where he goes on about how, unlike print journalists, bloggers are far too principled to be fed stories by PR firms.
- pbiggar 10y agohttps://circleci.com https://circleci.com is 37 on the list. 37! Ahead of I think any other SaaS company. Either my unintentional content marketing campaign has paid off, or something is weird with how they count this.
- oneeyedpigeon 10y agoThere's a lot of noise above you, too. E.g. YouTube gets all of its videos conflated, ycombinator links should arguably be ignored; really, you're about 30th :-)
- lamontcg 10y agoI'm kinda surprised that https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/ didn't make the list..
- anoother 10y agoWhy is Google.com mentioned twice?
- LordDragonfang 10y agoIt's interesting to compare HN's usage frequency of particular xkcd comics compared to elsewhere on the internet (https://xkcdref.info/statistics/ https://xkcdref.info/statistics/)
- UniZero 10y agoIf anyone is curious, Link #5 (broken) is now hosted here: http://ejucovy.github.io/readability/ http://ejucovy.github.io/readability/
- duncan_bayne 10y agoSomething I've noticed of late is that there are things one can criticise on HN and receive reasoned rebuttal, and other things where any criticism will receive a flurry of downvotes but little discussion.
- kitd 10y agoI'm sure the first 2 are simply people trying to remember/understand what formatting is supported. I wish it was a bit more prominent.
- longwave 10y agoRank 50 is missing. I wonder what it was!
- gkst 10y agoI just tried the query myself. The result set contains this URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headli..., which does not work when entered in the browser. It appears that OP merged this URL with the working URL, that occurs on rank 49. Also notice, that a URL variant pointing to this page occurs on rank 89 again.
- Sealy 10y agoThanks for this. I just discovered http://hckrnews.com http://hckrnews.com for the first time through your list of links. I think I'll be using it to browse the site from now on!
- gpvos 10y agofullmalls.com at #13 and etradinglife.com at #15? Maybe you should filter for dead or flagged comments?
- protomyth 10y agoI was hoping the cdc.gov links would make it given the number of discussions of mortality in the USA.
- ronnier 10y agoMy http://ihackernews.com http://ihackernews.com made the list. I've had zero time over the last 5 years to maintain it. Some nice person did convert it to js, based on the now available hacker news API. Now that this site renders better on mobile there's really no need for ihackernews. Reach out to me if you'd like to do something with it.