[HN Gopher] Trust signals as sparklines for Hacker News
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Trust signals as sparklines for Hacker News
Author : solaire_oa
Score : 72 points
Date : 2026-03-26 16:43 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (hn-trustspark.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hn-trustspark.com)
| cpa wrote:
| Interesting, but how is the trust signal measured? I couldn't
| find this information
| cobertos wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it's based off of the configuration in the
| green gear in the top right of the iframe. You can inspect the
| ways it's calculated from karma, comments, etc etc
| CalRobert wrote:
| If you look at the config it's based on karma, comments,
| submission rate, comment rate (optional), and account age
| (that is, if you trust it actually uses the config how it
| says)
| angry_octet wrote:
| There are some high karma accounts which make a great
| contribution, and others which ... don't. I'm doubtful
| whether karma or account age has a significant signal
| beyond anti-spam.
|
| But it would be useful to know if I had up/down voted them
| significantly in the past.
| krapp wrote:
| The only thing karma reliably indicates is participation
| over time, the signal is too noisy for anything else. If
| anything high karma should be a red flag. The very best
| contributors here rarely comment because they have better
| things to do. It shows an 8/8 score for me and I doubt
| anyone would consider me a top tier high quality
| contributor.
|
| A plugin like HN Comments Owl would be more useful IMHO.
| annie511266728 wrote:
| If it's not transparent, it kind of defeats the whole idea of a
| "trust" signal -- at that point it's just a number you either
| believe or ignore.
| xnx wrote:
| "trust me bro" signal
| adrianwaj wrote:
| Great idea.
|
| I think friend/foe and trust signals should come from a user's
| voting. So I think it should operate transparently to the user
| and there should be a default shade-out option of bad actors, but
| with the option to view. So it's set-and-forget. On the backend -
| could you make it so if you've never visited HN before, and you
| install the plugin, the experience changes accordingly?
|
| I had the idea to setup a forum somewhere else - this sort of
| functionality would come in handy as part of normal operation.
| alex7o wrote:
| Where can I see mine?
| CalRobert wrote:
| Install the plugin and then load up your profile page, or any
| page with ac omment from you (like this one)
|
| You have an overall 7 out of 8.
| vivid242 wrote:
| After attention, are we now in the trust economy... a brilliant
| idea for a plugin - thank you!
| amelius wrote:
| The problem is that I don't trust plugins.
|
| Is there a way to do this from a bookmarklet?
| solaire_oa wrote:
| Author here. I tried a bookmarklet, that was my preference,
| but the security headers in HN were too strict. As far as I
| could tell anyway.
| gyanchawdhary wrote:
| this UX is basically the (not so clever) equivalent of that blue
| tick status signal nonsense they have on insta ..
| Izmaki wrote:
| Great way to gatekeep new contributors trying to be helpful with
| news. Run the link through URL Scan if you're paranoid...
| hluska wrote:
| I wish I wouldn't have read this comment from you, so you may
| be onto a feature.
| onli wrote:
| Suggestion: instead of just popping in the computed graphic add a
| placeholder immediately - four low grey bars should work well, in
| the same width as the final sparkline graphics. That way the text
| on the page will not jump later when the final sparklines are
| ready.
| nickphx wrote:
| No, thank you.
| mentalgear wrote:
| It's a nice idea, but I have mostly stopped using/installing any
| software that is not open-source a long time ago. So, please
| open-source it, especially if you want users to truly trust it.
|
| Even then, I would recommend anyone to install (small to mid)
| browser extensions by cloning and inspecting the source and just
| then loading it yourself - if you don't know: any browser
| extension can read input/password fields across all site(s) you
| gave it access to (yeah, it's crazy but unfortunately true).
| smusamashah wrote:
| This could become/converted to a userscript making it easy to
| inspect and more cross compatible. It's very easy these days.
| imiric wrote:
| To be fair, the .xpi is just a .zip file, and the JS isn't
| minimized.
