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 [flagged] I must've pissed someone off at HN
6 points by oblib on July 17, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 24 comments
I posted a link to an article about [1]Ford trucks a few hours ago and made a comment on that post basically saying I thought Ford was out of touch with farmers who live near me.

The post was bumped to the front page before I submitted my comment. I checked the comments about an hour later and the post was still there and had 27 points and my comment got 8 points.

The odd part is when I check it about an hour later my HN "Karma" fell from 4997 to 4811, and the post got buried down to #650 and the points were unchanged.

I don't know how "Karma" or rankings works here, but that seems a bit odd.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36762673



You didn't piss anyone off at HN. The post set off the flamewar detector, which is a software penalty that causes a thread to fall in rank when the discussion is overheated. That's the only thing that happened, and it wouldn't have affected your karma in any way. The only thing that makes karma go down is downvoting on comments. (Submissions don't have downvoting, only flags, and flags don't affect karma.)

I checked the logs and your karma has never been 4997. The most it has ever been is 4812. It went to 4811 after someone downvoted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36762833.

Your karma was 4797 when you submitted the post, though—most likely you misremembered 4797 as 4997, which is an easy enough mistake to make.


Thank you dang!

There was certainly some heated opinions being shared there. Fair to say I may have set the tone with my initial comment. I grew up around cars and car builders and spent quite a few years working with them so I am opinionated in that field.


As I've commented on HN over the past month or so and shared with dang via email, I've been running some analyses on the HN front page based on a full history[1]. One aspect I've looked at is the "flamewar detector", or as dang's described it elsewhere, and "overheated discussion" metric[3] --- not necessarily bad, but a sign that things might be getting tendentious. I've taken to calling it "spiciness".

In particular, it seems to me that this might penalise stories in which there is a genuine level of disagreement or contentiousness, or which are socially, politically, and/or culturally contested.[4]

As I understand, it kicks in where a post has >= 40 comments and comments > votes.[2]

Given that I have ~188k front page stories with vote and comment counts, it's pretty straightforward to calculate the comments:votes ratio, and look at patterns that emerge.

Looking at means, we can get, first, the overall ratio and its percentile distribution, and the overall story position (not surprisingly, 14, which is close to 15, the midpoint of the 1--30 range):

  Overall ratio
  
  n: 115908, sum: 73618, min: 0.25, max: 21.00, mean: 0.635141, median: 0.52, sd: 0.419485
  
  %-ile:  
     5: 0.28, 10: 0.3,  15: 0.33, 
    20: 0.35, 25: 0.38, 30: 0.4,
    35: 0.43, 40: 0.46, 45: 0.49,
    55: 0.56, 60: 0.6,  65: 0.64,
    70: 0.69, 75: 0.75, 80: 0.83,
    85: 0.92, 90: 1.07, 95: 1.34
Note that both the mean and median ratios are well below the detector threshold of 1.0. By standard deviation (percentage of values included with a normal distribution in parentheses):

  1σ: 1.055 (68%)
  2σ: 1.474 (95%)
  3σ: 1.894 (99.73%)
Note that the normal distribution values seem to agree with the calculated percentiles. And that HN's flamewar detector kicks off for stories roughly 1σ > mean spiciness.

I pulled up the list of the 40 most "ratioed" (or "spiciest") HN threads of all time:

