3 ms·

Ask NickB: How do you do it, dude?

52 points by iamelgringo 19y ago

You're all over the place. Your current karma is over 8000. How much time do you spend submitting links, etc...? Any tips or tricks? By the way, thanks for the hard work in making the site better.

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
brk 19y ago
NickB is not real, he is my bot (just kidding)
joeguilmette 19y ago
it's all those xkcd submissions :X
eVizitei 19y ago
I guess the links must be the money-maker, they tend to get more points then the comments.
mynameishere 19y ago
Step 1: Attribute value to Karma etc.
- theoneill 19y ago
  Almost everyone values the opinion of their peers, and that is what karma measures (or tries to).
  - mynameishere 19y ago
    I don't see much correspondence between quality and upmods. Exhibit A: This current "submission" is at #1. Why? Who is upmodding it and why do they think it is a valuable or even sensible question? nickb "does it" by submitting and commenting a lot...too much, really. There's usually something wrong with outliers. I'm on the "leaders" link, but I know perfectly well that plenty of my comments would have had me banned from any real world settings...and that includes comments that got upmodded.
    - cperciva 19y ago
      nickb "does it" by submitting and commenting a lot...too much, really I don't see any problem with submitting lots of stories as long as they're of a reasonable quality. Unfortunately the fact that stories can't be voted down means that there's no penalty (at least as far as karma is concerned) for flooding the site with submissions. While I don't think nickb falls into this category, there are certainly other people who are making (IMHO) excessive numbers of submissions without significant merit. Ironically, a few hours ago I posted a suggestion for dealing with this problem (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99846 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99846): Make submitting a story cost a few points of karma, so that submissions only result in a net gain in karma if the submissions get voted up.
      - edw519 19y ago
        "Make submitting a story cost a few points of karma, so that submissions only result in a net gain in karma if the submissions get voted up." Interesting approach. My own experience tells me that I have absolutely no idea whatsoever how well a submission will do. Sometimes I submit something I find especially profound and helpful, and no one else ever votes or comments. Other times, I see something of passing interest, and it goes wild. Of course, there is always the "Old Faithful List": Facebook, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, pg, Google, or anything professing a like/dislike of a language.
      - pius 19y ago
        I guess it all depends on how you view the site. I view it the way I view Delicious . . . I'm using it primarily for social bookmarking (except that I make sure I only submit items that are of "hacker interest"). If others find my bookmarks meritorious, that's nice. If not, that's fine too. Either way, the cream will rise to the top for the most part.
    - pg 19y ago
      Who is upmodding it and why do they think it is a valuable or even sensible question? I upmodded it because I can see that, while grammatically a question, its real purpose is to thank Nickb, and I think he deserves it. There are plenty of situations where being an outlier is not a bad sign, and reputation in a (nonlame) community is one of them.
- Prrometheus 19y ago
  When you come back as a walrus, you'll be sorry.
  - mynameishere 19y ago
    I'm going straight to hell.
- yters 19y ago
  It has inherent social value - it influences the way people interact. I'd say it's analogous to any other measurement of social status. So, when I see someone with high karma, I know they epitomize the ideals of the largest*most active group in a society.
cperciva 19y ago
FWIW, in the past 5 days, nickb has gained 150 points of karma from submissions, and 25 points of karma from comments; so clearly it's primarily the submissions which are putting him so far "ahead of the pack". Interestingly, in the same 5 days, nickb has submitted 37 stories -- an average of score of just over 5 points each -- which places ranks him highly not only in volume of submissions but also in quality.
- gibsonf1 19y ago
  Nickb clearly has some clever software working for him :)
- nickb 19y ago
  What did you use to track this down? Did you do it manually? And yes, just like with a lot of other things, it's about quality and not quantity of submissions. The interest of users of this site is pretty clear so if you submit links that are meaningful to them, there's a good chance you'll get upmoded. But as I said, I don't really care about karma... I get nothing for it anyway :). I view submitting stuff here as a thanks to others that do the same. I can't even begin to express the thanks to others that have introduced me to so many different concepts that have cut down our development time by months.
kirubakaran 19y ago
Yeah seriously! I recently got into the leader board which gave me a good feeling, although I know I shouldn't be feeling that. But even with my low score, I feel like I am Karma Slutting sometimes (I prefer that to the term Karma Whoring).
tx 19y ago
Ever heard of custom burned RSS feeds and an alarm clock?
edw519 19y ago
