Hacker News
Contents
A platform for curiosity
https://news.ycombinator.com/ - it has search box so you can search topics. Very useful.
How It Works
OSE Install of Related Software
OSE Is testing the old version of Hacker News software at https://forum.jambonaka.ovh/
Thread 2
About search, it appears HN is using https://www.algolia.com/ (not opensource/free solution). On upvoting: the logic appears to be intricate as it also a complex problem to solve. (do you expect the topic/comment with the most upvote to come up -> stale, do we want to instead look at the first derivative? a mix?).
For comments, I don't know if the expected behavior is ordering on vote count. If so, the following comment in the source code might explain the problem you encountered:
- A user needs legit-threshold karma for a vote to count if there has
- already been a vote from the same IP address. A new account below both
- new- thresholds won't affect rankings, though such votes still affect
- scores unless not a legit-user.
Anyway, the page https://forum.jambonaka.ovh/bestcomments shows the ordering.
On topic ranking, here are a couple relevant comments:
- Votes divided by the age in hours to the gravityth power.
- Would be interesting to scale gravity in a slider.
- If something rose high then stopped getting votes, its score would
- decline but it would stay near the top. Newly inserted stories would
- thus get stuck in front of it. I avoid this by regularly adjusting
- the rank of a random top story.
modifying the logic is not going to be easy, it's a lisp like language - not at all my cup of tea. I already had to make a few modifications because the website is behind a reverse proxy and I'd prefer not to do it again :)
Marcin Jakubowski <marcin@opensourceecology.org>
Apr 4, 2020, 9:15 PM (4 days ago)
to Benoit
On Sat, Apr 4, 2020 at 6:15 PM Benoit Maurin <maurinbe@gmail.com> wrote: About search, it appears HN is using https://www.algolia.com/ (not opensource/free solution). On upvoting: the logic appears to be intricate as it also a complex problem to solve. (do you expect the topic/comment with the most upvote to come up -> stale, do we want to instead look at the first derivative? a mix?). Tell me more. What is wrong with simple upvote, and then you simply count the votes? Please educate me on ranking.
For comments, I don't know if the expected behavior is ordering on vote count. If so, the following comment in the source code might explain the problem you encountered:
- A user needs legit-threshold karma for a vote to count if there has
- already been a vote from the same IP address. A new account below both
- new- thresholds won't affect rankings, though such votes still affect
- scores unless not a legit-user.
Anyway, the page https://forum.jambonaka.ovh/bestcomments shows the ordering.
Well, we can mine best answers from this link.
So the basic functionality - here's what I'd like to see as a use case. A question is asked. It's embedded, probably on a wiki page where development is occuring. We can see the best answers under that comment. Should this emerge from the answers produced - once the ranking algorithm kicks in?
- the rank of a random top story.
modifying the logic is not going to be easy, it's a lisp like language - not at all my cup of tea. I already had to make a few modifications because the website is behind a reverse proxy and I'd prefer not to do it again :) For topic ranking - I think that is fine. We don't really care about which is the most liked question. We probably care more about answers to specific questions, right?
Marcin
Thread 1
Marcin Jakubowski <marcin@opensourceecology.org> Thu, Mar 26, 4:04 PM (13 days ago) to Benoit
Check out this thread - I inquired if the source for the Hacker News site is available. They say yes. Can you try a demo install? One major point we need is good upvoting. Either Hacker News software or Askbot appear to be good options, and we would then use Discourse (in progress) for embeddable threads on wiki pages.
Marcin
Forwarded message ---------
From: Hacker News <hn@ycombinator.com> Date: Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 3:49 PM Subject: Re: HN software To: Marcin Jakubowski <marcin@opensourceecology.org>
It's available as a tar download - see the install link. There's an Arc forum where you can ask questions, and maybe some resources out there on the web; I'm not sure. We don't have the cycles to provide support for it, I'm afraid.
Daniel
On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 1:44 PM Marcin Jakubowski <marcin@opensourceecology.org> wrote: Ah, ok - can you send me a direct link? Not sure where to look. Is that on Github/Gitlab? Are there any howtos for installing a Hacker News-like upvote site?
Marcin
On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 3:32 PM Hacker News <hn@ycombinator.com> wrote:
Yes, it's bundled in! Sorry that wasn't clear.
Daniel
On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 1:22 PM Marcin Jakubowski <marcin@opensourceecology.org> wrote: Hi Daniel,
Not sure if we're on the same page. I was referring to the actual Hacker News website software, https://news.ycombinator.com/ - not the language that the software is written in. Is the actual software - its upvote/downvote and ask capability - available as open source?
Marcin
On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 12:17 PM Hacker News <hn@ycombinator.com> wrote: Yes, check out the link on that page where it says "basic web apps". The Arc language was developed by Paul Graham who created HN and co-founded YC. It's a dialect of Lisp, which he became well-known for writing books (in the 1990s) and essays (in the 2000s) about.
Hacker News still runs on Arc. Someday we'll release the updates we've made to the language and the application.
Daniel
On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 12:20 AM Marcin Jakubowski <marcin@opensourceecology.org> wrote: Thanks. Is that the right link, though? Arc language?
Marcin
On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 1:06 AM Hacker News <hn@ycombinator.com> wrote: There's an older version at http://arclanguage.org/. People do run forums using it, and you're welcome to do the same!
Daniel (moderator)
On Wed, Mar 25, 2020 at 10:26 PM Marcin Jakubowski <marcin@opensourceecology.org> wrote: Hi HN,
Is the software that runs Hacker News open source? I'm the founder of Open Source Ecology - we would like to install our own instance.
Marcin
