Hacker News Reader

Comment by vorador | Hacker News Reader

Why not remove the leaderboard altogether ? I don't see what it brings, except competition because people want to get listed.

View on HN

It rewards people for their contributions to the site.

the real reward would be if the top 100 people got the ability to add live dofollow links in their profiles. that way people would get a little bit of Google juice for their sites

That puts a horrible incentive on those who would do it just for the links.

The best incentives are non monetary. Real people are motivated by them.

Not really, the lowest # on the leaderboard right now is ~4.2K.

To get that you'd need to spend like 6-7 months on HN submitting quality stuff or making quality posts(need those votes). Noone is going to do all that for a single link, they'd rather spend that time adding their site to a bunch of directories or writing articles to submit to content farms.

I think you underestimate both the capability for automation and the motivation of the spammers.

The motivation for the spammers would be the direct clickthrough from the new page that's what they're doing it for today, their accounts would never have a snowballs chance in hell to make it to the leaderboard.

Votingrings with sockpuppets would be detected long before they would get even near that level, presumably long before they'd reach even 10% of what it takes to get on the leaderboard.

There must be softer targets than the HN leaderboard.

You get live dofollow links to stuff you submit, if it gets voted up. And it has actual anchor text, instead of being a raw URL.

yeah but you keep the high PR juice only for as long as your site is on the front page:

front page: PR7 page 2: PR0

the top100 leaderboard user profile on the other hand: PR4

I second this motion.

There are a lot of guys here working hard on their startups who have also spent a boatload of hours on HN submitting, ranking, and commenting. Giving them a little GoogleJuice doesn't hurt HN at all (want to take a year to get on the board just for one link? Don't think so) and it helps some of us out a bit.

Hey, that's a really good idea! Is anybody listening?

I would LOVE it if HN did this, and would directly benefit, but I think it's a profoundly bad idea. If you thought people obsessed about karma now... (ahem, Jacques).

I like it in the sense that it starts the transition towards the monetization of karma, which is a pet interest of mine. I would totally sell links in my profile.

Personal leaderboard would serve better - who are the people I upmode the most? Who are the people they upmode the most?

I think the leaderboard is a very good reward for the people who spend quite a lot of time on submitting quality links and contributing to discussions with good comments. every upvote on Hacker News (especially in the comments section) is hard-earned IMHO. the community upvotes quality, and that's one of the main reasons why I love to read links from Hacker News and take part on discussions here. for me it's really rewarding when I see that one of my comments / submissions got an upvote (note: I'm no karma-wh__e by any means!)

I don't see any use of it either.

The term "Leader" makes me uncomfortable in the first place, English is not my first language, that's why maybe it resonate for me as in : "The persons who rules the others".

In my opinion "Top contributors" would be more appropriate.

Leaderboard, one word, is a term from sports leagues meaning the highest scoring players or teams. Obviously in sports no-one gains "authority" over the other players by scoring more goals; it is a means of recognizing equals.

"Leader" doesn't necessarily have those connotations for English speakers. It means, "The person whom others follow." Generally, "the person who rules others," is the "Ruler."

"Leader" can imply "ruler," but it can also mean someone who is winning a competition (his opponent are behind in score and hence are "following" him) or someone whom other voluntarily follow.

It is generally considered a benign term.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com