HN Leaders — What are the most upvoted users of Hacker News commenting on?

Re:HN Leaders — What are the most upvoted users of Hacker Ne... by alkonaut on Monday August 08, 2022 @10:31AM (#32385849)

I just find that it's more a reflection on how soon you post on a topic, rather than how much insight you provide. A fantastically insightful comment #100, is not going to get a fraction of the upvotes of a mediocre comment #10 on a post. That's because of the nonlinear exposure. If you post early, you will get more reads which leads to more upvotes which will puts your comment near the top. Almost all my comments with more than say 20 upvotes, are "early" rather than "great".

What I'd like to see are average upvotes of buried comments. Comments that were highly rated based on their content rather than their exposure.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:HN Leaders — What are the most upvoted users of Hacker Ne... by johnfn on Monday August 08, 2022 @11:30AM (#32386680)

Actually, I haven't really found this to be true. The HN algorithm does some sort of thing where it spotlights new comments at the top of the stack to see how well they perform before pushing them down. There have been a number of times when I was very clearly late to the conversation but my comments apparently got enough upvotes when they were spotlighted to stay on top.

It feels to me like the comment sorting is actually dictated by a rough calculation of impressions / votes rather than just raw votes, which is why this sort of thing can happen.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:HN Leaders — What are the most upvoted users of Hacker Ne... by burlesona on Monday August 08, 2022 @11:14AM (#32386415)

Similarly, discussion is heavily skewed toward the first 5-10 comments on a post. If I think something is really interesting but it already has 100 comments, I usually don’t bother posting as I probably won’t get replies (which is the interesting part of commenting IMO). The sweet spot is a new article that I find very interesting with less than 25 comments. Then I often want to comment because I know it’ll appear close enough to the top that others will reply and discuss :)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:HN Leaders — What are the most upvoted users of Hacker Ne... by kqr on Monday August 08, 2022 @11:27AM (#32386636)

On the contrary, the sorting algorithm accounts for both votes and time. Whenever I manage to provide good thoughts from a fresh perspective on "old" (by your account) discussions my comments have stayed at the top despite being late.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:HN Leaders — What are the most upvoted users of Hacker Ne... by nabakin on Monday August 08, 2022 @11:34AM (#32386749)

Completely agree. I think to really show the best comments in a thread, comments should be weighted higher based on how recent they were made. At the same time though, you don't want to weight them too highly and flood the top comments with new, less notable comments because that would seriously deteriorate the quality of the top comments section.

I find HN strikes a really good balance here, occasionally putting new comments at the very top, but not enough to flood the top comments. It's much better than Reddit at least. HN also seems to give additional weight based on the length of the comment which filters out many of the joke/quippy comments and gives preference to comments which add a lot to the discussion.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:HN Leaders — What are the most upvoted users of Hacker Ne... by the_only_law on Monday August 08, 2022 @11:13AM (#32386404)

Sadly, I've gotten more upvotes on a nasty quip towards someone than I have on any technical subject I've put effort into writing on.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:HN Leaders — What are the most upvoted users of Hacker Ne... by culi on Monday August 08, 2022 @11:32AM (#32386713)

I've seen multiple people post similar things on this thread. I actually have the opposite experience. Most of my most upvoted comments tend to be multiple paragraphs with many citations

I guess the difference is I don't make these types of posts on software-engineering heavy discussions. I've been a Wikipedia editor for a few years and I have a lot of niche interests in botany, evolutionary biology, anthropology, microbiology, etc.

There are certain non-software/hardware topics HN seems to really like (phages, the gut microbiome, and nootropics come to mind). It seems that making a long comment with a bunch of citations related to one of those topics is more likely to get you upvotes. Probably because its something a lot of people will be interested in but you're much less likely to be disagreed with given the lack of community expertise around the topics

Maybe my posts wouldn't do as well on a botany forum haha

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:HN Leaders — What are the most upvoted users of Hacker Ne... by com2kid on Monday August 08, 2022 @05:25PM (#32391222)

A decade ago any comment that was less than a couple paragraphs would be almost instantly down voted. Sadly that is the case today. Threads are a lot noisier, and I even see some bad joke reply threads appearing here and there. A dramatic shift in culture.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:HN Leaders — What are the most upvoted users of Hacker Ne... by burlesona on Monday August 08, 2022 @11:16AM (#32386461)

I notice this too, although I don’t think it’s quite as bad on HN as on the internet in general. I dislike the “sick burn” comments and wish they weren’t so popular.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:HN Leaders — What are the most upvoted users of Hacker Ne... by nindalf on Monday August 08, 2022 @11:44AM (#32386938)

I agree this effect exists, but much less than a comparative site like Reddit. One thing HN does well is that a new comment appears at the top of its sub-thread and stays there if it gets enough upvotes.

This has happened a couple of times with my comments. Once there were at least 200 comments on a hot button issue but my comment rose to the top anyway.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:HN Leaders — What are the most upvoted users of Hacker Ne... by alkonaut on Tuesday August 09, 2022 @03:46AM (#32395243)

I didn't know that. But that I guess makes it even worse for me: I have had many highly upvoted comments, but none that weren't early. So in conclsion then, all my highly rated comments were highly rated because they were early...

[ Parent | on HN ]