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One thing I'm curious about, but I guess not visible in any way, is random stats about my own user/usage of the site. What's my upvote/downvote ratio? Are there

One thing I'm curious about, but I guess not visible in any way, is random stats about my own user/usage of the site. What's my upvote/downvote ratio? Are there users I constantly upvote/downvote? Who is liking/hating my comments the most? And some I guessed could be scrapable: Which days/times are I the most active (like the github green grid thingy)? How's my activity changed over the years?

minimaxir 1y ago
The only vote data that is visible via any HN API is the scores on submissions. Day/Hour activity maps for a given user are relatively trivial to do in a single query, but only public submission/comment data could be used to infer it.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  Too bad! I’ve always sort of wanted to be able to query things like what were my most upvoted and downvoted comments, how often are my comments flagged, and so on.
  - saagarjha 1y ago
    I did this once by scraping the site (very slowly, to be nice). It’s not that hard since the HTML is pretty consistent.
nottorp 1y ago
> Are there users I constantly upvote/downvote? Hmm. Personally I never look at user names when I comment on something. It's too easy to go from "i agree/disagree with this piece of info" to "i like/dislike this guy"...
- matsemann 1y ago
  Same, which is why it would be cool to see. Perhaps there are people I both upvote and downvote?
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  > It's too easy to go from "i agree/disagree with this piece of info" to "i like/dislike this guy"... ...is that supposed to pose some kind of problem? The problem would be in the other direction, surely?
  - nottorp 1y ago
    Either you got the direction wrong or you'd support someone who is wrong just because you like them. You're wrong in both cases :)
    - thaumasiotes 1y ago
      Maybe try rereading my comment?
      - nottorp 1y ago
        You're right. But I still disagree with you. Both ways are wrong if you want to maintain a constructive discussion. Maybe you don't like my opinions on cogwheel shaving but you will agree with me on quantum frobnicators. But if you first come across about my comments on cogwheel shaving and note the user name, you may not even read the comments on quantum frobnicators later.
- vidarh 1y ago
  The exception, to me, is if I'm questioning whether the comment was in good faith or not, where the trackrecord of the user on a given topic could go some way to untangle that. It happens rarely here, compared to e.g. Reddit, but sometimes it's mildly useful.
- pjc50 1y ago
  I recognize twenty or so of the most frequent and/or annoying posters. The leaderboard https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders absolutely doesn't correlate with posting frequency. Which is probably a good thing. You can't bang out good posts non-stop on every subject.
9rx 1y ago
> What's my upvote/downvote ratio? Undefined, presumably. For what reason would there be to take time out of your day to press a pointless button? It doesn't communicate anything other than that you pressed a button. For someone participating in good faith, that doesn't add any value. But those not participating in good faith, i.e. trolls, it adds incredible value knowing that their trolling is being seen. So it is actually a net negative to the community if you did somehow accidentally press one of those buttons. For those who seek fidget toys, there are better devices for that.
- saagarjha 1y ago
  If Hacker News had reactions I’d put an eye roll here.
  - 9rx 1y ago
    You could have assigned 'eye roll' to one of the arrow buttons! Nobody else would have been able to infer your intent, but if you are pressing the arrow buttons it is not like you want anyone else to understand your intent anyway.
- immibis 1y ago
  Actually, its most useful purpose is to hide opinions you disagree with - if 3 other people agree with you. Like when someone says GUIs are better than CLIs, or C++ is better than Rust, or you don't need microservices, you can just hide that inconvenient truth from the masses.
  - 9rx 1y ago
    So, what you are saying is that if the masses agree that some opinion is disagreeable, they will hide it from themselves? But they already read it to know it was disagreeable, so... What are they hiding it for, exactly? So that they don't have to read it again when they revisit the same comments 10 years later? Does anyone actually go back and reread the comments from 10 years ago?
    - 1y ago
pjc50 1y ago
I don't think you can get the individual vote interactions, and that's probably a good thing. It is irritating that the "API" won't let me get vote counts; I should go back to my Python scraper of the comments page, since that's the only way to get data on post scores. I've probably written over 50k words on here and was wondering if I could restructure my best comments into a long meta-commentary on what does well here and what I've learned about what the audience likes and dislikes. (HN does not like jokes, but you can get away with it if you also include an explanation)
xnx 1y ago
Some of this data is available through the API (and Clickhouse and BigQuery). I wrote a Puppeteer script to export my own data that isn't public (upvotes, downvotes, etc.)

