Top 100 Users on Hacker News by H-Index
github.com
github.com
While h-index and karma are great to measure, well, measurable contribution to the community, it fails to capture the contribution to the community that consists in (and this is true of a lot of other if not of all "karma policies" too):
- sharing what one sees in this community, and spreading it through
other channels
- or even just using the knowledge gathered here
- or, in the best case, using the inspiration found in this community
to help build a better world
Yet I speak little and have only a little under 300 karma. I believe, though, that I contribute somehow more to the community than what my karma shows (e.g. by spreading the word about a cool and useful technology at work - say functional reactive programming for instance - and seeing it being adopted or experimented with).
I think attendance matters, too :)
EDIT: list formatting
EDIT2: added bit about FRP cuz, you know, redux
i really don't know how any of the stuff that you have mentioned is empirically verifiable or in other words, as you have so rightly indicated, measurable.
how would you rank things based on stuff that you cannot even measure ? e.g. if 'sharing what one sees in this community, and spreading it through other channels' is something that is looked at as a measure of contribution, how would you go about doing it ?
i could probably think of couple of ways. none of which will not appear 'creepy' e.g. one very obvious approach might be that we start linking up things like facebook/reddit/g+ etc. accounts here and start tracking things ? thereby, generating over a period of time, metrics which measure node (that's you !) centrality etc...
may you please elaborate ? thanks ! i don't really understand, sorry.
My h-index is 2 :)
"I believe there are 15 747 724 136 275 002 577 605 653 961 181 555 468 044 717 914 527 116 709 366 231 425 076 185 631 031 296 protons in the universe and the same number of electrons." --Sir Arthur Eddington
[by] author, score, rank() over (partition by [by] order by score desc) item_rank
[...]
where score >= item_rank
For example, a user has four submissions with scores of 1, 2, 10, 3. Their h-index would be 2. (10 >= 1 true, 3 >= 2 true, 2 >= 3 false, 1 >= 4 false).
This is an odd way to calculate h-rank (as a measure of quality), however, the implementation appears to pass the test cases on Wikipedia.
It is the highest number h for which at least h articles have >= h citations.
I think the way OP wrote it was slightly unclear. This is clearer to me:
So, ColinWright has 143 submissions with a score of at least 143 each.
I don't say this to be mean or for any gain whatsoever. I am truly sad about the second internet boom, having seen a bit of the first one. I am just a lamenting academic with no horses in your race. I would only like to see the world truly changed, and I wish all our society's best education were put to use actually doing it.
It's hard to notice what a big deal it is because when we post such things it always feels like we're brave and tiny David against big ugly Goliath. But that's a cognitive bias.
The solution is to remove or at least de-escalate the pejoratives, and roll back one's grand claims to partial ones. If you consciously leave room for other options, people will become curious to engage with your point of view. Then we get interesting discussion, which is really all we care about here.
I spend countless hours reading these comments and have gradually gotten more inured to their sharpness than most readers can be expected to, yet when I read things like "your gods" and "how utterly lost you all are" my spine stiffens and my fur stands on end. Such comments only evoke tribal identification: for or against, depending on where one's pre-existing sympathy lies. Once tribal identification kicks in, we get reflexive responses rather than reflective ones, and that is the root of everything we're trying to avoid.
I get the idea that simply "doing work to make money" doesn't change the world in meaningful ways. I think of it akin to the idea of "Rent" or lock-in. Both of those ways can be used, and quite effectively, to extract more money. Yet neither of those can be used to further science, arts, technology, engineering, philosophy, or other more academic pursuits directly. Making a new DRM technology to retard sharing of media isn't innovative: it's built on a broken premise that will turn into a time and money sink for all those whom are involved.
Now, money can be used to fund those areas. YC is doing just that with the UBI research (linked elsewhere in this thread). But the money can also be stockpiled, sent in investments, or other non humanity-furthering ways.
But, I think the crux of his argument is that this 'gravitational' force of money sucks innovative peoples, scientists, and similar into what amounts to a tar pit. There's only a limited amount of these types of people, and the claim is SV and similar cultures around the world is sucking the air out from more pressing pursuits.
Now, the bad side: Academia is also just as poisonous... Just in not the ways SV is. Instead, at least in the US, I'm sure you know of the repercussions students have, are, and will go through for the loan crisis. My own job, as with most around me, are paid nearly all by exorbitant student loans. And it's a cyclical money-suck.
Faculty also deal with nasty issues. Three of my friends are PhDs in various STEM areas. All 3 of them are adjunct faculty. In other words, cheaply paid contract labor. This is similar to the Uber-ification of teaching staff.
I'm a relative outsider to that of business and that of academia (being IT staff). I see the value of both, and also its poisons. The more I think on it, it seems the underlying issue is money. Or better yet, it's the idea that one has to "grow or perish". The idea is the same in both spheres.
But it's a systemic problem, so grandiose denunciations of one segment of the system (in lvs's case, Silicon Valley) take us further from understanding it in a bunch of ways. The way that concerns me is that it interrupts the dynamic of thoughtful discussion and replaces it with yelling and chest-beating. No matter how sophisticated the rhetoric, that is what it is at bottom.
