Please tell us what features you'd like in news.ycombinator
1,590 comments
Please change page titles from "Hacker News | $TITLE" to "$TITLE | Hacker News". Right now, my tab bar shows a pile of orange [Y] icons that all say "Hacker Ne...", which makes them impossible to distinguish. The [Y] icon already tells me the tab points to Hacker News, so an excerpt of the title would help more than the site name.
Showing subdomains on all google domains would be nice.
There are lots of submissions from sites.google.com that seem much more clickable because they end with (google.com). Similarly I'd be more likely to click a link from code.google.com.
There are lots of submissions from sites.google.com that seem much more clickable because they end with (google.com). Similarly I'd be more likely to click a link from code.google.com.
Please remove up-vote buttons from the main page for unvisited links. An absence of these buttons could enforce a vote-after-read policy.
Titles are easily abused therefore It is not a good idea to vote based only on title without reading comments and/or a linked page.
It could diminish a number of bait-like sensational titles too.
Titles are easily abused therefore It is not a good idea to vote based only on title without reading comments and/or a linked page.
It could diminish a number of bait-like sensational titles too.
When you upvote a comment, if you have authored any parent comment in the the thread, your nick should be listed in the comment metadata ("Upvoted by commenters: tqbf, RiderOfGiraffes").
Upvotes/downvotes send conversational signals that incite responses, whether those responses have intrinsic value or not. So do critiques. Seeing the name of someone who just critiqued your comment in a list of your upvoters might neutralize some pointless flame wars.
To an extent, we already have this feature informally, because "I upvoted you, but..." has become an idiom on HN. I think it'd work better if it was automatic though, and it might incentivize "feel-good" upvotes.
Upvotes/downvotes send conversational signals that incite responses, whether those responses have intrinsic value or not. So do critiques. Seeing the name of someone who just critiqued your comment in a list of your upvoters might neutralize some pointless flame wars.
To an extent, we already have this feature informally, because "I upvoted you, but..." has become an idiom on HN. I think it'd work better if it was automatic though, and it might incentivize "feel-good" upvotes.
Let me follow people. I just learned about Bret Taylor's account.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1440154
I'd love to click "follow" next to that comment. Then I want my view on hacker news to be heavily weighted by the mods from the people I follow (you could make it a mod on the normal ranking, like a reordering of the top stories). A friend comment view would be even more useful - like the thread view for any user, but collected among friends. A synopsis view of the comments without the full thread and only the first 200 chars of the comment would be easy to digest.
Generally I think the solution to making HN not suck is to let me ignore completely the parts that suck.
I'd love to click "follow" next to that comment. Then I want my view on hacker news to be heavily weighted by the mods from the people I follow (you could make it a mod on the normal ranking, like a reordering of the top stories). A friend comment view would be even more useful - like the thread view for any user, but collected among friends. A synopsis view of the comments without the full thread and only the first 200 chars of the comment would be easy to digest.
Generally I think the solution to making HN not suck is to let me ignore completely the parts that suck.
I edit posts extensively before submitting, so I frequently see "Unknown or expired link."
This error is a minor tax on carefully worded, carefully considered posts. I've lost posts following this error due to back button/refresh mishaps. I could post, then edit, but then people are voting and replying to content that is changing.
This error is a minor tax on carefully worded, carefully considered posts. I've lost posts following this error due to back button/refresh mishaps. I could post, then edit, but then people are voting and replying to content that is changing.
It's embarrassing to make the claim, but I think I have a solution worth trying regarding the display of scores.
1) Revert to showing scores for top level comments. This will allow people to know whether the top-of-page responses are well-liked by the community, and how fast this approval drops off as one scans down the page. It will also privilege top level comments, subtly discouraging people from pinning their answer to the current top-of-page comment when it's not really a reply.
2) Keep hiding scores for replies (as it is now). This seems to be increasing civility, and discouraging quick quips. It might even make sense to discount the points internally, giving yet more emphasis to the top level. This emphasis is important because the top level dictates the overall position on the page (things move as blocks). Hiding the response points will also encourage people to vote up threads as a whole, which helps with the case of useful questions which lead to good answers.
