Who Are The Most Influential Posters on HN?

8 points·schusterfluke··13 comments

Don't be afraid to nominate yourself.

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Depends on what you mean by "Posters."

Some people such as ColinWright post many influential articles.

Others such as Grellas [average comment score 38.8] are known for authoritative comments in their areas of expertise.

The most influential poster is PG.

http://news.ycombinator.com/lists

http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders

So Influence goes in order of posters with most Karma to least?

Tell me, how else could it be done?

Why isn't Paul Graham on that list? Isn't he influential?

Check PG's profile - he has 124701 (at the time of writing) and would be significantly off the top. He has deliberately removed himself from the listing.

Paul Graham does not post his best writing directly on HN, but he writes really insightful blog posts

which get submitted here (in my opinion some of the most insightful comments posted on HN are from his blog).

This isn't really an answer to the question of influence, but it gives you a start on the question. There's the list of the top 100 people ranked by karma - that doesn't mean they're influential, of course.

So, maybe you should define "influence".

Aight: How about "The capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of [the collective mind of the people who read HN] ...something like that.

Hmm.

* How would you measure that?

* How would you get everyone to agree?

Rather than a list of lifetime karma, I would rather see a list of users with the most karma within the last year.

pg,patio11,swombat,edw519 to name a few.

patio11

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