  rank ratio       date-pos   year pos DoW  user             vote  com site  
     1 21.00   2007-4-18.18   2007 18  Wed  juwo                5  105 juwo.com
     2 10.83   2008-2-4.26    2008 26  Mon  eusman              6   65 n/a
     3  9.33   2007-4-26.26   2007 26  Thu  juwo                3   28 juwo.com
     4  9.14   2007-7-31.13   2007 13  Tue  rokhayakebe         7   64 n/a
     5  9.00   2007-7-22.21   2007 21  Sun  gibsonf1            3   27 streamfocus.com
     6  7.50   2007-4-20.25   2007 25  Fri  jkush               6   45 n/a
     7  7.50   2007-6-1.10    2007 10  Fri  keiretsu            6   45 n/a
     8  7.33   2007-3-26.20   2007 20  Mon  BitGeek             3   22 n/a
     9  7.29   2008-1-27.13   2008 13  Sun  wumi               14  102 n/a
    10  7.27   2008-7-22.29   2008 29  Tue  BenS               15  109 n/a
    11  7.22   2008-9-25.17   2008 17  Thu  DanielBMarkham     23  166 n/a
    12  6.79   2008-11-14.19  2008 19  Fri  bbuderi            24  163 xconomy.com
    13  6.77   2008-3-28.17   2008 17  Fri  btw0               13   88 n/a
    14  6.57   2007-10-9.20   2007 20  Tue  _h4xr               7   46 f2s.com
    15  6.50   2007-10-13.15  2007 15  Sat  robmnl              6   39 n/a
    16  6.50   2007-11-3.16   2007 16  Sat  breck               4   26 qcrunch.com
    17  6.50   2008-1-18.13   2008 13  Fri  german             14   91 n/a
    18  6.33   2007-12-10.24  2007 24  Mon  kf                  6   38 independent.ie
    19  6.29   2007-9-5.10    2007 10  Wed  rokhayakebe        14   88 n/a
    20  6.25   2007-7-1.13    2007 13  Sun  danw                4   25 n/a
    21  6.20   2007-5-24.15   2007 15  Thu  bootload            5   31 n/a
    22  6.20   2007-6-11.9    2007  9  Mon  danw                5   31 n/a
    23  6.07   2007-2-21.1    2007  1  Wed  pg                262 1590 n/a
    24  6.00   2007-11-13.30  2007 30  Tue  trekker7            5   30 n/a
    25  5.99   2022-5-26.8    2022  8  Thu  LoveGracePeace    280 1678 nih.gov
    26  5.91   2008-5-5.30    2008 30  Mon  rrival             11   65 n/a
    27  5.85   2008-4-1.15    2008 15  Tue  robmnl             27  158 n/a
    28  5.82   2007-8-19.11   2007 11  Sun  kf                 11   64 n/a
    29  5.80   2007-8-21.4    2007  4  Tue  zenobo             20  116 n/a
    30  5.78   2007-4-6.1     2007  1  Fri  kkim               77  445 paulgraham.com
    31  5.77   2008-4-18.10   2008 10  Fri  Flemlord           26  150 n/a
    32  5.75   2007-11-18.18  2007 18  Sun  rokhayakebe         8   46 n/a
    33  5.70   2008-2-12.22   2008 22  Tue  theremora          10   57 n/a
    34  5.64   2007-10-17.9   2007  9  Wed  altay              14   79 n/a
    35  5.55   2008-1-17.18   2008 18  Thu  sspencer           11   61 n/a
    36  5.50   2007-10-23.25  2007 25  Tue  DanielBMarkham      6   33 whattofix.com
    37  5.50   2007-4-18.25   2007 25  Wed  yaacovtp            4   22 n/a
    38  5.50   2007-4-7.17    2007 17  Sat  me_jobs_r_u_woz     4   22 n/a
    39  5.42   2008-3-4.29    2008 29  Tue  kulkarnic          12   65 n/a
    40  5.42   2008-5-24.7    2008  7  Sat  _bbks              38  206 n/a
"n/a" site is a post without a URL, typically an "ask" or "tell" thread.

Eyeballing that list, one pattern that is suggested is that high-ratio posts seem to have relatively high story position values (that is, they appear low on the HN front page), notable exceptions being #23 (pg's 2007-2-21 request), and #30 (kf's 2007-8-21 post, a pg essay "Microsoft is Dead"). I'd done further analysis of story position by spiciness and found that in general for stories which make the front page, higher spiciness actually correlates slightly with a higher page position (lower StoryPos value). I suspect this is due to specific moderator interaction, that is, those stories which survive do so because they're deemed appropriate to HN.

Another is that high-ratio posts are notably clustered in 2007-2008. Frequency analysis suggests that flamewar detection was implemented around January, 2009 as spicy front-page posts thin markedly after that month. The one item appearing after that date ... ticks numerous hot buttons (2022-5-26.8).

Because of how I'm collecting and analysing data I don't have HN or article URLs directly available, though it's possible to determine the article from the front-page archive. "2008-5-24.7" corresponds to the 7th-position story on the 2008-5-24 front page archive: <https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2008-05-24>

I also took a look at the highest and lowest ratioed sites, with >= 20 front-page appearances, appearing in a follow-up comment.

Overall, the detector seems reasonably justified, though not infallible. It's a much better indicator than I'd thought it would be.

________________________________

Notes:

1. 20 April 2007 -- 21 June 2023 presently. I re-up the archive periodically, but haven't fully automated this. Results change little incrementally.

2. Via ColinWright 2 years ago here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25871251>

3. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16020089>

4. As it happens, HN tends to downrate each of these topics as dang's discussed over the years. Links ... not immediately available.


