8 ms·

Show HN: I made a tool to track the upvote/ranking history of HN submissions

144 points by janmo 5y ago

EE84M3i 5y ago
Does it track things that were on the front page but were flagged? I've been looking for that.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  I sort of think there should be an 'important flagged discussions' link, ones with otherwise lots of engagement that got flagged by people who were opposed to the viewpoint of the post.
  - pbhjpbhj 5y ago
    Flags are for "this shouldn't be here" not for "I disagree", AFAICT. It's bad enough that downvotes are used for disagreement.
    - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      I'm pretty sure that flags are used for disagree with viewpoint of this article. on edit: discussing how I see flagged used, not how it should be used.
      - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
        People who do that are supposed to lose their flagging privileges.
- graderjs 5y ago
  I believe it will show it, but not the flagging specifically. You can see the position (best) drop off a cliff, even while upvotes and comments keep rising for a bit. Maker, this is really really cool. Only quibble is make it easier to check out a post. Not sure how, but maybe: - Bookmarklet - Some sort of search, or bring up all posts by a user, or all posts currently on the front page. A suggestion I have is to allow a comparison chart. So be able to add multiple submissions, and compare their trends. All in all, great work!
- google234123 5y ago
  It would be cool to see what popular posts are flagged off the homepage.
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    You can often find these by going to: https://news.ycombinator.com/active https://news.ycombinator.com/active This view of HN more heavily weights articles that generate robust discussions. I often find interesting stuff here that only briefly made it to the front page (due to flags or due to HN's "flamewar detector").
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
thih9 5y ago
Demo: https://upvotetracker.com/post/hn/27092770 https://upvotetracker.com/post/hn/27092770 . The link shows voting history of this submission. I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that it works on itself; still, I find it very cool that it does.
- sm4rk0 5y ago
  What happened at 7:36UTC? It dropped from second place to 16th.
  - janmo 5y ago
    I believe that HN is intervening manually. They can give it a up or a down push. Perhaps I could use the data to reverse engineer what is going on behind the scenes.
    - atatatat 5y ago
      inb4 ban.
fabcomm 5y ago
This is a cool tool. Nice work. Fun to play with. Also, I think it could benefit yet another hacker trying to hack HackerNews.
walterbell 5y ago
An earlier effort: http://hnrankings.info/ http://hnrankings.info/
giansegato 5y ago
Neat! I wonder how it works. Does it poll every submission every set amount of seconds to check key stats over time? Looks like a huge amount of traffic. Is there any more efficient way I'm not seeing?
- madsbuch 5y ago
  I would think that it loads page one and two of new and best every minute and records submissions. That is 4 requests per minute, which isn't that bad.
  - janmo 5y ago
    Currently I am doing 6 requests a minute
    - mistermann 5y ago
      I wonder, might you consider implementing something like what's asked for here? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27093483 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27093483 > Does it track things that were on the front page but were flagged? I've been looking for that. ...and... > I sort of think there should be an 'important flagged discussions' link, ones with otherwise lots of engagement that got flagged by people who were opposed to the viewpoint of the post. An example of such a post: The not-so-drastic truth behind climate change https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27097434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27097434 This article was on my frontpage, I read the 10 or so comments that were there and then forwarded it to myself as I love reading discussions about culture war topics, but when I refreshed HN immediately after reading the comments, I discovered that not only was it no longer on the front page, but it couldn't be found on any of the 17 pages provided when hitting next and searching for it. This is far from the first time I've noticed this happening with articles of this nature, and I think it would be very interesting to be able to see what ideas the HN moderators don't want the minds of their users exposed to. I think there are also several specific (and influential) subreddits that would also yield some very interesting results. Of course, you run the risk of getting your scraper blocked which would ruin your entire project...but on the other hand, if you were able to find a technical way around such blocking (I assume there are services that allow one to scrape using a large pool of ip's?) I think you could make this project significantly more interesting than it already is. Being able to see the things you are already showing is mildly interesting, but being able to see a list of particular topics that the powerful gatekeepers of information (in a very real sense, demi-gods who exert significant control over the publics' very perception of reality) do not want people to see is far more interesting, and in turn may make your service far more popular than it would be in its current form. EDIT: And it keeps getting more interesting...now the parent comment to the one I made[1] in that thread is [deleted] - not sure if that's a user invoked delete or moderator - I assume the former, as if it was a moderator I assume mine would have been toasted also. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27098186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27098186 >> Even re-production and communication should be discussed. > I think the most interesting and valuable/useful perspective to discuss this topic from (aside from "the science") is from a human psychology (which is heavily dependent on communication) perspective. Ultimately, actually doing something about climate change (regardless of what the consensus decision of that is) requires political support, and from what we've seen on that front, that seems to be the weakest link within the entire multidimensional problem. > Speaking of human psychology (and communication, and perception of reality), note how quickly moderators were able to memory hole this post - it was on my front page 10 minutes ago, and now it can no longer be found within the first 17 pages of HN. I've seen this phenomenon occur on several occasions over the years, and I don't even check HN all that often, and in each case (of the ones I've noticed) it tends to be particularly controversial topics like this one, where the perspective of the article is "controversial". Human beings (and all the clever mischievousness they get up to) are completely fascinating creatures, I can't understand why so few people find them interesting. EDIT 2: And just now does the post have a [flagged] tag, wonder why it disappeared before even being flagged.
yamrzou 5y ago
Neat, it feels fast and the charts are beautiful! T̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶s̶e̶e̶m̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶i̶s̶s̶u̶e̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶u̶p̶v̶o̶t̶e̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶o̶u̶g̶h̶:̶ ̶F̶o̶r̶ ̶e̶x̶a̶m̶p̶l̶e̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶n̶u̶m̶b̶e̶r̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶u̶p̶v̶o̶t̶e̶s̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶s̶u̶b̶m̶i̶s̶s̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶i̶t̶s̶e̶l̶f̶ ̶a̶t̶ ̶6̶:̶2̶0̶:̶0̶8̶ ̶a̶m̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶2̶9̶ ̶i̶n̶s̶t̶e̶a̶d̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶2̶ ̶(̶I̶ ̶k̶n̶o̶w̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶I̶'̶m̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶i̶m̶i̶l̶a̶r̶ ̶t̶o̶o̶l̶ ̶:̶)̶)̶.̶ Edit: I was wrong, the upvote count is correct. I thought the timezone was UTC, it would be nice if the timezone information is added to the chart.
argvargc 5y ago
This is amazing. Would you consider releasing the source? If not would you care to comment on development; language(s), dependencies etc?
- spsphulse 5y ago
  Yes. Fantastic project! Woul love to know more details & key architectural decisions.
  - janmo 5y ago
    Perhaps I will do an article on it, I came up with some ingenious solutions.
    - spsphulse 5y ago
      Thank you! That'd be immensely helpful.
Twisell 5y ago
I am working on a similar concept as a side side project that progress way too slowly. Kudo for the nice implementation !!
19h 5y ago
Why doesn’t it find its own URL? Getting a 404 when searching for this very post.
- janmo 5y ago
  You must enter the HN URL. Like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27092770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27092770
quarkstaffel 5y ago
I did that for reddit in 2016. Especcially with /r/the_donald. Funny to watch the steep hill for every upvoted thread after 30 mins or so: 5 minutes of massive bot action with 2000-5000 upvotes and than flat again.
- cutemonster 5y ago
  If the graphs are publicly visible anywhere it'd be interesting to have a look
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

