Habrahabr

Habrahabr

Type of site	collaborative blog
Available in	Russian
Owner	Thematic Media
Created by	Denis Kryuchkov
Website	https://habr.com/
Alexa rank	531 ((As of June 2014))
Commercial	Yes
Registration	required for participation, only by invitation
Launched	26 May 2006
Current status	Online

Habrahabr (also "Habr") (Russian: Хабрахабр, Хабр) is a Russia n collaborative blog with elements of social network about IT, Computer science and anything related to the Internet, owned by Thematic Media. Habrahabr was founded in June 2006.

Habrahabr often compared to other technology sites, such as Engadget or Hacker News. "Тематические Медиа" developed group of websites ("Тостер" toster.ru, "Мегамозг" megamozg.ru, "Мозгохранилище" brainstorage.me, "Фрилансим" freelansim.ru) after they developed habrahabr.ru.

In 2007, Habrahabr won in two nominations at the ROTOR (Russian: РОТОР): Discovery of the Year (Russian: Открытие года) and Online Community of the Year (Russian: Интернет-сообщество года). Also, the website's author, Denis Kryuchkov, won in nomination Producer of the Year (Russian: Продюсер года). In 2009, the website again won in nomination Online Community of the Year.

Sections

Blogs

Thematic system, personal and corporate blogs. Each team blog consists of two sections: the first ("zahabrennye") broadcast topics approved users (habratopiki), the second ("othabrennye") - habratopiki that users did not like. Corporate blogs Habrahabr have companies such as Google, Yandex, ABBYY, Intel, Microsoft, REG.RU and others. Blogs were later renamed Hub.

Questions and Answers (Q & A)

Since the autumn of 2010 a service questions and answers, similar to Google services FAQ. In this section, any user can ask questions about the IT-topics and receive answers from other members of the project.

In 2013, the year separated from the portal Habrahbr and became an independent site toster.ru.

People

Section provides statistics on the registered users (distribution by country and region, the number of registered and active users) and includes user rating, built on the basis of their habrasily. In the present karmagraf - a graph showing the cumulative change indicators karma users.

Corporate

Rating companies, one way or another connected with the sphere of high technologies. Basis rating - the assessment by users of a particular company.

Job board

The section devoted to industry job boards. All resumes and vacancies divided by sector ("consulting, outsourcing," "Optimizing sites (SEO)», «Media", etc.). Position can accommodate only a user with a non-negative karma. Summary Users with negative karma will not appear in the list summary.

Sandbox

Sandbox is designed for posts from read-only users. Posts get there from users who have not yet received access to commenting and creating posts without pre-moderation. After hitting the post in the sandbox it is to see someone from "zahabrennyh," and if he is interested in the post, it will be added to the main section.

Mechanisms

Karma

The karma is a value assigned to each user. It can be changed by other users (and no one but them). It is a form of community-driven moderation, since the karma level impacts the user's privileges.

The starting point of karma for new users is 0.00, although since Habrahabr had become an invitation-only resource, newly invited users get a first “plus” from the inviter.

A user who has a karma of at least 5 is able to contribute to someone’s else karma value, increasing or decreasing its value by 1. The contribution can be changed later. The number of karma changes per day is limited with one's own karma value (for example, a user with 7.00 can vote 7 times a day).

Reasons for changing Karma vary. Most “pluses” are received for good posts, useful or humorous comments and other actions in good standing. “Minuses” may be result of offence, spam or other bad actions. Some users tend to change Karma in holywar purposes (say, Chrome supporters may give “minuses” to those who stated they will never leave Firefox).

To publish posts, one must have a positive karma value. This way, spammers, poor writers and the like are quickly squeezed out by the community.

With a positive karma value, you are also allowed to use some HTML in your comments. For users with a negative karma, comments are text-only, and their rate is limited to one per 5 minutes.

When the karma value is above 5, you can alter the karma of other users; voting for comments is available from a karma value of 2.00.

Upon reaching 50 points of Karma, the user is granted one invite to invite others. This happens only once, with breaking the barrier. If Karma drops below 50 and then rises above 50 again, no new invitations are given.

Also you get one invite for every 100 rating points, that one of your posts got (ex. 0 invites for a post with -inf...99 rating points, 1 invite — 100...199 rating points, and so on).

Rating

The rating is also a value assigned to each user. Rating depends on Karma, positive and negative votes of other users for posts and comments. However, the exact formula is unknown.

Voting for topics and comments

Voting for topics and comments helps users show their opinion about them.

Using this tool users can determine the importance of a subject, thus making a new topic appear on the main page or "unhabr" it.