7 ms·

Hacker News Rankings. Graphs of HN posts rank on timeline

126 points by nuker 3y ago

nuker 3y ago
Have a look at my post about Smoking scenes on Netflix TV shows. It is wild :)) https://hnrankings.info/39786855/ https://hnrankings.info/39786855/
- stareatgoats 3y ago
  Sounds like you think it's an unusual curve, but it's not really. Once a post hits the front page it attracts the attention of users, or moderators, that might flag a post. Multiple flags demotes a post. Maybe because they don't think it's interesting enough, it has a clickbaity title, is ragebait, the discussion has descended into flame war, or for a variety of other reasons. The post then drops sharply. It happens fairly frequently, and might perhaps happen to this one too, because it could attract shallow, bordering on paranoid, discussions about the moderation of the site.
  - nuker 3y ago
    > Sounds like you think it's an unusual curve, but it's not really. I know you are correct. But I also smell Big Tobacco conspiracy, not with HN, but with Netflix. Where can I see number of flaggings?
    - stareatgoats 3y ago
      > Where can I see number of flaggings? It's not revealed in the UI anywhere AFAIC
      - nuker 3y ago
        Why do you think HN does not expose flaggings data?
        defrost 3y ago
        Largely because those that would find it of most use are looking to sidestep being flagged. eg: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Ranmalie https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Ranmalie ( You'll need Showdead: ON in user options to see most of those comments, they're flagged, dead, and spamming a dodgy cryto scheme )
        nuker 3y ago
        Yes, but it also hurts transparency, being treated fair and expose any foul play. I think full transparency, who flagged what and when, as a dataset, will be beneficial. HN became important source of truth, there is not many like it. Or drop flagging as a feature completely. Looks easier :)
        pvg 3y ago
        HN became important source of truth Treating HN this way is a misunderstanding of its goals and would make HN much worse. 'nerd messageboard with less yelly conversation' is about as good as one can hope for the actual aspirational goal of 'place for curious conversation'.
- aprxi 3y ago
  Mine got a pretty similar ride: https://hnrankings.info/39741565/ https://hnrankings.info/39741565/
  - pvg 3y ago
    Probably because listy stuff doesn't work well as an HN post: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20lists%20don%27t%20make&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- sph 3y ago
  Yeah it might be what I shared on a sibling comment: HN hates posts with comments > upvotes. When that threshold is crossed, HN flags it as controversial topic and deranks it. Or maybe it's been manually flagged, so who knows.
- pvg 3y ago
  It's an undated post of a two year old blogspammy summary thing of a single study by an advocacy group. As HN submission quality goes, it's not very high so if you are interested in having the topic discussed, you probably need to find some more interesting material.
nuker 3y ago
Rankings of this very post: https://hnrankings.info/39787932/ https://hnrankings.info/39787932/
- nuker 3y ago
  We just hit the front page :)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Anon4Now 3y ago
You might want to display the timezone below the x axis.
- nuker 3y ago
  Not my website :) But I'm aware that you need to post when it is 10am in NY. I'm down under, and my timing sucks lol
max_sendfeld 3y ago
What's the reason behind the sudden, violent drop off from the front page for a few posts? They seem to be on a fairly linear trajectory and then go down by 30+ positions within a 10 min window.
- sillysaurusx 3y ago
  HN has worked this way for over a decade. It’s a combination of user flags, flamewar detector, and manual moderator classification. The goal is to have a front page that consistently surprises or delights anyone bookish. So the stories that get bumped tend to be ones that do the opposite.
  - Solvency 3y ago
    The front page turnover is not that high. Moderator selectivism runs rampant here and it's easy to see patterns of favoritism/bias over the years.
    - lolinder 3y ago
      I think you underestimate the number of flags from users and overestimate the amount of direct moderator intervention. There have been countless times where I've been the flag that tips a comment or a post over into the dead (or for posts, deranked) territory. I flag comments that are rude, abusive, or deliberately filled with misinformation. I flag posts that are likely to start flame wars, that are highly off topic, or that are clearly low-effort blogspam marketing with no valuable content. If any of that sounds subjective to you, that's because it is. Most of the favoritism and bias you observe can be attributed to users like me who have an idea of what the HN culture should be and subjectively flag things that don't fit.
      - sillysaurusx 3y ago