144 points by janmo 5y ago

EE84M3i 5y ago

Does it track things that were on the front page but were flagged? I've been looking for that.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago
I sort of think there should be an 'important flagged discussions' link, ones with otherwise lots of engagement that got flagged by people who were opposed to the viewpoint of the post.
- pbhjpbhj 5y ago
  Flags are for "this shouldn't be here" not for "I disagree", AFAICT. It's bad enough that downvotes are used for disagreement.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure that flags are used for disagree with viewpoint of this article. on edit: discussing how I see flagged used, not how it should be used.
    - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
      People who do that are supposed to lose their flagging privileges.
graderjs 5y ago
I believe it will show it, but not the flagging specifically. You can see the position (best) drop off a cliff, even while upvotes and comments keep rising for a bit. Maker, this is really really cool. Only quibble is make it easier to check out a post. Not sure how, but maybe: - Bookmarklet - Some sort of search, or bring up all posts by a user, or all posts currently on the front page. A suggestion I have is to allow a comparison chart. So be able to add multiple submissions, and compare their trends. All in all, great work!
google234123 5y ago
It would be cool to see what popular posts are flagged off the homepage.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  You can often find these by going to: https://news.ycombinator.com/active https://news.ycombinator.com/active This view of HN more heavily weights articles that generate robust discussions. I often find interesting stuff here that only briefly made it to the front page (due to flags or due to HN's "flamewar detector").

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

thih9 5y ago

Demo: https://upvotetracker.com/post/hn/27092770 https://upvotetracker.com/post/hn/27092770 . The link shows voting history of this submission. I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that it works on itself; still, I find it very cool that it does.

sm4rk0 5y ago
What happened at 7:36UTC? It dropped from second place to 16th.
- janmo 5y ago
  I believe that HN is intervening manually. They can give it a up or a down push. Perhaps I could use the data to reverse engineer what is going on behind the scenes.
  - atatatat 5y ago
    inb4 ban.

fabcomm 5y ago

This is a cool tool. Nice work. Fun to play with. Also, I think it could benefit yet another hacker trying to hack HackerNews.

walterbell 5y ago

An earlier effort: http://hnrankings.info/ http://hnrankings.info/

giansegato 5y ago

Neat! I wonder how it works. Does it poll every submission every set amount of seconds to check key stats over time? Looks like a huge amount of traffic. Is there any more efficient way I'm not seeing?