3) Now that top-level is emphasized, add a 'fold' to the page. But instead of basing it on number of comments, cut off at a negative point level. As they currently do, downvoted items will migrate toward the bottom, becoming fainter as they go negative. But rather than eventually displaying a fixed negative number (-4), just put it below the fold and only visible with a 'show all' link. This will discourage trolling and piling on, as once a comment is below the fold it's unlikely to attract many additional viewers. And it will encourage others to 'clean up the page' if they feel their vote will have a clear consequence. Starting to fade at 0 and folding at -4 seems like a good start, but one could also fold earlier or even bring new unvoted comments in mid-fade.
I think this hybridized approach would be easy to try and has advantages over both individual systems. Thanks!
1) Revert to showing scores for top level comments. This will allow people to know whether the top-of-page responses are well-liked by the community, and how fast this approval drops off as one scans down the page. It will also privilege top level comments, subtly discouraging people from pinning their answer to the current top-of-page comment when it's not really a reply.
2) Keep hiding scores for replies (as it is now). This seems to be increasing civility, and discouraging quick quips. It might even make sense to discount the points internally, giving yet more emphasis to the top level. This emphasis is important because the top level dictates the overall position on the page (things move as blocks). Hiding the response points will also encourage people to vote up threads as a whole, which helps with the case of useful questions which lead to good answers.
3) Now that top-level is emphasized, add a 'fold' to the page. But instead of basing it on number of comments, cut off at a negative point level. As they currently do, downvoted items will migrate toward the bottom, becoming fainter as they go negative. But rather than eventually displaying a fixed negative number (-4), just put it below the fold and only visible with a 'show all' link. This will discourage trolling and piling on, as once a comment is below the fold it's unlikely to attract many additional viewers. And it will encourage others to 'clean up the page' if they feel their vote will have a clear consequence. Starting to fade at 0 and folding at -4 seems like a good start, but one could also fold earlier or even bring new unvoted comments in mid-fade.
I think this hybridized approach would be easy to try and has advantages over both individual systems. Thanks!
I've noticed that sometimes the domain name shown in parens next to the link is kind of useless. Take, for example, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=449670. "tumblr.com" is not useful in this case, but "titocosta.tumblr.com" would be more helpful--"oh, it's someone's personal blog named Tito Costa." Interestingly, it looks like sometimes you already do show more than just "domain.com", as in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=449221.
Please replace grayarrow.gif with Unicode character ▲ to make the upvote triangle look crisp on high-resolution displays.
I noticed a several people suggesting features in other threads, so I'm starting one explicitly for that. I know there's a lot that needs improving; the site is pretty bare-bones at this stage. So propose whatever new features you think we need, and vote for the ones that you want most.
I'd love to be able to see the names of people who have repeatedly upvoted your comments. It'd be a great way of finding people who share the same kind of mindset, enhancing HN as a 'people discovery tool'.
It would also work for 'if you think this person is clever, you might like to read things posted by these others'.
It would also work for 'if you think this person is clever, you might like to read things posted by these others'.
I've noticed that HN users are often thoughtful enough to write short summaries of linked articles in the comments section. For instance
Summary: Wired.com graph shows that while the web continues to grow (in terms of bandwidth consumption), it is not growing as fast as other internet services such as P2P and video and consequently has a lower overall % of traffic than several years ago.
So my suggestion is, add a new HN section called 'Summary' which finds all these comments (which will be recognizable by the 'Summary:' text at the start of the comment) and lists them in one place for quick reading.
Obviously the more people that do it, and know to use the same 'Summary:' convention, the better it will work. Bad summaries will be handled naturally by the downvoting in the original threads.
Summary: Wired.com graph shows that while the web continues to grow (in terms of bandwidth consumption), it is not growing as fast as other internet services such as P2P and video and consequently has a lower overall % of traffic than several years ago.
So my suggestion is, add a new HN section called 'Summary' which finds all these comments (which will be recognizable by the 'Summary:' text at the start of the comment) and lists them in one place for quick reading.
Obviously the more people that do it, and know to use the same 'Summary:' convention, the better it will work. Bad summaries will be handled naturally by the downvoting in the original threads.
SEARCH
We NEED search, unless you don't want to have a page that serves as reference for people, but only to make them consume articles.