        It’s the other way around, I think. We probably underestimate the amount of direct moderator intervention, both for stories and comments. It’s their full time job. Ask yourself: what do you think Dan’s team does all day, every day, if not make decisions that influence the site? His comments are all that are publicly visible, so most people assume he just writes comments — an assumption as far from the truth as can be. And most people have no idea that there are even other members of the team, let alone know what they do. This is by design. HN works best when people are focused on the content, not the site. It’s one of the most influential newspapers in the world, precisely because it focuses on the content. And you’d be kidding yourself if you feel they don’t decide which stories should stay on the front page, every day, a dozen times. Again, it’s their whole job. Note that them seeing a story and allowing it to stay is also a choice, even though it’s implicit. So them doing nothing because they chose to let a story stay is not the same thing as them doing nothing because the community chose to put it there. Frankly, you wouldn’t want to visit HN if it was community run, because the community is terrible about choosing which stories should be on the front page. This has been proven true for over a decade, and the main reason Dan doesn’t come out and say so is because it’s one of those things that shouldn’t be said out loud. There’s no reason to call attention to how utterly awful the majority of users’ decisions are about what should be on the front page. Remember, millions of people visit the site now. You wouldn’t want that many people to try to decide. The voting system is an indicator to the mods of potential community interest, but it’s ultimately up to the editors what stays and what goes. People call this favoritism or censorship or other frankly silly terms, but there’s nothing sinister about it. The way onto the front page is simple: make something that someone bookish would find interesting or surprising. The "surprising" criteria is the trickiest part, because it covers what most people mean by "newsworthy" (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39778999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39778999). But HN has a particular kind of newsworthiness that filters out the majority of stories that the majority of users want to put on the front page. It’s a tricky subject, and it’s long past time someone should write an essay to explain it all. I’m not quite sure how to do that without angering the community xor mods, but it would be interesting if it were possible. One reason this idea appeals to me is because I’d like to at least thank all of the dozens of people who help run HN behind the scenes; they rarely get any kind of recognition, because they don’t need it, let alone want it. But that makes them worth thanking all the more.
sillysaurusx 3y ago
Love the site; been using it for as long as I can remember. Wish it also tracked votes and comment count over time in addition to position.
ecuaflo 3y ago
How do you get the historical data?
- zX41ZdbW 3y ago
  I did a similar thing recently: https://twitter.com/tbragin/status/1749580473800556779 https://twitter.com/tbragin/status/1749580473800556779 And it is entirely trivial: ITEMS=$(clickhouse-local --query "SELECT arrayStringConcat(items, ',') FROM url('https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/updates.json')") clickhouse-client --query " INSERT INTO hackernews_changes_items SELECT * FROM url('https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/{$ITEMS}.json')
keepamovin 3y ago
This is cool. Really want to be able to scroll horizontally with the mouse.
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
aronhegedus 3y ago
Cool site!
fakecontent000 3y ago
[dead]
hubraumhugo 3y ago
Nice, lots of cool stuff to do with HN data. I've recently started analyzing and categorizing all front-page posts with a simple LLM workflow. The result is an interactive chart that displays the trending topics across different time frames: https://www.kadoa.com/hacksnack/trending https://www.kadoa.com/hacksnack/trending
smusamashah 3y ago
Made a userscript recently to show change in rank on stories on the front pages https://gist.github.com/SMUsamaShah/e7c9ed3936ba69e522f8cb38671f1da7 https://gist.github.com/SMUsamaShah/e7c9ed3936ba69e522f8cb38... I use it mainly to check out new stories which are highlighted by prepending (NEW). Using this I noticed sometimes stories go down and disappear quickly, sometimes stories stay on the page for a noticably very long time. This websites proves that and lays that out clearly in a chart.
neilv 3y ago
This is great. Small feedback: the colors that work nicely for the chart lines on black aren't as legible on my screen when that same color is used on white for the title in the mouseover bubble.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
ahstilde 3y ago
there's something like this for product hunt too. i can't find the site.
s2l 3y ago
I did a project with kids to visualize similar information in grafana. https://salmanzg.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/image-1.png https://salmanzg.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/image-1.png The shell scripts are still alive collecting data for past couple of months and there are interesting "interest" patterns. That's how I decide which stories I should not miss.
purplezooey 3y ago
Cool, what's the software stack in use here?
- password4321 3y ago
  I am interested in this as well from a cost perspective since this is one of a handful of HN-related sites that has lasted longer than a domain renewal year.