|
| I vibe-converted it to a userscript[1], but it doesn't work
| for me in qutebrowser because it depends on profile data
| fetched from `https://hn-trustspark.com/alltrust.json`, which
| seems to be periodically updated by the author, and
| qutebrowser has limited userscript support. :(
|
| It could probably be worked around by fetching the data
| externally, but I don't want to depend on hn-trustspark.com.
| It would be great if the profile updating tool could be
| published as well.
|
| Anyway, hope it helps someone else :)
|
| FWIW, after a quick review of the script, it looks safe to
| me. As long as you trust that the served profile data is
| correct, and don't mind leaking your IP to it.
|
| Great idea and kudos to the author! We need more tools like
| this to help us deal with spam, and not just on HN, but
| everywhere.
|
| [1]: https://gist.github.com/imiric/a5d1cd187e91eb0b725c46612
| 50e5...
| defrost wrote:
| It's a good idea, provided nothing sketchy goes on either
| now or in a future update ... I'm playing about with it but
| will likely unload it soon enough.
|
| One issue: New accounts with Zero submissions get a full
| green stack for "Submission Trust" (0 submissions in 0
| days).
|
| That comes across as three flat red lines and a singl tall
| green stack - not sure if that's the right message.
|
| Submissions is an odd one ... those people that submit a
| story seen on the tech blogs once a day get bucketed
| together with habitual spammers of poor quality posts.
| solaire_oa wrote:
| Thanks! Nice, you found the alltrust.json file ha. Yes, a
| bg job running on an rpi leverages HN APIs and builds the
| alltrust file by the minute, for all "active" accounts.
| Technically fetching that data is all you'd need to make
| your own script/plugin.
|
| It's centralized for a few reasons though, first being that
| client-side API requests would be discourteous to the APIs
| (flood/ddos), and a whole new level of error handling would
| be required. Shared IPs, like those in a tech company
| building, would easily and quickly reach the API limits. So
| that's the reasoning, if you're curious.
| password4321 wrote:
| Wow "trust as in trust me bro", thanks for the heads-up. Only Y
| Combinator is allowed that level of access to HN karma metadata
| right now; what a gold mine.
| solaire_oa wrote:
| Author here. This is a good callout, there are a few reasons
| why it's a plugin and not open source (yet).
|
| First is that I didn't want to make a plugin in the first
| place, I wanted to make a bookmarklet, but HN's CSP policy was
| too strict. So that was a bummer.
|
| Second is that I have very mixed feelings about open source
| these days, and so open-sourcing feels less and less like the
| sensible default state. One of the sibling comments here
| discovered the alltrust.json and vibecoded around it, which is
| really a case in point about why open sourcing feels like I'd
| be leaving myself "open" to be domineered (not just by users,
| but by bots and companies as well).
|
| Third is that the system/plugin is partly LLM-assisted itself
| (even though the code is minuscule), and I'm self conscious of
| being a slop-slinger. Or at least, pushing up repos with LLM
| code just feels, idk... lazy and asymmetrical (despite this
| plugin having clear utility, which I think it does).
|
| But it's completely fair to say "oh look, a plugin about trust
| that's closed source, how hypocritical." I get that. If there's
| enough interest I'll open source it, sure.
| imiric wrote:
| Hey, that's a perfectly reasonable stance, and I can relate
| to it.
|
| Apologies for working around it and putting the code out
| there against your wishes. If you check my post history, you
| can see how opposed I am to these new tools, and "vibe
| coding" specifically. In my defense, I really didn't want to
| spend a lot of time on this, and LLMs do a decent job at this
| type of mechanical conversion. And I really don't judge
| anyone for using them mindfully, as you've clearly done in
| this case. The code didn't read like slop to me, if it's any
| consolation. :)
|
| Besides, this "closed source" criticism is really a non-issue
| in this case considering it's a browser extension with clear
| JS, which anyone can inspect if they were really interested.
|
| Cheers!
