The site
Hacker News is a public message board at news.ycombinator.com, started in 2007 and run by the startup investor Y Combinator. Anyone can submit a link — most often about software, science, or building companies — and registered readers vote it up or reply to it.
It is deliberately plain. There are no images in the feed, no advertising between the stories, and no personalisation: everyone who loads the front page at the same moment sees the same list, in the same order. That last property is what makes the site measurable at all. A ranking that differs per person could not be captured and compared.
How a story reaches the front page
A new submission lands on a separate new page that comparatively few people read. Each upvote gives it one point. Gather enough points quickly and it moves onto the front page, where far more people see it — which tends to bring more votes still.
Two forces pull the other way. A story's position decays automatically as it ages, so standing still means sliding down. And readers can flag a submission, which pushes it down or off the list entirely. Most submissions never reach the front page. One that does is usually there for hours, not days.
The four measures
Atlas keeps these four separate everywhere, and never adds them into a single score. They answer different questions, and combining them would produce a number nobody could check.
- Rank
- Where a story sat in the list at one captured moment. Position 1 is the top of the front page.
- Attention
- The story's points — upvotes net of downvotes, exactly as Hacker News reports them.
- Discussion
- How many comments the story has attracted.
- Time
- How long the story was observed on the page, counted between scheduled readings.
How to read them without being misled
Rank is a moment, not a verdict. Because position decays with age, a story at number 3 may be newer rather than better-liked than one at number 8. Rank tells you where something was at the moment of capture, and nothing about how it got there.
Points are attention, not agreement. People upvote what they find worth arguing about as readily as what they endorse. A high score means many readers thought the submission deserved to be seen — not that they agreed with it, and not that it is accurate.
Comments measure argument as often as interest. The most-discussed story of a day is frequently the most contested one. A story can be widely read and barely discussed, or lightly read and fiercely debated; the comment count alone does not distinguish those.
Time is bounded by the readings. The list is captured on a schedule, so a duration is the span between captures that contained the story — not a continuous stopwatch. A gap between captures stays a gap, and is never filled in by estimate.
What none of this tells you
No measure here establishes that a story is true, important, well-reported, or good. Votes and comments record what a particular self-selected audience did with a link on a particular day. They are evidence about that audience's attention, and nothing more.
Atlas is independently operated and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Hacker News or Y Combinator.