hn-popularity-contest-data

Thanks for asking! Site: https://www.evalapply.org/ Blog: https://www.evalapply.org/posts/ Feed: https://www.evalapply.org/index.xml Custom generator: https://github.com/adityaathalye/shite EvalApply.org also made mtlynch's annual list (mind blown)! The Most Popular Blogs of Hacker News in 2025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46478377 He has kindly CC0-licensed his data: https://github.com/mtlynch/hn-popularity-contest-data ... Perhaps you can use it to seed your site.

Thanks, Phil! Updated! https://github.com/mtlynch/hn-popularity-contest-data/pull/9...

Everything is default included, and I have a long list of not-blog domains that are excluded.[0] Plus, I exclude the Alexa top 500. There are lots of not-blogs still in the dataset, but I just exclude them when I come across them in popular views. But I'm sure if you dig through positions 101-5000 you'll find lots of domains that don't match my official criteria for a blog. https://github.com/mtlynch/hn-popularity-contest-data/blob/m...

>There's some data issues in the full dataset, expectedly. My blog got around 200 points this year, which should be enough to hit #2077, but the blog does not appear at all. Yeah, the minimum for inclusion is 500 upvotes across all front page stories.[0] >Also baseten.co is not a personal blog. Thanks, I've updated the dataset to exclude baseten.[1] It should disappear in the next hour or so. Which view did they appear in? I don't see them anywhere in the top 100. [0] https://refactoringenglish.com/tools/hn-popularity/methodolo... [1] https://github.com/mtlynch/hn-popularity-contest-data/pull/8...

Sorry about that! Thanks for the correction. I've updated the blog post and the dataset.[0] The blog updates instantly, but the dataset needs a few minutes for my pipeline to re-run and push to the CDN. [0] https://github.com/mtlynch/hn-popularity-contest-data/pull/8...

The methodology is explained here: https://refactoringenglish.com/tools/hn-popularity/methodolo... You won't show up unless your site is listed in this manually curated CSV file: https://github.com/mtlynch/hn-popularity-contest-data/blob/m...

You can submit a PR to update your bio here: https://github.com/mtlynch/hn-popularity-contest-data/blob/m... - there are 77 closed PRs for that repo already so it looks like it's a well managed path for updating that.

This CSV file looks potentially useful for other projects - maps domain names to author name, bio and tags and since it's in a GitHub repo you can JS fetch() it from any page via CORS https://github.com/mtlynch/hn-popularity-contest-data/blob/m...

Okay, updated! https://github.com/mtlynch/hn-popularity-contest-data/pull/4... But privately, I think of you as a security researcher, and there's nothing you can do about it. : ) Thanks for your writing and your security findings!

Ah, you're right. Thanks! Fixed: https://github.com/mtlynch/hn-popularity-contest-data/pull/3...

Author here. Thanks for letting me know. Fixed now: https://github.com/mtlynch/hn-popularity-contest-data/pull/3...

Author here. I tried submitting this as a Show HN a couple times but it didn't take, so I'm happy to see some interest! I caught this just before bed, but I'm happy to take any suggestions or questions, and I'll answer in the morning. If you'd like to improve the metadata, I welcome PRs here: https://github.com/mtlynch/hn-popularity-contest-data

Fixed now! https://github.com/mtlynch/hn-popularity-contest-data/pull/2... Sincerely, your biographer. : )

>I see blog.plover.com, the blog of Mark Jason Dominus, who by the way is looking for a job Whoops, that was a mistake. Fixed now: https://github.com/mtlynch/hn-popularity-contest-data/pull/2... >Also, dtrace.org is excluded, which hosts four individual blogs that surely should qualify. I didn't realize the authors were on distinguishable URLs, so I've now added them back and canonicalized them to their new subdomain URLs.

Yeah, that's a good point. I was trying to be respectful of the author's wishes around pseudonymity, as it seemed intentional that when he lost anonymity, he switched domains, so I didn't want to "out" the author, but it's kind of silly since it's very public now. I think you're right that it makes sense to identify him by his pseudonym rather than just "Anonymous" so I've updated it: https://github.com/mtlynch/hn-popularity-contest-data/pull/2...