Most popular links in Hacker News comments, 2006–2015

I have seen xkcd #927 used to dismiss discussions of standards on HN so many times that it is the only xkcd comic I can recognize by number.

Thanks for this. I just discovered <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;hckrnews.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;hckrnews.com</a> for the first time through your list of links. I think I&#x27;ll be using it to browse the site from now on!

Just reread the 2003 Paul Graham post about PR firms, which is of course a great insight (hence all the reposts), but I had to chuckle at the last part where he goes on about how, unlike print journalists, <i>bloggers</i> are <i>far</i> too principled to be fed stories by PR firms.

It is strongly worth nothing that there has been a shift in comment sentiment&#x2F;quality over the years. In early HN, comments were more hostile and would definitely be killed by the modern mod team. (it&#x27;s where the HN stereotypes originated)<p>See my old list of the Top Comments for each month of HN since 2006 and note the difference between the old comments and recent comments: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;spreadsheets&#x2F;d&#x2F;1ZwonVX_KlDYhuhPnAAnVpdVRgu4LxldP74-c_kvOd5k&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;spreadsheets&#x2F;d&#x2F;1ZwonVX_KlDYhuhPnAAnV...</a><p>At the least, there is no situation nowadays on HN where commenting with <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;386&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;386&#x2F;</a> would be considered appropriate.

So a bunch of Graham, a bunch of XKCD (top one being the one on standards), and a bit of joel.

Most of these look like things I&#x27;d expect.<p>However, number 13 is an obvious spam link if you look at the mentions.<p>I wonder how HN protects against this type of spam and how this particular spam got through. The most recent mention was 4 years ago, so it would appear this particular issue is fixed in the current software.

My <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ihackernews.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ihackernews.com</a> made the list. I&#x27;ve had zero time over the last 5 years to maintain it. Some nice person did convert it to js, based on the now available hacker news API. Now that this site renders better on mobile there&#x27;s really no need for ihackernews. Reach out to me if you&#x27;d like to do something with it.

#13 is a spam bot, looks like the site got shut down or something

It&#x27;s interesting to compare HN&#x27;s usage frequency of particular xkcd comics compared to elsewhere on the internet (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcdref.info&#x2F;statistics&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcdref.info&#x2F;statistics&#x2F;</a>)

Something I&#x27;ve noticed of late is that there are things one can criticise on HN and receive reasoned rebuttal, and other things where any criticism will receive a flurry of downvotes but little discussion.

If anyone is curious, Link #5 (broken) is now hosted here: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ejucovy.github.io&#x2F;readability&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ejucovy.github.io&#x2F;readability&#x2F;</a>

I&#x27;m sure the first 2 are simply people trying to remember&#x2F;understand what formatting is supported. I wish it was a bit more prominent.

fullmalls.com at #13 and etradinglife.com at #15? Maybe you should filter for dead or flagged comments?

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;circleci.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;circleci.com</a> is 37 on the list. 37! Ahead of I think any other SaaS company.<p>Either my unintentional content marketing campaign has paid off, or something is weird with how they count this.

I&#x27;m kinda surprised that <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;1172&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;1172&#x2F;</a> didn&#x27;t make the list..

Rank 50 is missing. I wonder what it was!

I was hoping the cdc.gov links would make it given the number of discussions of mortality in the USA.

Why is Google.com mentioned twice?

Google appears twice. 92 and 82. Makes me wonder how good this list really is.