> I just want to point out, as someone who plausibly had the fastest accumulation of karma during the first months of having an account
I've mentioned it before, but I silently keep track of people I often see around on Hacker News–what they like to talk about, any affiliations they've mentioned, their positions on perennial topics. Think of it like those extensions that let you put tags next to people's names, except I use a browser that killed its extension community in cold blood so I keep this around in my head instead. An extension wouldn't be of much help, anyways: I find it very difficult to remember to read usernames, so I frequently end up in the curious situation where I'm reading a comment and think "this sounds like something so-and-so would say…wait, yes, it's them" (in certain cases, this can be "this sounds like so-and-so's writing style").
All this is a long way to essentially say that I am quite familiar with prolific users, especially ones that I see submitting things to the homepage or participating in comment threads that I frequent (which is a large subset of what ends up on the front page), so I was well aware of your incredibly rapid karma accumulation within weeks of the creation of your account. I factored this in to my statement above, which I will admit I haven't actually run the numbers on precisely but still stand behind unless you've happen to have done the math on this and would like to share. Here's why I think that comments come out ahead.
Hacker News is a fairly small community, but even inside it there are people who interact with it disproportionately and accumulate karma quickly and readily. As far as I can tell, both of us are in the top dozen or so karma accumulators on the site, which means that we're averaging 20-50 karma a day. I personally have been not very consistent–I didn't use Hacker News too much when I started out (I was a lurker for a couple of months before even registering, so I wasn't used to commenting)–and this year until about spring I was on-and-off with my contributions, reading a bit more or a bit less depending on outside workload, and at one point not being on the site at all for a month as a bet. These days I'm on fairly often, so I get a decent amount of karma consistently.
If we look at other top users, I think the pattern is similar. 'tptacek has a truly insane average of something like 70 karma a day going back all the way to 2007 (although I think he's slowed down slightly right now?), which is like the top quartile of what I get on average. Other users, including you, have more reasonable but still fairly high numbers as far as I can tell.
Taking this into account, I still think that comments make up the majority of karma for most of these users, for a number of reasons one of which is probably the fact that stories are downranked when calculating karma by something like 2x AFAIK. If you go through 'tptacek's or 'jacquesm's profiles right now, you'll notice that they post stories once in a while, and they even hit the front page occasionally, but not nearly enough to make up more than a small fraction of their karma. I think even you, whom I used to recall got things on the front page once or twice a week, would have a hard time accumulating karma that quickly if you also didn't comment abundantly.
I'm not saying it's impossible to get karma through stories, but it's uncommon and among the top posters I think there's perhaps one that doesn't comment at all, a few that post stories frequently, and the remainder who submit rarely if at all.
For what it's worth, belatedly: I think there's also a pretty important compounding effect; a Markov 'tptacek would still accumulate karma. In part I think that's because people follow my comments (following people instead of the front page is a really good way to use the site, which can be crazymaking otherwise) --- I've seen evidence for this, like commenting on very old stories and seeing those comments bumped --- and part of it is probably just a name-recognition thing in threads.
Which is to say: a significant factor in karma accumulation is just how long you've been on the site.
I'm sure that name recognition is an important component, but for what is worth and completely anedoctally, I've found myself many times upvoting a comment and realiziing it was from you after the fact.
Sure, but at least it's not like Stack Overflow where you can just sit around and accumulate karma interest forever. I think that counts for something :)
Well, as long as we're replying in this thread at week-long intervals (I just saw this!) I would like to add that I think HN needs some karma inflation to make it easier for newer users to get in the game. Not that karma matters very much, but it does have a gamelike quality.
I also want to change HN's leaderboard to show leaders by different criteria, including on (say) a weekly/monthly/yearly/alltime basis. Maybe that would help bring in some fresh air.
Hmm, I'm not sure. Not because I want to "preserve my karma value" or anything but I am fearful of tricks like these because they seem to be somewhat close to "engagement" hacks. I do enjoy seeing new users and would like for there to be ways for them to contribute, but I am not really a fan of outright gamification. Personally, when I started contributing I was a bit hesitant because I didn't know how to "do it right"–it takes a bit getting used to commenting here, so I actually think a bit more detailed FAQ would be really nice. It's always fun to discover something new about Hacker News and share it around once you've been here for a while, and I think you could still keep some of those little secrets for people to find, but I think at least some of https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented would be nice to know upon joining.
Speaking of the leaderboard, I was actually curious how it was organized: there are some people missing from it that I would expect to be there, like 'pg. How is that list generated?
I don't currently have the time to respond to this in depth (I plan on doing so tomorrow), but I actually have done the math, although only for limited periods.
I’d love to see it :). Actually, I gave a presentation once that had some Hacker News stuff in it almost exactly a year ago so I’ll see if I still have the scripts for that, so I’d have at least a spreadsheet to play around with.
Having a pretty tough time finding my data here (not entirely sure which device it's on but it doesn't seem to be on the one I thought it was on), but if I can find it sometime soon I'll shoot it over to you via mail or something!
I've mentioned it before, but I silently keep track of people I often see around on Hacker News–what they like to talk about, any affiliations they've mentioned, their positions on perennial topics. Think of it like those extensions that let you put tags next to people's names, except I use a browser that killed its extension community in cold blood so I keep this around in my head instead. An extension wouldn't be of much help, anyways: I find it very difficult to remember to read usernames, so I frequently end up in the curious situation where I'm reading a comment and think "this sounds like something so-and-so would say…wait, yes, it's them" (in certain cases, this can be "this sounds like so-and-so's writing style").
All this is a long way to essentially say that I am quite familiar with prolific users, especially ones that I see submitting things to the homepage or participating in comment threads that I frequent (which is a large subset of what ends up on the front page), so I was well aware of your incredibly rapid karma accumulation within weeks of the creation of your account. I factored this in to my statement above, which I will admit I haven't actually run the numbers on precisely but still stand behind unless you've happen to have done the math on this and would like to share. Here's why I think that comments come out ahead.
Hacker News is a fairly small community, but even inside it there are people who interact with it disproportionately and accumulate karma quickly and readily. As far as I can tell, both of us are in the top dozen or so karma accumulators on the site, which means that we're averaging 20-50 karma a day. I personally have been not very consistent–I didn't use Hacker News too much when I started out (I was a lurker for a couple of months before even registering, so I wasn't used to commenting)–and this year until about spring I was on-and-off with my contributions, reading a bit more or a bit less depending on outside workload, and at one point not being on the site at all for a month as a bet. These days I'm on fairly often, so I get a decent amount of karma consistently.
If we look at other top users, I think the pattern is similar. 'tptacek has a truly insane average of something like 70 karma a day going back all the way to 2007 (although I think he's slowed down slightly right now?), which is like the top quartile of what I get on average. Other users, including you, have more reasonable but still fairly high numbers as far as I can tell.
Taking this into account, I still think that comments make up the majority of karma for most of these users, for a number of reasons one of which is probably the fact that stories are downranked when calculating karma by something like 2x AFAIK. If you go through 'tptacek's or 'jacquesm's profiles right now, you'll notice that they post stories once in a while, and they even hit the front page occasionally, but not nearly enough to make up more than a small fraction of their karma. I think even you, whom I used to recall got things on the front page once or twice a week, would have a hard time accumulating karma that quickly if you also didn't comment abundantly.
I'm not saying it's impossible to get karma through stories, but it's uncommon and among the top posters I think there's perhaps one that doesn't comment at all, a few that post stories frequently, and the remainder who submit rarely if at all.