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Best of HN 2020

191 points by richardboegli 6y ago

vincentmarle 6y ago
Interestingly, none of the top posts have been about COVID, which has been arguably the biggest event of 2020 (the only thing that is related is the Twitter work forever from home announcement).
- whym 6y ago
  I would guess many COVID stories that could be big were submitted, upvoted, and quickly flagged because they were deemed out of scope. If they were not flagged, perhaps one or two could have been among the top 10. But even then I wouldn't be sure about that. For comparison, "Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967) was among the top posts and not flagged, because of its historical significance (per dang's comment there). I don't think COVID was less significant, but there was no obvious point in time to focus among many related stories spanning over months, unlike the presidential election that had a single victory moment.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  That's true, but, if you venture into page 2, the #22 story of this year was about the death of John Conway.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  The most interesting Covid posts were in February. One was about how China was running the largest remote work experiment the world had ever seen. Ominous stuff if you go back and read it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22221507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22221507 Curated Coronavirus discussions from the beginning of the year is pure history, good stuff to examine a moment in time.
- elorant 6y ago
  Probably because the covid issue evolved gradually. First we knew that something was happening in China but couldn't tell what it was exactly, then we realized it was a decease but didn't know how bad, then there was the lockdown but information from China is regulated so no big story here, and then it hit Europe and all hell broke loose. The thing is that there wasn't a singular event that would have captured all of our attention catapulting it to the top of HN.
- lavp 6y ago
  > which has been arguably the biggest event of 2020 Who’s arguing against that?
- esturk 6y ago
  If you go into the "Biden wins White House..." thread, there's actually quite a lot about COVID, seeing how political it became.
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
I'm happy to see that there's a "Thank you Dang" in the top 20. He certainly deserves that praise... I am still amazed at how good this community is, despite having grown into a much larger one over the years.
- purplecats 6y ago
  im still puzzled by the seeming contradiction that sites can get ddosed from traffic from hacker news, yet the comment sections nor the average votes accumulation on posts seem to reflect the size of the community that such a traffic would warrant.
  - trisiak 6y ago
    Pure speculation but could it be a network effect? I frequently visit websites that were shared by coworkers and friends over text communicators that they originally found on HN. Obviously, not all people vote or comment either so that's a second multiplicative factor. Finally, causation != correlation, which most likely is your point, e.g. things on HN already spread from somewhere else.
    - iamacyborg 6y ago
      There’s definitely a network effect. I had a post of mine do well on here which lead to a ton of mentions on Twitter and LinkedIn. There was probably more going on but I don’t run analytics on the site so can only make educated guesses as to where stuff was being shared.
  - asutekku 6y ago
    I would imagine the amount of people who engage with the content is much smaller than the amount of people who have not logged in and just read the site. As usual, only small portion of any site’s users are the active kind of.
    - AkshayPrabhu 6y ago
      This is likely, I'd say it's due to the 90–9–1 rule[0] which states that the vast majority of your users would be lurkers, a small proportion would participate in discussions and the smallest number being the power users who generate most of the content on the platform [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)
app4soft 6y ago
> This page will only work with JavaScript enabled Thanks for warning.[0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16191843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16191843

Best of HN 2020

191 points by richardboegli 6y ago

Interestingly, none of the top posts have been about COVID, which has been arguably the biggest event of 2020 (the only thing that is related is the Twitter work forever from home announcement).

whym 6y ago
I would guess many COVID stories that could be big were submitted, upvoted, and quickly flagged because they were deemed out of scope. If they were not flagged, perhaps one or two could have been among the top 10. But even then I wouldn't be sure about that. For comparison, "Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967) was among the top posts and not flagged, because of its historical significance (per dang's comment there). I don't think COVID was less significant, but there was no obvious point in time to focus among many related stories spanning over months, unlike the presidential election that had a single victory moment.
pmiller2 6y ago
That's true, but, if you venture into page 2, the #22 story of this year was about the death of John Conway.
runawaybottle 6y ago
The most interesting Covid posts were in February. One was about how China was running the largest remote work experiment the world had ever seen. Ominous stuff if you go back and read it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22221507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22221507 Curated Coronavirus discussions from the beginning of the year is pure history, good stuff to examine a moment in time.
elorant 6y ago
Probably because the covid issue evolved gradually. First we knew that something was happening in China but couldn't tell what it was exactly, then we realized it was a decease but didn't know how bad, then there was the lockdown but information from China is regulated so no big story here, and then it hit Europe and all hell broke loose. The thing is that there wasn't a singular event that would have captured all of our attention catapulting it to the top of HN.
lavp 6y ago
> which has been arguably the biggest event of 2020 Who’s arguing against that?
esturk 6y ago
If you go into the "Biden wins White House..." thread, there's actually quite a lot about COVID, seeing how political it became.

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

I'm happy to see that there's a "Thank you Dang" in the top 20. He certainly deserves that praise... I am still amazed at how good this community is, despite having grown into a much larger one over the years.

purplecats 6y ago
im still puzzled by the seeming contradiction that sites can get ddosed from traffic from hacker news, yet the comment sections nor the average votes accumulation on posts seem to reflect the size of the community that such a traffic would warrant.
- trisiak 6y ago
  Pure speculation but could it be a network effect? I frequently visit websites that were shared by coworkers and friends over text communicators that they originally found on HN. Obviously, not all people vote or comment either so that's a second multiplicative factor. Finally, causation != correlation, which most likely is your point, e.g. things on HN already spread from somewhere else.
  - iamacyborg 6y ago
    There’s definitely a network effect. I had a post of mine do well on here which lead to a ton of mentions on Twitter and LinkedIn. There was probably more going on but I don’t run analytics on the site so can only make educated guesses as to where stuff was being shared.
- asutekku 6y ago
  I would imagine the amount of people who engage with the content is much smaller than the amount of people who have not logged in and just read the site. As usual, only small portion of any site’s users are the active kind of.
  - AkshayPrabhu 6y ago
    This is likely, I'd say it's due to the 90–9–1 rule[0] which states that the vast majority of your users would be lurkers, a small proportion would participate in discussions and the smallest number being the power users who generate most of the content on the platform [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)

app4soft 6y ago

> This page will only work with JavaScript enabled Thanks for warning.[0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16191843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16191843