Can you downmod a submission? I don't see how. If not, then submitting is a good strategy to get karma. You can't lose any. Engaging in a debate, OTOH, is another issue. Doesn't matter who's right, what you've done, or what you know. If someone else disagrees with you and doesn't feel like saying why, they just click the down arrow. "Anonymous Coward Downmodders". I could earn 50 points by posting the cure for cancer in one post and lose it all by saying I hate <Ruby, Facebook, Lisp, whatever> everywhere else. So, to be safe, keep submitting, don't insult anyone, and never say anything controversial. But what fun would that be? (Geez, I hope nobody disagrees with this.)
- pg 19y ago
  There are consequences if you spam the site with huge numbers of crappy links; they're just not so visible.
- edu 19y ago
  What the heck? What happens if you lose some karma? If you want to insult somebody (and it's related to the context), do it!
  - rms 19y ago
    Maybe you won't get to 250 points and will be stuck with orange as your top color forever!
- curi 19y ago
  I mostly post controversial comments. This is obviously not the ideal way to get high karma, but I'm not very active and have 188 karma anyway, so it seems to work fine.
nickb 19y ago
Wow.. a thread about me? I guess I should feel honored :) A word about myself so you can see where I'm coming from... I'm currently part of a startup. We're working feverishly on a product that I feel might get some heavy competition in 6-12 months. I've seen one or two products that sort of come close to the area we're approaching but they haven't really hit the bulls-eye. The pace at which we're working is not for the faint of heart and I work about 12-13 hrs every day. The team has about 4 people so far (+2 part time) and I'm the lead. This is my third startup (1st time as a lead) so I've seen things from many different angles. I've experienced a startup that skyrocketed and one that failed and also one that's doing moderately well. So yes, I've seen what works and what doesn't. We're completely self funded at this point (myself and my co-founder put some cash into the company) but we might go out and raise some money 6 months from now or so. We have never applied for YC... we're probably too late and too big for YC. Now, after reading that description, you will understand what my interests are and why I like this site so much. I'm primarily concerned with methods, ways, advice of how to work using agile methods and how to develop webapps fast. We use RoR, some Java, some Python, some Flash and a lot of JavaScript. Personally, I'm a huge fan of functional languages (Lisp & Erlang) so you will see a lot of submissions from me on those topics as well. I am also _extremely_ interested in various distribution methods (viral, word of mouth, SEO/SEM) so you will see me submit a lot of links like that. Now, how exactly do I track news. Well, I use an RSS reader (NetNewsWire, grab it, it's free now) to gather my news and the only news website that I actually open inside a browser is Hacker News. I check RSS feeds about 3-4 times a day (usually during breaks and when I need to clear my head) and I use a YCN bookmarklet to submit (http://ycombinator.com/bookmarklet.html http://ycombinator.com/bookmarklet.html). It literally takes a second to submit using that handy little piece of JS code. I track about 150 feeds. Majority of them are about programming and technology. But I also track a lot of marketing, business and startup-related legal blogs. I dislike heavy volume blogs since they post a lot of fluff and a lot of it is boring to me at this point. So, whenever I find something that's interesting to me, I post it here. Over the past six months, I found a lot of interesting blogs linked here so I doubt you're missing much if you just track HN's "new" section. Submissions that are not strictly news are usually best links on the topic that I was researching. For example, after I did some research on recommendation systems, I posted a few links that were helpful to myself. I also use HN as a crude delicious. I also enjoy commenting on HN because people who frequent this site tend to be smarter than people on other sites and they tend to be in the same situation as myself: fighting time and working on something and looking for ways to make their product successful and better. Signal to noise ratio (SNR) on HN is also quite high. I was afraid that it would fall after pg rebranded and expanded the focus of the site but that has not happened yet (lucky for us!) I like to read a lot and I read very quickly so you'd be surprised how little time I actually spend reading stuff on the web. I try to read a book a week as well. Quick tip... check out the "new" section and give a mod point to articles you like. Most of the articles get "hot" after they reach the front page but a lot of quality articles never reach it. When you've identified people who have similar interests as yourself, keep track of their submissions. I keep track of submissions of 3 people here and I upmod their stories quite often since they interest me. For example, this is my submission queue: http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=nickb http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=nickb And finally, reward people who post to your threads by moding them up :). Has this made any difference to my rep? Probably not but I like spreading karma. PS: My HN specific email's in my profile. Feel free to ask personal questions offline.
jsmcgd 19y ago
I thought of posting a similar question before because you seemed to be responsible for 1 in 6 of everything that happens on the site. I'm surprised to hear you actually get other stuff done. For a while I was starting to suspect you might be a professional Hacker News researcher!