126 points by nuker 3y ago

Have a look at my post about Smoking scenes on Netflix TV shows. It is wild :)) https://hnrankings.info/39786855/ https://hnrankings.info/39786855/

stareatgoats 3y ago
Sounds like you think it's an unusual curve, but it's not really. Once a post hits the front page it attracts the attention of users, or moderators, that might flag a post. Multiple flags demotes a post. Maybe because they don't think it's interesting enough, it has a clickbaity title, is ragebait, the discussion has descended into flame war, or for a variety of other reasons. The post then drops sharply. It happens fairly frequently, and might perhaps happen to this one too, because it could attract shallow, bordering on paranoid, discussions about the moderation of the site.
- nuker 3y ago
  > Sounds like you think it's an unusual curve, but it's not really. I know you are correct. But I also smell Big Tobacco conspiracy, not with HN, but with Netflix. Where can I see number of flaggings?
  - stareatgoats 3y ago
    > Where can I see number of flaggings? It's not revealed in the UI anywhere AFAIC
    - nuker 3y ago
      Why do you think HN does not expose flaggings data?
      - defrost 3y ago
        Largely because those that would find it of most use are looking to sidestep being flagged. eg: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Ranmalie https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Ranmalie ( You'll need Showdead: ON in user options to see most of those comments, they're flagged, dead, and spamming a dodgy cryto scheme )
        nuker 3y ago
        Yes, but it also hurts transparency, being treated fair and expose any foul play. I think full transparency, who flagged what and when, as a dataset, will be beneficial. HN became important source of truth, there is not many like it. Or drop flagging as a feature completely. Looks easier :)
        pvg 3y ago
        HN became important source of truth Treating HN this way is a misunderstanding of its goals and would make HN much worse. 'nerd messageboard with less yelly conversation' is about as good as one can hope for the actual aspirational goal of 'place for curious conversation'.
aprxi 3y ago
Mine got a pretty similar ride: https://hnrankings.info/39741565/ https://hnrankings.info/39741565/
- pvg 3y ago
  Probably because listy stuff doesn't work well as an HN post: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20lists%20don%27t%20make&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sph 3y ago
Yeah it might be what I shared on a sibling comment: HN hates posts with comments > upvotes. When that threshold is crossed, HN flags it as controversial topic and deranks it. Or maybe it's been manually flagged, so who knows.
pvg 3y ago
It's an undated post of a two year old blogspammy summary thing of a single study by an advocacy group. As HN submission quality goes, it's not very high so if you are interested in having the topic discussed, you probably need to find some more interesting material.

nuker 3y ago

Rankings of this very post: https://hnrankings.info/39787932/ https://hnrankings.info/39787932/

nuker 3y ago
We just hit the front page :)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Anon4Now 3y ago

You might want to display the timezone below the x axis.

nuker 3y ago
Not my website :) But I'm aware that you need to post when it is 10am in NY. I'm down under, and my timing sucks lol

max_sendfeld 3y ago

What's the reason behind the sudden, violent drop off from the front page for a few posts? They seem to be on a fairly linear trajectory and then go down by 30+ positions within a 10 min window.

