This is a pretty good example of how certain metrics aren't always relevant to reality, or, at least match the headline. The word "feed" implies that HN depends on the contributions from/links to these sites, but most users of HN would argue that domains such as github.com, github.io, nytimes.com, etc. are far more prevalent and important to HN than virtually any of the domains listed here. HN depends on daily, traffic...It's not that the sites with high medians aren't <i>good</i>, but they don't "feed" HN...Median score in this context is a trivial metric. Number of top stories, daily, by domain would be far more relevant in showing what "feeds the beast", as they say in the media business.
<i>The link is updated to reflect the following</i><p>After SeanDav's question and minimaxir's comment, I summed up reposts' scores before computing the mean and the median:<p>HN news sources by <i>mean score</i>: <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tTDDG2xg7OVKdUy4WCZ_5__17u_IOM4WPpbmnZDbxUI/edit?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tTDDG2xg7OVKdUy4WCZ_...</a><p>HN news sources by <i>median score</i>: <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1P20sKg-fI6msZVZtJFe0UHozX94AUINsiG_-1mbpaoo/edit?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1P20sKg-fI6msZVZtJFe0...</a><p>HN news sources by <i>number of submissions</i>: <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mmfbNWaX0Nr1P65VmwZpm4WiceK7pepknSob4ti0M7s/edit?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mmfbNWaX0Nr1P65VmwZp...</a><p>SQL code: <a href="https://github.com/antontarasenko/smq/blob/master/hackernews/top-domains-median.sql" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/antontarasenko/smq/blob/master/hackernews...</a><p>How-to: <a href="https://github.com/antontarasenko/smq" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/antontarasenko/smq</a>
I really find it discouraging that Sam Altman is at the top of that list. Most of his articles fall into two categories: promoting things that will make him money directly[1], or myopic musings/self-serving advice to people that will make him money indirectly[2].<p>Is the HN algorithm rigged in favour of things he writes, or does this community really get a lot out the things he says?<p>[1] <a href="http://blog.samaltman.com/asana" rel="nofollow">http://blog.samaltman.com/asana</a><p>[2] <a href="http://blog.samaltman.com/the-tech-bust-of-2015" rel="nofollow">http://blog.samaltman.com/the-tech-bust-of-2015</a> made me laugh, for example
Surprised not to see <a href="http://nautil.us/" rel="nofollow">http://nautil.us/</a> on here. I have to avoid clicking articles to not spoil my print version I see them so often on here.<p>FWIW, if anyone from that site/mag are frequent HN readers, HN is the reason I subscribed, and gifted subscriptions to several of my family for xmas this year.
Besides cutting off at 10 submissions,you should probably also throw away anything that got say 2 points or less. Something like medium is brought way down by all the submissions that got 1 point, which means they probably never got seen. HN lets you resubmit low scoring items exactly for this reason.
I'd be more interested in seeing the distribution across submissions that actually made the front page.<p>There's a daily deluge of articles from ars, techcrunch, nytimes, etc, so the (tons) of articles that do get to the top get penalized by the ones that don't.<p>I don't think there's a flag for "hit front page" so might have to estimate that with a min point filter instead.
A brief motivation for the parameters:<p>1. Sorting by the median. The mean is not very informative for the quality of the source. Most sources provide low-scored content with eventual hits that drive the mean up. The median fixes this problem.<p>2. Cutting off at 10 submissions. An arbitrary minimum to exclude pure luck from the results.<p>In the end, this ranking excludes websites like github.com and youtube.com, but it features some less known sources.
This morning an article I visited from the front page had only been around 21 seconds and already had 60 comments.<p><a href="http://imgur.com/1oyIv2d" rel="nofollow">http://imgur.com/1oyIv2d</a>
I'm surprised I don't see medium in here.<p>Even more, I'm starting to see more post from medium nowadays that has declining quality relative to 2015.