52 points by iamelgringo 19y ago

You're all over the place. Your current karma is over 8000. How much time do you spend submitting links, etc...? Any tips or tricks? By the way, thanks for the hard work in making the site better.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

brk 19y ago

NickB is not real, he is my bot (just kidding)

joeguilmette 19y ago

it's all those xkcd submissions :X

eVizitei 19y ago

I guess the links must be the money-maker, they tend to get more points then the comments.

mynameishere 19y ago

Step 1: Attribute value to Karma etc.

theoneill 19y ago
Almost everyone values the opinion of their peers, and that is what karma measures (or tries to).
- mynameishere 19y ago
  I don't see much correspondence between quality and upmods. Exhibit A: This current "submission" is at #1. Why? Who is upmodding it and why do they think it is a valuable or even sensible question? nickb "does it" by submitting and commenting a lot...too much, really. There's usually something wrong with outliers. I'm on the "leaders" link, but I know perfectly well that plenty of my comments would have had me banned from any real world settings...and that includes comments that got upmodded.
  - cperciva 19y ago
    nickb "does it" by submitting and commenting a lot...too much, really I don't see any problem with submitting lots of stories as long as they're of a reasonable quality. Unfortunately the fact that stories can't be voted down means that there's no penalty (at least as far as karma is concerned) for flooding the site with submissions. While I don't think nickb falls into this category, there are certainly other people who are making (IMHO) excessive numbers of submissions without significant merit. Ironically, a few hours ago I posted a suggestion for dealing with this problem (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99846 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99846): Make submitting a story cost a few points of karma, so that submissions only result in a net gain in karma if the submissions get voted up.
    - edw519 19y ago
      "Make submitting a story cost a few points of karma, so that submissions only result in a net gain in karma if the submissions get voted up." Interesting approach. My own experience tells me that I have absolutely no idea whatsoever how well a submission will do. Sometimes I submit something I find especially profound and helpful, and no one else ever votes or comments. Other times, I see something of passing interest, and it goes wild. Of course, there is always the "Old Faithful List": Facebook, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, pg, Google, or anything professing a like/dislike of a language.
    - pius 19y ago
      I guess it all depends on how you view the site. I view it the way I view Delicious . . . I'm using it primarily for social bookmarking (except that I make sure I only submit items that are of "hacker interest"). If others find my bookmarks meritorious, that's nice. If not, that's fine too. Either way, the cream will rise to the top for the most part.
  - pg 19y ago
    Who is upmodding it and why do they think it is a valuable or even sensible question? I upmodded it because I can see that, while grammatically a question, its real purpose is to thank Nickb, and I think he deserves it. There are plenty of situations where being an outlier is not a bad sign, and reputation in a (nonlame) community is one of them.
Prrometheus 19y ago
When you come back as a walrus, you'll be sorry.
- mynameishere 19y ago
  I'm going straight to hell.
yters 19y ago
It has inherent social value - it influences the way people interact. I'd say it's analogous to any other measurement of social status. So, when I see someone with high karma, I know they epitomize the ideals of the largest*most active group in a society.

cperciva 19y ago

FWIW, in the past 5 days, nickb has gained 150 points of karma from submissions, and 25 points of karma from comments; so clearly it's primarily the submissions which are putting him so far "ahead of the pack". Interestingly, in the same 5 days, nickb has submitted 37 stories -- an average of score of just over 5 points each -- which places ranks him highly not only in volume of submissions but also in quality.

gibsonf1 19y ago
Nickb clearly has some clever software working for him :)
nickb 19y ago
What did you use to track this down? Did you do it manually? And yes, just like with a lot of other things, it's about quality and not quantity of submissions. The interest of users of this site is pretty clear so if you submit links that are meaningful to them, there's a good chance you'll get upmoded. But as I said, I don't really care about karma... I get nothing for it anyway :). I view submitting stuff here as a thanks to others that do the same. I can't even begin to express the thanks to others that have introduced me to so many different concepts that have cut down our development time by months.

kirubakaran 19y ago

Yeah seriously! I recently got into the leader board which gave me a good feeling, although I know I shouldn't be feeling that. But even with my low score, I feel like I am Karma Slutting sometimes (I prefer that to the term Karma Whoring).

tx 19y ago

Ever heard of custom burned RSS feeds and an alarm clock?

