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I don't think the actual HN "database" has that much info. You would need to reconstruct this from the complete server logs, along with application logs for PG's direct updates (assuming he doesn't use the web interface)


I imagine it does... It has to at least know who upvoted, to prevent revotes. The timestamp is frequently stored as well.


It has to at least know who upvoted, to prevent revotes.

HN has to know who voted, not which way someone voted. HN doesn't let you change your vote once its been made, but it does let you downvote once you have enough karma.


Maybe they use a bloom filter to store who voted per comment, that would be an efficient way to prevent upvotes without needing to store much data.


I don't think this would work well. The occasional false-positives would look like annoying glitches, every now and then making it look like your account had been hijacked by hiding the buttons as if you had already 'voted'. Although maybe I'm not getting the math right?

Also, the existence of the 'saved stories' link from the user page would seem to indicate that for stories at least a full list is being stored.




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