Don't put the low-point stories in your list because it makes the load times incredibly high for your page.
Additionally, there's a flaw with your definition of evergreen: a large portion of the (YYYY) submissions are made in order to provide ironic juxtaposition with current events, which makes the submission meaningless outside of that context.
Agreed. But I got a laugh out of the fact that the least valuable "evergreen" is called "Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce." So that's what that guy is on...
His grandmother spent 10,000 hours making it every Sunday.
In all seriousness, this list, however flawed, is nice to take a look at as I see I've missed a few of these. But a cutoff would probably make more sense, at least on the main page.
Tellingly, Malcolm Gladwell talking about spaghetti sauce is just him talking about someone else's research. It should really be called "Malcolm Gladwell on Howard Moskowitz on spaghetti sauce".
I think you're being a bit too harsh by repeating that the author's analysis is flawed. Like Wikipedia, it's good enough. It gives an interesting overview of past submissions without trying to be perfect.
I’m also wondering what fraction of evergreen articles are actually marked with a date. For example this submission [1] was much more popular than the same submission with a date [2].
Here is the section that addresses the randomness you speak of:
"For a given month, consider the collection of scores of evergreen stories (or non-evergreen stories). It is reasonable to assume that the observed collection of scores is only one of many possible ways the collections of scores might have occurred, i.e. the scores could have occurred with different values from what we observe. Rephrased as a thought experiment, if we had the ability to repeat the story submissions for a given month many times, we would expect the scores to vary from one attempt to the next. Let’s formalize this concept.
In the analysis that follows, we treat each measurement as a realization of a random variable. For example, in a given month, let’s say there are n evergreen stories, each with a score. We view the collection of scores in a given month as being generated by a sequence, X_1, …, X_n, of independent random variables."
The "randomness" I'm referring to is the answer why one submission got more points than another. It depends on multiple factors, such as time submitted, density of other submissions, current events etc.
This is the same reason your theory is flawed: assuming "independent random variables" only works if events have an equal probability of occurring.
Good point. Ideally, the data should be normalized wrt. total number of HN accounts. But it’s likely just meant as a treasure trove of submission, which it probably still is to some extent.
Additionally, there's a flaw with your definition of evergreen: a large portion of the (YYYY) submissions are made in order to provide ironic juxtaposition with current events, which makes the submission meaningless outside of that context.