3 ms·

Either this has a cutoff of a few weeks (likely, since I've seen higher-rated comments than the ones here), or HN suffers from insane inflation.

projectileboy 17y ago
It's the latter. A comment with 30 points, say, a year ago would have been very unusual, but now that's a pretty typical score for the highest-rated comment of any link in the current top 10. Unfortunately, this seems to coincide with HN following the same trajectory as early Reddit, and that makes me sad.
- noodle 17y ago
  no, i've had some comments in the past that "should" be on that list that aren't. in fact, i see some comments in my thread history that should be on this list that aren't. edit: i don't see anything older than 9 days. maybe a 10 day or 2 week maximum?
- misterbwong 17y ago
  While I do share your sentiment fearing that the community will change, I don't think that the karma totals are really a good gauge of content/comment quality on HN. Just because more people are here to upvote does not mean the comment is of lesser quality than before (the opposite is also true...) A quick fix to this could be a sort of weighted comment score. Maybe the karma points / by the number of karma points added that day to give an idea of scale in comparison to the overall size of community. I'm sure others could come up with something more precise, but it's a start.
  - projectileboy 17y ago
    I agree that it's a lousy gauge, but it does seem to serve as a rough barometer, indicating bad weather.
- zimbabwe 17y ago
  I agree, but I've had comments that were in the eighties and I think one topped a hundred, and they don't show up here.
- Timothee 17y ago
  By the same token, it seems to me that the ratio "story upvotes"/"number of comments" has gone higher and higher recently. I'm not sure what it says about HN though. I might not necessarily be a bad thing actually. I'm not really for having a flood of comments on all the stories.
- krakensden 17y ago
  That's something slashdot got right- capping comment scores. There's really no need to give something 128 upvotes, it's just a pileon.
  - skorgu 17y ago
    I don't like capping, sometimes there are truly exceptional comments that deserve 99.9%ile rankings. What about some form of logarithmic decay? Perhaps the first upvote should not be worth the same as the 101st.
nixme 17y ago
The list definitely has a cutoff. Other lists are available at http://news.ycombinator.org/lists http://news.ycombinator.org/lists
qeorge 17y ago
I'd assume it works on the same algorithm as the home page and normal comment pages. Something of the form: points / (timeSinceEpoch^2) After a certain time the number of points needed to override the denominator is unattainable, no matter how popular the comment was. As a result, the comments on the top of this list should be both popular and recent.

projectileboy 17y ago

It's the latter. A comment with 30 points, say, a year ago would have been very unusual, but now that's a pretty typical score for the highest-rated comment of any link in the current top 10. Unfortunately, this seems to coincide with HN following the same trajectory as early Reddit, and that makes me sad.

noodle 17y ago
no, i've had some comments in the past that "should" be on that list that aren't. in fact, i see some comments in my thread history that should be on this list that aren't. edit: i don't see anything older than 9 days. maybe a 10 day or 2 week maximum?
misterbwong 17y ago
While I do share your sentiment fearing that the community will change, I don't think that the karma totals are really a good gauge of content/comment quality on HN. Just because more people are here to upvote does not mean the comment is of lesser quality than before (the opposite is also true...) A quick fix to this could be a sort of weighted comment score. Maybe the karma points / by the number of karma points added that day to give an idea of scale in comparison to the overall size of community. I'm sure others could come up with something more precise, but it's a start.
- projectileboy 17y ago
  I agree that it's a lousy gauge, but it does seem to serve as a rough barometer, indicating bad weather.
zimbabwe 17y ago
I agree, but I've had comments that were in the eighties and I think one topped a hundred, and they don't show up here.
Timothee 17y ago
By the same token, it seems to me that the ratio "story upvotes"/"number of comments" has gone higher and higher recently. I'm not sure what it says about HN though. I might not necessarily be a bad thing actually. I'm not really for having a flood of comments on all the stories.
krakensden 17y ago
That's something slashdot got right- capping comment scores. There's really no need to give something 128 upvotes, it's just a pileon.
- skorgu 17y ago
  I don't like capping, sometimes there are truly exceptional comments that deserve 99.9%ile rankings. What about some form of logarithmic decay? Perhaps the first upvote should not be worth the same as the 101st.

nixme 17y ago

The list definitely has a cutoff. Other lists are available at http://news.ycombinator.org/lists http://news.ycombinator.org/lists

qeorge 17y ago

I'd assume it works on the same algorithm as the home page and normal comment pages. Something of the form: points / (timeSinceEpoch^2) After a certain time the number of points needed to override the denominator is unattainable, no matter how popular the comment was. As a result, the comments on the top of this list should be both popular and recent.