  Top 20 spiciest sites (20+ front-page appearances):

    site                            n     points      comms     ratio
    
    apnews.com                     36      14674      17512     1.193
    sfchronicle.com                25       5771       6174     1.070
    variety.com                    24       5479       4992     0.911
    mattmaroon.com                 73       3332       3023     0.907
    axios.com                      92      38075      34150     0.897
    bizjournals.com                20       2183       1959     0.897
    cnbc.com                      174      59983      53056     0.885
    apple.com                     241      99945      88396     0.884
    reason.com                     70      13143      11614     0.884
    nypost.com                     28       5851       5088     0.870
    markevanstech.com              22        290        251     0.866
    macrumors.com                  62      18700      16162     0.864
    nikkei.com                     56      17568      15174     0.864
    economist.com                 829     119205     102702     0.862
    thewalrus.ca                   30       6194       5199     0.839
    techradar.com                  30       7227       6053     0.838
    backreaction.blogspot.com      33       7209       5968     0.828
    strongtowns.org                27       8279       6857     0.828
    mondaynote.com                 45       7581       6268     0.827
    coindesk.com                   22      10236       8355     0.816
    
  Bottom 20 least spicy sites (20+ front-page appearances):

    site                            n     points      comms     ratio

    particletree.com               37        997        227     0.228
    brendangregg.com               40      11135       2512     0.226
    intruders.tv                   28        324         73     0.225
    aphyr.com                      34       8514       1910     0.224
    andrewchen.typepad.com         51        757        168     0.222
    michaelnielsen.org             31       3335        723     0.217
    igvita.com                     38       3626        767     0.212
    startuplessonslearned.blo      24       1101        232     0.211
    citusdata.com                  51       8361       1717     0.205
    ferd.ca                        21       5883       1132     0.192
    ocks.org                       27       6036       1120     0.186
    tensorflow.org                 22       5612       1020     0.182
    aosabook.org                   21       3899        669     0.172
    ocw.mit.edu                    41       8793       1500     0.171
    david.weebly.com               20       1364        226     0.166
    jslogan.com                    24         97         16     0.165
    burningdoor.com                23        149         23     0.154
    linusakesson.net               26       4531        684     0.151
    github.com/0xax                22       2168        121     0.056


The submission has a lot more comments than points which makes it automatically get "buried" (removed from the top posts) because it indicates potential fighting in the comments.

Re the karma, I don't belive it's possible for it to go down like that, you may want to email HN to ask them what's going on.


That's right. The post set off the flamewar detector.


Dan - Would you mind sharing a rough threshold for what "sets off the flamewar detector" means?

In [1] (unofficial), a rough 1:1 ratio is mentioned.

I see that, now, that submission has 31 points and 91 comments, say ~3x comments:points.

Flipping through Active, I see plenty of submissions with a ~2x ratio, and the min around ~0.5x and the max around ~2.5x (on hollywood strike, so potentially heated thoughts).

[1]: https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#flame-...


40+ comments && comments > votes, according to lore:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25871251>


I took your advice and did that. Thank you for the suggestion.


I went through this anguish at a site many years ago. The sooner you stop caring about invisible internet points the better.


This happens often when I post a spicy contrarian opinion on reddit. Perhaps ironically (perhaps not), similar comments tend to get the opposite reaction here.


I don't worry about getting down voted for comments I make, but this is odd. I've sent an email asking for clarification so we'll see how it goes.


What's the big deal? I'm sure this happens a lot. You're not the first, you won't be the last. Move on.

As another commenter pointed out the sooner you stop caring about invisible internet points the better.


It's not "big deal". It didn't cost me any money and I won't lose any sleep over it.

As I've already said, I'm curious about how/why this happened because it doesn't make sense.

I've sent an email asking about it and maybe I'll learn something if I get a response. I've never done that before so I don't know what to expect.


Perhaps your post getting flagged counts as negative karma too?

Anyway, karma discussions are generally off topic here so you may experience similar effect with this post.


If it was flagged I wasn't notified. No idea why it would be though.


Anyone can flag a post or comment (look for that "flag" on the top line), and it does not result in any notification.


No, I have an old post that's marked as "flagged" but not that one.


Posts don't get marked as "flagged" or "dead" on the first "flag" by someone: I ain't sure of the threshold, and I am merely guessing, but trying to tell you not to bother with this — it doesn't really matter, HN has some non-transparent rules and we all accept to live by them believing they are right in spirit most of the time.


Ok, this is too funny...

Dang contacted me and told me my karma was 4797, not 4997. My eyes are getting old is my excuse :D


That's how it works dude. Did you expect it to stay on the front page forever?


No, but I did not expect to go from 28 to 650 in about an hour.


Karma is weird. You spend an hour agonising over the composition of a well-written comment and get down-voted.

Or maybe, you write a quick throwaway one-line comment, and upvotes instantly increase your karma by 50.


I have also found this to be surprisingly true.




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