edw519 19y ago

Can you downmod a submission? I don't see how. If not, then submitting is a good strategy to get karma. You can't lose any. Engaging in a debate, OTOH, is another issue. Doesn't matter who's right, what you've done, or what you know. If someone else disagrees with you and doesn't feel like saying why, they just click the down arrow. "Anonymous Coward Downmodders". I could earn 50 points by posting the cure for cancer in one post and lose it all by saying I hate <Ruby, Facebook, Lisp, whatever> everywhere else. So, to be safe, keep submitting, don't insult anyone, and never say anything controversial. But what fun would that be? (Geez, I hope nobody disagrees with this.)

pg 19y ago
There are consequences if you spam the site with huge numbers of crappy links; they're just not so visible.
edu 19y ago
What the heck? What happens if you lose some karma? If you want to insult somebody (and it's related to the context), do it!
- rms 19y ago
  Maybe you won't get to 250 points and will be stuck with orange as your top color forever!
curi 19y ago
I mostly post controversial comments. This is obviously not the ideal way to get high karma, but I'm not very active and have 188 karma anyway, so it seems to work fine.

nickb 19y ago

Wow.. a thread about me? I guess I should feel honored :) A word about myself so you can see where I'm coming from... I'm currently part of a startup. We're working feverishly on a product that I feel might get some heavy competition in 6-12 months. I've seen one or two products that sort of come close to the area we're approaching but they haven't really hit the bulls-eye. The pace at which we're working is not for the faint of heart and I work about 12-13 hrs every day. The team has about 4 people so far (+2 part time) and I'm the lead. This is my third startup (1st time as a lead) so I've seen things from many different angles. I've experienced a startup that skyrocketed and one that failed and also one that's doing moderately well. So yes, I've seen what works and what doesn't. We're completely self funded at this point (myself and my co-founder put some cash into the company) but we might go out and raise some money 6 months from now or so. We have never applied for YC... we're probably too late and too big for YC. Now, after reading that description, you will understand what my interests are and why I like this site so much. I'm primarily concerned with methods, ways, advice of how to work using agile methods and how to develop webapps fast. We use RoR, some Java, some Python, some Flash and a lot of JavaScript. Personally, I'm a huge fan of functional languages (Lisp & Erlang) so you will see a lot of submissions from me on those topics as well. I am also _extremely_ interested in various distribution methods (viral, word of mouth, SEO/SEM) so you will see me submit a lot of links like that. Now, how exactly do I track news. Well, I use an RSS reader (NetNewsWire, grab it, it's free now) to gather my news and the only news website that I actually open inside a browser is Hacker News. I check RSS feeds about 3-4 times a day (usually during breaks and when I need to clear my head) and I use a YCN bookmarklet to submit (http://ycombinator.com/bookmarklet.html http://ycombinator.com/bookmarklet.html). It literally takes a second to submit using that handy little piece of JS code. I track about 150 feeds. Majority of them are about programming and technology. But I also track a lot of marketing, business and startup-related legal blogs. I dislike heavy volume blogs since they post a lot of fluff and a lot of it is boring to me at this point. So, whenever I find something that's interesting to me, I post it here. Over the past six months, I found a lot of interesting blogs linked here so I doubt you're missing much if you just track HN's "new" section. Submissions that are not strictly news are usually best links on the topic that I was researching. For example, after I did some research on recommendation systems, I posted a few links that were helpful to myself. I also use HN as a crude delicious. I also enjoy commenting on HN because people who frequent this site tend to be smarter than people on other sites and they tend to be in the same situation as myself: fighting time and working on something and looking for ways to make their product successful and better. Signal to noise ratio (SNR) on HN is also quite high. I was afraid that it would fall after pg rebranded and expanded the focus of the site but that has not happened yet (lucky for us!) I like to read a lot and I read very quickly so you'd be surprised how little time I actually spend reading stuff on the web. I try to read a book a week as well. Quick tip... check out the "new" section and give a mod point to articles you like. Most of the articles get "hot" after they reach the front page but a lot of quality articles never reach it. When you've identified people who have similar interests as yourself, keep track of their submissions. I keep track of submissions of 3 people here and I upmod their stories quite often since they interest me. For example, this is my submission queue: http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=nickb http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=nickb And finally, reward people who post to your threads by moding them up :). Has this made any difference to my rep? Probably not but I like spreading karma. PS: My HN specific email's in my profile. Feel free to ask personal questions offline.

jsmcgd 19y ago

I thought of posting a similar question before because you seemed to be responsible for 1 in 6 of everything that happens on the site. I'm surprised to hear you actually get other stuff done. For a while I was starting to suspect you might be a professional Hacker News researcher!