Please, give us some way to be able to check past entries.
We NEED search, unless you don't want to have a page that serves as reference for people, but only to make them consume articles.
Please, give us some way to be able to check past entries.
I think it could be interesting to see the "karma-change tally" (don't know how to call it) on stories, people and comments.
The rationale is that to me, there's quite a difference between a comment that has 1 karma because there was no upvotes/downvotes and one that has 1 karma because there was 20 upvotes and 20 downvotes.
So, we could have something like:
5-3=2 points by username
The rationale is that to me, there's quite a difference between a comment that has 1 karma because there was no upvotes/downvotes and one that has 1 karma because there was 20 upvotes and 20 downvotes.
So, we could have something like:
5-3=2 points by username
Truncated URLs may be longer than the original URL if they were just left alone.
The URL truncator will append three periods (not a &helip; character) to the end of a URL. In some cases (say for a URL of 62 characters), the last character will be removed and replaced with three periods. This increases the total size of the URL text to 64 characters.
The algorithm appears to be
The URL truncator will append three periods (not a &helip; character) to the end of a URL. In some cases (say for a URL of 62 characters), the last character will be removed and replaced with three periods. This increases the total size of the URL text to 64 characters.
The algorithm appears to be
def truncate(word, postfix = '...')
if ((word + postfix).length > 64)
word = word[0, 64 - postfix.length] + postfix
end
word
end
def truncate(word, postfix = '…')
if (word.length > 64)
word = word[0, 64 - postfix.length] + postfix
end
word
endAdd a footer to the comments page.
Justification : When I page down and hit the end of a page of comments, there is no visual cue in the page telling me that I'm at the bottom. Since I think I've gone down a full page, I lose track of where I was reading; which is annoying.
Justification : When I page down and hit the end of a page of comments, there is no visual cue in the page telling me that I'm at the bottom. Since I think I've gone down a full page, I lose track of where I was reading; which is annoying.
I would like to be able to read HN on mobile devices more easily. I commited some code on github that achieves that:
https://github.com/nex3/arc/commit/0efaa1b189c4ed54c4f91a7ec...
It only adds a viewport meta tag and some styling which applies to small screens only by using a media query.
Please use it! Afterwards the site will look like this on the iphone: http://minus.com/lGBmQmM4CrdHE
Sidenote: Why can I commit directly to the github repository? I thought that by clicking edit, I would create a fork and work on that and create a pull request later. Strange. Or is this some kind of open-to-all repository?
https://github.com/nex3/arc/commit/0efaa1b189c4ed54c4f91a7ec...
It only adds a viewport meta tag and some styling which applies to small screens only by using a media query.
Please use it! Afterwards the site will look like this on the iphone: http://minus.com/lGBmQmM4CrdHE
Sidenote: Why can I commit directly to the github repository? I thought that by clicking edit, I would create a fork and work on that and create a pull request later. Strange. Or is this some kind of open-to-all repository?
Every time someone asks for a search function here, someone answers with http://searchyc.com. This is a perfectly valid answer, but you should rather ask yourselves, why are people constantly asking for that? Because you don't have a "search" link in the HN header, e.g. right next to "new". It'd be fine if it'd just point to searchyc.com.
Please, if it wouldn't be much work, change the mechanism for coloring down voted comments to be via the stylesheet instead of via font tags with color attributes?
Also, there is an oddity in the way comments are organized. They go like this:
If there is no specific reason for this odd layout, fixing it would make the site a little more friendly for those who want to tweak it with user stylesheets. (I'm tweaking the font size, to make it easier to read on my aging eyes).
Also, there is an oddity in the way comments are organized. They go like this:
font tag that sets the comment color
"first paragraph text NOT in a p tag"
p tag
"second paragraph text"
p tag
"third paragraph text"
...
p tag
font tag that sets the comment color
"final paragraph text"
If there is no specific reason for this odd layout, fixing it would make the site a little more friendly for those who want to tweak it with user stylesheets. (I'm tweaking the font size, to make it easier to read on my aging eyes).
Make it possible to lose karma by submitting garbage stories, either via downmods or (IMHO the better option) by making submitting a story "cost" a certain number of points of karma (which of course will be regained if the story gets voted up).