minimaxir 1y ago

The only vote data that is visible via any HN API is the scores on submissions. Day/Hour activity maps for a given user are relatively trivial to do in a single query, but only public submission/comment data could be used to infer it.

ryandrake 1y ago
Too bad! I’ve always sort of wanted to be able to query things like what were my most upvoted and downvoted comments, how often are my comments flagged, and so on.
- saagarjha 1y ago
  I did this once by scraping the site (very slowly, to be nice). It’s not that hard since the HTML is pretty consistent.

nottorp 1y ago

> Are there users I constantly upvote/downvote? Hmm. Personally I never look at user names when I comment on something. It's too easy to go from "i agree/disagree with this piece of info" to "i like/dislike this guy"...

matsemann 1y ago
Same, which is why it would be cool to see. Perhaps there are people I both upvote and downvote?
thaumasiotes 1y ago
> It's too easy to go from "i agree/disagree with this piece of info" to "i like/dislike this guy"... ...is that supposed to pose some kind of problem? The problem would be in the other direction, surely?
- nottorp 1y ago
  Either you got the direction wrong or you'd support someone who is wrong just because you like them. You're wrong in both cases :)
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    Maybe try rereading my comment?
    - nottorp 1y ago
      You're right. But I still disagree with you. Both ways are wrong if you want to maintain a constructive discussion. Maybe you don't like my opinions on cogwheel shaving but you will agree with me on quantum frobnicators. But if you first come across about my comments on cogwheel shaving and note the user name, you may not even read the comments on quantum frobnicators later.
vidarh 1y ago
The exception, to me, is if I'm questioning whether the comment was in good faith or not, where the trackrecord of the user on a given topic could go some way to untangle that. It happens rarely here, compared to e.g. Reddit, but sometimes it's mildly useful.
pjc50 1y ago
I recognize twenty or so of the most frequent and/or annoying posters. The leaderboard https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders absolutely doesn't correlate with posting frequency. Which is probably a good thing. You can't bang out good posts non-stop on every subject.

9rx 1y ago

> What's my upvote/downvote ratio? Undefined, presumably. For what reason would there be to take time out of your day to press a pointless button? It doesn't communicate anything other than that you pressed a button. For someone participating in good faith, that doesn't add any value. But those not participating in good faith, i.e. trolls, it adds incredible value knowing that their trolling is being seen. So it is actually a net negative to the community if you did somehow accidentally press one of those buttons. For those who seek fidget toys, there are better devices for that.

saagarjha 1y ago
If Hacker News had reactions I’d put an eye roll here.
- 9rx 1y ago
  You could have assigned 'eye roll' to one of the arrow buttons! Nobody else would have been able to infer your intent, but if you are pressing the arrow buttons it is not like you want anyone else to understand your intent anyway.
immibis 1y ago
Actually, its most useful purpose is to hide opinions you disagree with - if 3 other people agree with you. Like when someone says GUIs are better than CLIs, or C++ is better than Rust, or you don't need microservices, you can just hide that inconvenient truth from the masses.
- 9rx 1y ago
  So, what you are saying is that if the masses agree that some opinion is disagreeable, they will hide it from themselves? But they already read it to know it was disagreeable, so... What are they hiding it for, exactly? So that they don't have to read it again when they revisit the same comments 10 years later? Does anyone actually go back and reread the comments from 10 years ago?
  - 1y ago

pjc50 1y ago

I don't think you can get the individual vote interactions, and that's probably a good thing. It is irritating that the "API" won't let me get vote counts; I should go back to my Python scraper of the comments page, since that's the only way to get data on post scores. I've probably written over 50k words on here and was wondering if I could restructure my best comments into a long meta-commentary on what does well here and what I've learned about what the audience likes and dislikes. (HN does not like jokes, but you can get away with it if you also include an explanation)

xnx 1y ago

Some of this data is available through the API (and Clickhouse and BigQuery). I wrote a Puppeteer script to export my own data that isn't public (upvotes, downvotes, etc.)