Comment by l____ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by l____ | Hacker News Reader

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> Yeah, I'm sure the causal arrow goes both ways.

Even not fully realizing this (see my replay to @tofflos) I did not exclude such a possibility and that's why I performed the Granger causality test for both hypotheses (SO influencing HN and HN influencing SO).

> But I'm puzzled by the framing. If I were looking at the relationship, I'd be asking questions like: Is HN a good place to post if I want to make something popular? If I learn about something on HN, is it likely to become popular? If I want to know what the next big thing is, is HN an indicator of that?

I guess these are different questions which are not covered by my analysis.

> If I'm thinking of SO as the cause of something, it'd be mainly in the category of docs: a supporting factor. So I'd be inclined to measure documentation and developer resources more generally.

To be honest, I do not understand this one. Could you please elaborate?

Sure. I personally wouldn't put SO down as the cause of anything in that I think it's intermediate in the kinds of causal chains I see around software popularity. I almost never hear about a new technology on SO. I'm there because I am already using it, have a question, and see a Google result.

So if I'm looking at technology adoption, SO is in a basket of factors that I think of as supporting. Does this technology have a website? Is it easy to get started? Is there a place where I can chat with people? Is there a meetup? Is there a conference? Are there good docs? Are there good videos? Are there blog posts and books? And, of course, are there good questions and answers?

All of these supporting factors can keep somebody on the road to adoption, in that once somebody has decided to try the technology, they aid the person in getting to a useful result. I don't think they're causal in the sense of initiating anything. But if I squint I could call them causal in the sense that if you invest in them, you see increased adoption. Given their substitutability, though, if I were looking at causality I'd try to find a broader metric than SO alone.

is that helpful?

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