Recently I've seen two trends, both of which significantly diminish the value of Hacker News:
1. Some users are flooding Hacker News with submissions (in one case I counted 18 submissions in one day), and even though most of their submissions aren't being voted up, enough submissions are to make them accumulate lots of karma (which I assume is why this is happening).
2. The same stories are being posted many times by different users. I'm sure this is partly the result of #1 -- with the floods of submissions users might not realize that a story was submitted before -- but the fact that there's no "penalty" for useless submissions probably contributes as well.
Recently I've seen two trends, both of which significantly diminish the value of Hacker News:
1. Some users are flooding Hacker News with submissions (in one case I counted 18 submissions in one day), and even though most of their submissions aren't being voted up, enough submissions are to make them accumulate lots of karma (which I assume is why this is happening).
2. The same stories are being posted many times by different users. I'm sure this is partly the result of #1 -- with the floods of submissions users might not realize that a story was submitted before -- but the fact that there's no "penalty" for useless submissions probably contributes as well.
Down-voting is awkward. Some feel it should be reserved for extraordinary circumstances, others that it's essential for every day curation of the site. Frequently, the person being downvoted does not know what they did wrong. But if all downvoters were to explain their reasons, far too much attention and page space would be spent on poor comments.
Proposal: The downvote arrow takes you to a "confirm" page with a "reason" text box. If you want to downvote you are encouraged (required?) to enter a reason before confirming your vote. This page also shows otherwise hidden comments by other people explaining their downvote.
Advantage: Allows downvoters to explain to the commenter why their comment is being downvoted without cluttering up the main discussion page. Ideally produces a better and more functional community.
Credit: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4208938
Proposal: The downvote arrow takes you to a "confirm" page with a "reason" text box. If you want to downvote you are encouraged (required?) to enter a reason before confirming your vote. This page also shows otherwise hidden comments by other people explaining their downvote.
Advantage: Allows downvoters to explain to the commenter why their comment is being downvoted without cluttering up the main discussion page. Ideally produces a better and more functional community.
Credit: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4208938
> HN should put a little entrepreneur badge next to your name for having shipped a product. That would motivate some people.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1917605
To encourage HN users to ship code, allow them to display an icon next to their user name once they have shipped their project. This would work on the honor system. To make the implementation simple, users can self-manage the icon. Perhaps a "ship" icon could be displayed that linked to the product if applicable.
This will help create a culture of "shipping" through a shame/pride/credibility/game achievement effect, as well as help users keep the HN addiction in check.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1917605
To encourage HN users to ship code, allow them to display an icon next to their user name once they have shipped their project. This would work on the honor system. To make the implementation simple, users can self-manage the icon. Perhaps a "ship" icon could be displayed that linked to the product if applicable.
This will help create a culture of "shipping" through a shame/pride/credibility/game achievement effect, as well as help users keep the HN addiction in check.
marking a comment up or down should use ajax- especially so browser history is preserved (pressing the back-button to get to the front page). I assume comments can be marked into the negative range for those hopefully rare occasions where it's needed? [please don't test it on me!]. Other than that I love the minimalism.
Please make it more clear that the e-mail field in your HN profile isn't publicly visible. Many people ( http://searchyc.com/comments/e-mail+in+my+profile ) leave comments like, "contact me using the e-mail in my profile", not realizing no one else can see that info.
Even better would be a "make public?" checkbox next to it.
Even better would be a "make public?" checkbox next to it.
The ability for each user to create their own personalized domain blacklist.
E.g., if someone doesn't like techcrunch.com, they can add it to their blacklist, and they will no longer see techcrunch.com stories.
There's maybe a dozen sites (TC isn't one of them) which regularly appear on HN, and which I'd be happy not to see. But I know others don't feel this way about those sites. This seems like a relatively easy way of improving everyone's experience.
E.g., if someone doesn't like techcrunch.com, they can add it to their blacklist, and they will no longer see techcrunch.com stories.
There's maybe a dozen sites (TC isn't one of them) which regularly appear on HN, and which I'd be happy not to see. But I know others don't feel this way about those sites. This seems like a relatively easy way of improving everyone's experience.
The suggestion was made
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=575855
to have the title for the site be user-configurable. That could be helpful for people who don't want to display a title of "Hacker News" on a work computer.