madsbuch 5y ago
I would think that it loads page one and two of new and best every minute and records submissions. That is 4 requests per minute, which isn't that bad.
- janmo 5y ago
  Currently I am doing 6 requests a minute
  - mistermann 5y ago
    I wonder, might you consider implementing something like what's asked for here? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27093483 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27093483 > Does it track things that were on the front page but were flagged? I've been looking for that. ...and... > I sort of think there should be an 'important flagged discussions' link, ones with otherwise lots of engagement that got flagged by people who were opposed to the viewpoint of the post. An example of such a post: The not-so-drastic truth behind climate change https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27097434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27097434 This article was on my frontpage, I read the 10 or so comments that were there and then forwarded it to myself as I love reading discussions about culture war topics, but when I refreshed HN immediately after reading the comments, I discovered that not only was it no longer on the front page, but it couldn't be found on any of the 17 pages provided when hitting next and searching for it. This is far from the first time I've noticed this happening with articles of this nature, and I think it would be very interesting to be able to see what ideas the HN moderators don't want the minds of their users exposed to. I think there are also several specific (and influential) subreddits that would also yield some very interesting results. Of course, you run the risk of getting your scraper blocked which would ruin your entire project...but on the other hand, if you were able to find a technical way around such blocking (I assume there are services that allow one to scrape using a large pool of ip's?) I think you could make this project significantly more interesting than it already is. Being able to see the things you are already showing is mildly interesting, but being able to see a list of particular topics that the powerful gatekeepers of information (in a very real sense, demi-gods who exert significant control over the publics' very perception of reality) do not want people to see is far more interesting, and in turn may make your service far more popular than it would be in its current form. EDIT: And it keeps getting more interesting...now the parent comment to the one I made[1] in that thread is [deleted] - not sure if that's a user invoked delete or moderator - I assume the former, as if it was a moderator I assume mine would have been toasted also. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27098186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27098186 >> Even re-production and communication should be discussed. > I think the most interesting and valuable/useful perspective to discuss this topic from (aside from "the science") is from a human psychology (which is heavily dependent on communication) perspective. Ultimately, actually doing something about climate change (regardless of what the consensus decision of that is) requires political support, and from what we've seen on that front, that seems to be the weakest link within the entire multidimensional problem. > Speaking of human psychology (and communication, and perception of reality), note how quickly moderators were able to memory hole this post - it was on my front page 10 minutes ago, and now it can no longer be found within the first 17 pages of HN. I've seen this phenomenon occur on several occasions over the years, and I don't even check HN all that often, and in each case (of the ones I've noticed) it tends to be particularly controversial topics like this one, where the perspective of the article is "controversial". Human beings (and all the clever mischievousness they get up to) are completely fascinating creatures, I can't understand why so few people find them interesting. EDIT 2: And just now does the post have a [flagged] tag, wonder why it disappeared before even being flagged.

yamrzou 5y ago

Neat, it feels fast and the charts are beautiful! T̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶s̶e̶e̶m̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶i̶s̶s̶u̶e̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶u̶p̶v̶o̶t̶e̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶o̶u̶g̶h̶:̶ ̶F̶o̶r̶ ̶e̶x̶a̶m̶p̶l̶e̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶n̶u̶m̶b̶e̶r̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶u̶p̶v̶o̶t̶e̶s̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶s̶u̶b̶m̶i̶s̶s̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶i̶t̶s̶e̶l̶f̶ ̶a̶t̶ ̶6̶:̶2̶0̶:̶0̶8̶ ̶a̶m̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶2̶9̶ ̶i̶n̶s̶t̶e̶a̶d̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶2̶ ̶(̶I̶ ̶k̶n̶o̶w̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶I̶'̶m̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶i̶m̶i̶l̶a̶r̶ ̶t̶o̶o̶l̶ ̶:̶)̶)̶.̶ Edit: I was wrong, the upvote count is correct. I thought the timezone was UTC, it would be nice if the timezone information is added to the chart.

argvargc 5y ago

This is amazing. Would you consider releasing the source? If not would you care to comment on development; language(s), dependencies etc?

spsphulse 5y ago
Yes. Fantastic project! Woul love to know more details & key architectural decisions.
- janmo 5y ago
  Perhaps I will do an article on it, I came up with some ingenious solutions.
  - spsphulse 5y ago
    Thank you! That'd be immensely helpful.

Twisell 5y ago

I am working on a similar concept as a side side project that progress way too slowly. Kudo for the nice implementation !!

19h 5y ago

Why doesn’t it find its own URL? Getting a 404 when searching for this very post.

janmo 5y ago
You must enter the HN URL. Like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27092770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27092770

quarkstaffel 5y ago

I did that for reddit in 2016. Especcially with /r/the_donald. Funny to watch the steep hill for every upvoted thread after 30 mins or so: 5 minutes of massive bot action with 2000-5000 upvotes and than flat again.

cutemonster 5y ago
If the graphs are publicly visible anywhere it'd be interesting to have a look

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]