I think rankings in other sports might be more fun if they worked more like HN rankings. Baseball fans do a lot of that. It's kind of what baseball statistics a

I think rankings in other sports might be more fun if they worked more like HN rankings. Baseball fans do a lot of that. It's kind of what baseball statistics are all about: The player in front of you is not just competing with himself, and the other players on the field, and the other players in the league. In a sense, he's competing with Lou Gehrig. Of course, the reason to avoid putting dead players in the rankings is that the people who prefer watching competitions between living players -- i.e. the majority of fans -- don't want the dead ones cluttering up their leaderboard. But this is the web, not TV, so the solution is simple: Multiple leaderboards. Create a version of the HN leaderboard that only counts the past 52 weeks. Put it up at some URL or other. Then people can decide to use the alternative leaderboard if they want. Heck, if we want, we can allow every reader to create his or her own leaderboard algorithm. Then we can have big chair-throwing debates about which leaderboard best represents the True State of Play on HN. That is exactly how the world of baseball statistics works. ;)