sillysaurusx 3y ago
HN has worked this way for over a decade. It’s a combination of user flags, flamewar detector, and manual moderator classification. The goal is to have a front page that consistently surprises or delights anyone bookish. So the stories that get bumped tend to be ones that do the opposite.
- Solvency 3y ago
  The front page turnover is not that high. Moderator selectivism runs rampant here and it's easy to see patterns of favoritism/bias over the years.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    I think you underestimate the number of flags from users and overestimate the amount of direct moderator intervention. There have been countless times where I've been the flag that tips a comment or a post over into the dead (or for posts, deranked) territory. I flag comments that are rude, abusive, or deliberately filled with misinformation. I flag posts that are likely to start flame wars, that are highly off topic, or that are clearly low-effort blogspam marketing with no valuable content. If any of that sounds subjective to you, that's because it is. Most of the favoritism and bias you observe can be attributed to users like me who have an idea of what the HN culture should be and subjectively flag things that don't fit.
    - sillysaurusx 3y ago
      It’s the other way around, I think. We probably underestimate the amount of direct moderator intervention, both for stories and comments. It’s their full time job. Ask yourself: what do you think Dan’s team does all day, every day, if not make decisions that influence the site? His comments are all that are publicly visible, so most people assume he just writes comments — an assumption as far from the truth as can be. And most people have no idea that there are even other members of the team, let alone know what they do. This is by design. HN works best when people are focused on the content, not the site. It’s one of the most influential newspapers in the world, precisely because it focuses on the content. And you’d be kidding yourself if you feel they don’t decide which stories should stay on the front page, every day, a dozen times. Again, it’s their whole job. Note that them seeing a story and allowing it to stay is also a choice, even though it’s implicit. So them doing nothing because they chose to let a story stay is not the same thing as them doing nothing because the community chose to put it there. Frankly, you wouldn’t want to visit HN if it was community run, because the community is terrible about choosing which stories should be on the front page. This has been proven true for over a decade, and the main reason Dan doesn’t come out and say so is because it’s one of those things that shouldn’t be said out loud. There’s no reason to call attention to how utterly awful the majority of users’ decisions are about what should be on the front page. Remember, millions of people visit the site now. You wouldn’t want that many people to try to decide. The voting system is an indicator to the mods of potential community interest, but it’s ultimately up to the editors what stays and what goes. People call this favoritism or censorship or other frankly silly terms, but there’s nothing sinister about it. The way onto the front page is simple: make something that someone bookish would find interesting or surprising. The "surprising" criteria is the trickiest part, because it covers what most people mean by "newsworthy" (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39778999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39778999). But HN has a particular kind of newsworthiness that filters out the majority of stories that the majority of users want to put on the front page. It’s a tricky subject, and it’s long past time someone should write an essay to explain it all. I’m not quite sure how to do that without angering the community xor mods, but it would be interesting if it were possible. One reason this idea appeals to me is because I’d like to at least thank all of the dozens of people who help run HN behind the scenes; they rarely get any kind of recognition, because they don’t need it, let alone want it. But that makes them worth thanking all the more.

sillysaurusx 3y ago

Love the site; been using it for as long as I can remember. Wish it also tracked votes and comment count over time in addition to position.

ecuaflo 3y ago

How do you get the historical data?

zX41ZdbW 3y ago
I did a similar thing recently: https://twitter.com/tbragin/status/1749580473800556779 https://twitter.com/tbragin/status/1749580473800556779 And it is entirely trivial: ITEMS=$(clickhouse-local --query "SELECT arrayStringConcat(items, ',') FROM url('https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/updates.json')") clickhouse-client --query " INSERT INTO hackernews_changes_items SELECT * FROM url('https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/{$ITEMS}.json')

keepamovin 3y ago

This is cool. Really want to be able to scroll horizontally with the mouse.

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

aronhegedus 3y ago

Cool site!

fakecontent000 3y ago

[dead]

hubraumhugo 3y ago

Nice, lots of cool stuff to do with HN data. I've recently started analyzing and categorizing all front-page posts with a simple LLM workflow. The result is an interactive chart that displays the trending topics across different time frames: https://www.kadoa.com/hacksnack/trending https://www.kadoa.com/hacksnack/trending

smusamashah 3y ago

Made a userscript recently to show change in rank on stories on the front pages https://gist.github.com/SMUsamaShah/e7c9ed3936ba69e522f8cb38671f1da7 https://gist.github.com/SMUsamaShah/e7c9ed3936ba69e522f8cb38... I use it mainly to check out new stories which are highlighted by prepending (NEW). Using this I noticed sometimes stories go down and disappear quickly, sometimes stories stay on the page for a noticably very long time. This websites proves that and lays that out clearly in a chart.

neilv 3y ago

This is great. Small feedback: the colors that work nicely for the chart lines on black aren't as legible on my screen when that same color is used on white for the title in the mouseover bubble.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

ahstilde 3y ago

there's something like this for product hunt too. i can't find the site.

s2l 3y ago

I did a project with kids to visualize similar information in grafana. https://salmanzg.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/image-1.png https://salmanzg.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/image-1.png The shell scripts are still alive collecting data for past couple of months and there are interesting "interest" patterns. That's how I decide which stories I should not miss.

purplezooey 3y ago

Cool, what's the software stack in use here?

password4321 3y ago
I am interested in this as well from a cost perspective since this is one of a handful of HN-related sites that has lasted longer than a domain renewal year.