In this case it's also ignorant, since the more intelligent people in SV are aware of and worried about these issues.
I recognize the zeitgeist is to "leave room for other options" for discursive comfort, but there is a fine line between that and self-defeatism, as much as I might agree that it could have rhetorical advantages to do so. I do not really seek those advantages, since I don't truly seek any gain. The "other options," in this case, might be that some of you are not worshiping Golden Calves and that some of you might be willing to agree that an algorithmic enumeration of bloggers, financiers, and self-promoters could be an anti-intellectual listing of false idols. I accept this could indeed be true for some of you, but it's not incumbent upon me to make your points for you in every rejoinder so as to parry your bristling.
Silicon Valley has this notion that one can replace hundreds, thousands, or millions of people with "short shell scripts". The base idea is something I'm OK with. However, with no social support structure in place, the ideas/implementations of Silicon Valley (and VC culture) seek to destroy people and families. No jobs == no money. No money == homeless, foodless, resourceless.
A great problem child is Uber. They destroy what little protections employees have, by refusing to have "employees". Powerless people either work for peanuts, or not work at all. They certainly won't sue. And Uber's end-game is "disenfranchise all workers by investing in automatic transportation via autonomous vehicles". That's the kind of endgames Silicon Valley thinks of. And that's frankly terrifying : "Be a serf until we no longer need you"
And, one can have the understood mindset of Silicon Valley and the VCs, and yet not live there. I know of those whom live in Chicago, New York City, parts of the Eastern Seabed in decent proximity of DC, London, and others whom share these notions.
The thing missing from the 'Valley speak is there is no discourse on how to handle everyone when nobody needs to work. That discussion is (not so) mysteriously left out.
And perhaps Uber was a good and bad idea both. There's hundreds of these companies that seek to "disrupt" whatever. The problem with these "disrupters" is that they also cause great problems... but those areas aren't explored because they are externalities. Outside the business interests; out of scope; government's problem; should have did it better; less interference... We've heard these as responses when individual areas are questioned.
The other part of highlighting inherent bias with regards to Silicon Valley (and VCs), is that areas like Hacker News punish you for non-groupthink. The more karma per recent post, the more you can post. If you have a contentious, but well thought out argument/discussion but yet against popular opinion here, you are modded down, and therefore silenced with "you're submitting too fast". There is no distinction between someone who is against the public opinion here, and that of a troll or regular crapflooder. I'd like to think there is a huge difference, but a -1 is a -1. The repercussions remain the same.
Maybe it's what Dang and other admins want. I don't know. Although I think it is of utmost importance to understand ones own biases. Knowing how your and others biases interact can be very useful, especially in business and enterprise.
I agree with you here. People who get flagged and downvoted for reasonable opinions should not be caught up in rate-limiting, and that seems to happen a bit too much.
For what it's worth you can try asking dang to remove the rate limiting if you're caught by it.
Over time, there is a huge difference. But people have a strong bias against wanting to admit this in their own case and those of users they agree with.
There's something about expressing a controversial opinion that compels people to be gratuitously provocative on top of the opinion they're expressing. Predictably, they get downvoted for the gratuitous provocation. Then they complain about how the hordes of HN can't appreciate their brave independent thinking, want to suppress them, and so on. This happens astonishingly often, and you can't understand how HN works without taking it into account.
> HN can't appreciate their brave independent thinking
So that first sentence is true. :-)
It seems like you are suggesting that we have not had numerous discussions about a 'Universal Basic Income' on HN? I'm pretty sure that there is a thread/wk on HN about that very topic.
> there is no discourse on how to handle everyone when nobody needs to work.
I was in haste in that sentence. Things like UBI are being discussed. However, the flip-side is the actual actions that grind down the worker to a 'nothing': robotic/computer work is ideal for every job, to the minds of the Silicon Valley exec.
UBI/Minimum Income: It's been given a many great names through the years. But it's understood as a way for everyone to receive the basic necessities of life, plus a bit more. But this idea requires buy-in of the population at large. Or at least, buy in from the "rich" ( https://youtu.be/5tu32CCA_Ig?t=12 )
The problem with Silicon Valley is that they have an assumption this either this already exists somehow, or it will magically appear. What instead happens, is that people lose jobs, wages are forced yet lower and lower, and the human is removed carte blanche in the favor of unpaid robotic labor. On an individual company level, this helps the bottom line of the company (race to the bottom). However, when this idea is expanded to wider and wider areas, it gentrifies the owner class away from everyone else. For in that eventuality, not even upper class jobs exist.
I do not argue that column lines or minutes/week are not given to the idea of UBI. A simple HNsearch query shows that. But I do, and have argued, that SV culture seeks to an absolute minima of nobody working except the owners and, nobody getting paid except for the owners. This, given enough iterations, leads to economic slowdown and disenfranchisement.
