This is excellent! I had envisioned doing something like this but never got around to it. Thank you!
A few ideas for enhancements:
- the ability to sort comments by a user defined formula using karma points, number of comments in thread, and date (Later comments get too many points because the site has grown so much.)
- a few formatting options
- a service than prints hard copies...
AFAIC, anyone who has submitted 100 good comments to Hacker News has effectively "written a book". You may not realize it, but you are an author and an authority on something. You should have hard copies of your pdf (in a pamphlet or handout of some sort) and you should carry a half dozen of them everywhere you go.
It may seem kind of silly, but if you've contributed value here, you should not be ashamed to share it with others, whether they be customers, prospective employers, or anyone you meet networking.
Your top 100 comments (The best of <xxx>) says volumes more about who you are than any resume or business card. You should be proud to share it.
Yup. My top comment is a one-liner aphorism about the US and China, while one of my favorite comments (encouraging people to get into OS & kernel development http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=740718) is way down at the bottom. C'est la vie.
Feature request: Make the queries linkable. I think people would appreciate being able to have permalinks for themselves or HN leaders like tptacek, patio11 and jacquesm.
It would also be very interesting to see how the results for edw519 size up against his own curated comment list: http://edweissman.com/53640595
This is also good for your site. You'll get more links now because people can link to the particular things they're interested in rather than just the homepage.
One thing I find interesting about my own highly ranked comments (and, I suspect, a lot of the lower ranked ones too) is how many of them reference books or articles that elaborate in much more detail on the subject. The rest tend to rely on my personal experiences and domain knowledge. I don't think this is a coincidence: a lot of the best comments exploit some kind of information asymmetry, where the writer knows something or knows about things that most don't and hence has a lot to contribute.
(Exception to my general rule above: this comment).
Apparently the best thing I've ever said was a complaint about an inaccurate headline.
The seventeenth-best thing I've ever said was that "Gorillas aren't monkeys" with a somewhat later edit in which I complain about how many people are modding me up for such a pointless nitpick.
And the fortieth-best thing I've ever said was:
Of all the fantasies I've ever heard which involve a hotel room, a comely young lady, fifteen thousand dollars and all-you-can-drink cranberry juice, that's the dullest, I'm sorry.
I have no idea what the context was, but it sounds way better out of context.
Really though, the biggest problem with this is that it overwhelmingly contains recent comments due to karma inflation.
I commend you for using <map> to link the markers to the items. Image maps... wow that takes me back to 1999. I can't believe people still remember how to use them. Of course you can't do any rollover effects with them, but otherwise it seems like a pretty quick and effective solution for the interface you wanted to make. When I first saw this I thought the Google Chart API had maybe changed to add JavaScript-based interactions.
However, I use the static image version + <map> since the JS version of the scatter chart is missing some features (no alpha channel, fixed marker size).
What will be really cool is to see how the "hide comment scores" effect looks using this (assuming at some point they will be able to collect that). I think the one liner type comments might show a big drop.
The switch happened in mid-May, 2011 (I don't remember the actual date). My scores went up slightly, but using this tool it's impossible to tell (since the limit is 100). I tried to change the limit in the HTML file using firebug, but I guess there's a server-side check for that (good!). Anyone care to hook against the API?
None of the data points are appearing on the chart when I look at it. I'm using Safari 5. Sounds like a cool idea - but right now it's a pain to have to keep downloading the PDF to see the chart.
When did PG remove the scores from comments again? This tool can tell if people upvote less when scores are hidden. Doesn't seem to be the case on a few random test names I tried.
Feature Request: Quick optional filter for "minimum length", rather than having to look for the big dots. The short comments are pithy, but many seem to be context-specific.
A few ideas for enhancements:
- the ability to sort comments by a user defined formula using karma points, number of comments in thread, and date (Later comments get too many points because the site has grown so much.)
- a few formatting options
- a service than prints hard copies...
AFAIC, anyone who has submitted 100 good comments to Hacker News has effectively "written a book". You may not realize it, but you are an author and an authority on something. You should have hard copies of your pdf (in a pamphlet or handout of some sort) and you should carry a half dozen of them everywhere you go.
It may seem kind of silly, but if you've contributed value here, you should not be ashamed to share it with others, whether they be customers, prospective employers, or anyone you meet networking.
Your top 100 comments (The best of <xxx>) says volumes more about who you are than any resume or business card. You should be proud to share it.