|
| EDIT: I've deleted the gist. :)
| solaire_oa wrote:
| No problem at all! I didn't mean to be accusatory. And I
| wouldn't say inspecting the plugin code is against my
| wishes at all, no, definitely keep that hacker spirit
| alive! And feel free to reload the gist.
|
| I suppose that my point is more that creating a GitHub repo
| has some strings attached to it nowadays, is all.
| neom wrote:
| Great idea! I've been running my own chrome plugin I made that is
| similar, but recently discovered this: https://oj-hn.com/ and
| intend to start to contribute to it as it's very good and hope it
| grows. Something like Sparklines would be great in oj also for us
| chrome users, I really like the Sparklines implementation.
| arjie wrote:
| I considered something like this but I find the UX of information
| too noisy. In practice, I much prefer simply performing a ternary
| block/leave alone/highlight functionality. And it's comments that
| bother me more than links.
| bryanhogan wrote:
| Interesting idea, wondering if the 4 bars are a good way to
| evaluate accounts.
|
| Some more thoughts:
|
| 1. The website needs a description of what this project even is.
|
| 2. Open-source the code, especially since it's just for the
| community, I'd be vary of installing "some random" extension from
| the store.
|
| 3. The modal element in the iFrame on the website is cutoff on
| mobile widths using Firefox.
| adammarples wrote:
| I don't know what trust signals or sparklines are
| layer8 wrote:
| Luckily, we have dictionaries and encyclopedias:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_signals
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparkline
| Kkoala wrote:
| This should have at least a basic description of how the trust
| signal works and is calculated
| croemer wrote:
| Does anyone have an archive.is? Page hasn't been loading the 4
| times I tried over the course of an hour.
|
| Found one: https://web.archive.org/web/20260328080015/https://hn-
| trusts...
| Lapra wrote:
| The problem with having a public trust score is that it'll be
| gamed by bad actors A/B testing their bots surely.
| layer8 wrote:
| I wouldn't call four bars a sparkline.
| mooreds wrote:
| Site breaks for my account? Maybe I'm not trusted? But I see no
| sparklines next to my username when I visit https://hn-
| trustspark.com/ and have posts on the newest page.
| mooreds wrote:
| Actually, it did just blur out one of my submissions so maybe
| it does work and my other submissions are, as the kids say,
| mid.
| solaire_oa wrote:
| Oh wow, You're a human with a high submission rate! I assumed
| accounts like these were bots. I've seen a large number of
| accounts like yours in `/newest`, indeed, it's the reason I
| made the default demo penalize high submission rates. If you
| don't mind me asking, what are you submission habits? Do you
| just submit links you find interesting often? And does the
| karma rewards factor into your routine submissions?
|
| (I'm not being facetious or accusatory, I'm genuinely
| interested learning how some of these high submission rates
| operate, since a lot look automated).
| mooreds wrote:
| haha, no worries.
|
| > what are you submission habits? Do you just submit links
| you find interesting often?
|
| Pretty much. I will often email myself links I think might
| be interesting, then batch up submissions. I also like to
| highlight friends' posts.
|
| > And does the karma rewards factor into your routine
| submissions?
|
| It's always fun to get karma, but I like the fact I can
| call attention to someone or something that deserves it
| more.
|
| I also wrote and talked about my thoughts on HN and how to
| be a good community member a bit more:
|
| - in this blog post:
| https://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/3530
|
| - in this podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrObxK-
| J_3I
| solaire_oa wrote:
| Darn, I really thought submission rates were the lowest
| hanging fruit for bot detection, and it doesn't appear
| this is the case.
|
| Thanks for commenting so I could see this.
|
| For what it's worth, penalizing submission rates is not
| the default in the plugin itself, that's just for the
| demo. And also, in my testing, HN at large has "high
| trust" practically everywhere. My own account is
| consistently one of the lowest scoring that I come
| across, ironically. So perhaps this plugin isn't as
| useful as I had hoped.
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(page generated 2026-03-28 23:01 UTC)