As closing questions: What happens when these wheels of extreme automation are turned within the current iteration of government? What happens when we get 50% unemployment? 75%? 95% (nobody working except owners)? Do you think Marshall Brain's idea of Manna is possible or likely?
Here's an example of what I mean that some of these perceptions are imaginary. In fact what you describe is a hot topic of discussion in SV as in other places; YC Research is funding an experiment in Basic Income; and so on.
Yes, my views of SV are shaped by internet media, business acquisition coverage, comments here at YC news, and conventions I attend. So no, I don't live in the 'Valley per se, but have at least some understanding of it.
If I cite correctly, I found these as the UBI discussions YC is funding?
https://blog.ycombinator.com/basic-income https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10982340 http://www.fastcoexist.com/3056510/why-silicon-valleys-leadi... http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/27/technology/y-combinator-basi...
So, yes, it does seem that YC is continuing the underlying research on what it would take to implement UBI. That's awesome!
Unfortunately, the negative comments towards "Silicon Valley and the VCs" was that: a larger discussion. I'm not meaning this to be a "YC sux" kind of discussion. That goes nowhere. I'm sincerely glad you (and YC) are getting into this tough area. But you seem rather alone in that regard. The Guardian puts it well, with this article (Feb 2016):
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/28/silicon...
So, to keep this constructive, what can the members of the (tech enlightened) public do to help? Have other organizations (for and non-profit) entered into talks to assist with your UBI research?
Although it's by Karma rather than by front-page reaching skill, so it's a different metric really.
It's odd that it displays Karma for everyone outside the top ten.
Actually I hate that leader page and would like to replace it with something more interesting. There's too much past and not enough present and future in it.
It was removed since it offered no insight and was often inaccurate.
This is an example of how people try to maximize numbers, even when they know they shouldn't. You make what you measure.
That said, I don't think it was all bad: it definitely incentivized me to write comments that were consistently longer and deeper than they would be otherwise. Looking back through my old comments, a surprising number read like essays.
But it also created a bunch of perverse incentives. Apart from disincentivizing conversation it also pushed me towards trying to comment on bigger stories and pushed me away from commenting on stories that had been up for a while and would fall off the front page soon.
The downsides of focusing on average votes per comment definitely outweigh the upsides. I wonder if there's some better measure out there that creates fewer weird incentives and isn't as gameable but still has the same positive effects.
It's a fun distraction every once in a while (oh hey, another X points and I hit the leaderboard!), but gaming the system in general, or spending any time worrying about it... just no.
Any list that includes me, but not eg grellas is probably doing something wrong.
I'd say to just remove the page altogether, but a suitable replacement could possibly serve as a tool to uplift behavior you'd like to see more of. That's definitely easier said than done, but I'd love to see some experimentation in this area.
End by adding a time filter (let people have a few choices).
It's worth leaving this leader page up as it indicates the system as it stands. The answer lies much more in changing the system than in hiding its results.
So you should leave this existing feedback page up until you can improve the feedback.
If the feedback makes you unhappy, it's not the feedback's fault. It's your system's.
:-)
tptacek 241986
You can't simply add Total Points on submissions + Total Points on comments - # of submissions/comments: comment karma is no longer exposed via the API, and total karma counts do not incorporate points earned via suspected voting ring accounts. (while submissions do)
You'll have a low H index if you have lots of low quality submissions, and you'll have a low H index if you have very few ultra successful submissions.
From wikipedia: The definition of the index is that a scholar with an index of h has published h papers each of which has been cited in other papers at least h times.[4] Thus, the h-index reflects both the number of publications and the number of citations per publication. The index is designed to improve upon simpler measures such as the total number of citations or publications.
That's why a lot of people like to look at more than one number when looking at a set summary, but you can't compare and classify these as easily.
I would suggest for certain kinds of submissions/topics to add logarithmic instead of linear influence on the h-index. Or to add some form of handicap.
After all SF housing is something that the community is obviously interested and passionate about - you can easily get 200 comments/upvotes on any article on the topic. So you check if this article contributes to the h-rank by removing the baseline upvotes/comments an article about SF housing gets.
TL:DR - for some topics your contributions should count towards the h-rank only if they engage the community above average.
On the other hand perhaps a simple comparison of keyword frequencies in title or all comment bodies would work? Still, doing this properly is nontrivial.
1. Deduct a small value per post or as a function of total posts. Theory I apply is that all content has an assessment cost. More bang in fewer posts is better.
2. Evaluate posts seperately based on some value metric. E.g. thorny technical problems vs. "How I lifehacked my gym socks" pablum.
One way or another, the system must reflect value judgements.
An example: https://github.com/antontarasenko/smq/blob/master/reports/ha...
Its discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11499120
An explanation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11499158
Submissions, when they succeed, tend to get many upvotes. Comments also get upvotes, but in average an order of magnitude less. The same applies to replies in comment, which I would guess generally get fewer upvotes (or subcomments to comments other than the top comment).
It seems that the Top 100 users here are the one who are posting stories and that comment rarely, as that would optimize the "leverage" to get a higher H-index.