My friendly suggestion is that if we must change the name of the site, which I like just fine, it would be helpful to call it "Helpful News," so that all of us who are habituated to calling the site HN could continue doing that without confusion.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=575855
to have the title for the site be user-configurable. That could be helpful for people who don't want to display a title of "Hacker News" on a work computer.
My friendly suggestion is that if we must change the name of the site, which I like just fine, it would be helpful to call it "Helpful News," so that all of us who are habituated to calling the site HN could continue doing that without confusion.
Could HN have an opt-in to save your outbound link click history?
I've lost count of the number of times when I've unexpectedly wanted to revisit an article from days/weeks/months ago and have utterly failed to find the site by search/browser history (I visit from mulitple machines), etc. I really don't want to have yet another service to sign in to for saving interesting links - and even if I did - they're not always things that I think I wanted to save at the time.
What I'd like to see is:
- opt in to have links pass through a intermediate step so the outbound step is saved in my profile on HN - include the URL and the HN piece (comments, etc)
Seems very simple to do, and would make it so much easier to refer friends back to what I've read without having to rely on my poor memory or rigorous bookmarking.
I've lost count of the number of times when I've unexpectedly wanted to revisit an article from days/weeks/months ago and have utterly failed to find the site by search/browser history (I visit from mulitple machines), etc. I really don't want to have yet another service to sign in to for saving interesting links - and even if I did - they're not always things that I think I wanted to save at the time.
What I'd like to see is:
- opt in to have links pass through a intermediate step so the outbound step is saved in my profile on HN - include the URL and the HN piece (comments, etc)
Seems very simple to do, and would make it so much easier to refer friends back to what I've read without having to rely on my poor memory or rigorous bookmarking.
Upvote/downvote arrows are too close togheter to comfortably use on phones, especially that the actions are not possible to reverse.
Some UI idea is needed here imo. I like what Reddit is Fun app does: you need to touch the post and then upvote/downvote appear below it next to each other. Unfortunately that wouldn't be natural for desktop/mouse users.
As it is now, downvote rights which just appeared on my account make it that I can no longer upvote anything on mobile, risk of accidently hitting the wrong arrow is just too big.
I'd suggest hiding upvotes count in /newest page.
After submitting a bunch of links, some of them making a front page, I noticed that there is a fairly strong effect of social proof.
People check /newest, see that some post already has 1 or 2 upvotes, check it instead of some without any upvotes (someone upvoted, might be good!). The upvoted one gets even more upvotes (because more people are reading it), and it's on the homepage.
A bunch of my submissions made the homepage and from what I've noticed, the threshold is about 7-10 upvotes in the first hour. So can we fairly say that a dozen of people decide what's on the homepage? Maybe.
While the sample size is really really small, 8 of 9 links I submitted and got more than 4 upvotes, made the front page. But I guess with a greater sample size, the general assumption would still hold true.
The obvious disadvantage of hiding score is that it's harder to tell what is worth attention (especially during peak hours when there is a new submission every minute), but maybe it would help to bring more good content to the front page (as opposed to content that a dozen of people thought is good).
After submitting a bunch of links, some of them making a front page, I noticed that there is a fairly strong effect of social proof.
People check /newest, see that some post already has 1 or 2 upvotes, check it instead of some without any upvotes (someone upvoted, might be good!). The upvoted one gets even more upvotes (because more people are reading it), and it's on the homepage.
A bunch of my submissions made the homepage and from what I've noticed, the threshold is about 7-10 upvotes in the first hour. So can we fairly say that a dozen of people decide what's on the homepage? Maybe.
While the sample size is really really small, 8 of 9 links I submitted and got more than 4 upvotes, made the front page. But I guess with a greater sample size, the general assumption would still hold true.
The obvious disadvantage of hiding score is that it's harder to tell what is worth attention (especially during peak hours when there is a new submission every minute), but maybe it would help to bring more good content to the front page (as opposed to content that a dozen of people thought is good).
I was wondering if you'd consider adding an opt-in setting that would make users' votes visible to others, both for comments and for submissions. I'm interested in it for a few reasons:
1) I'd like to see what people I respect are voting for, in the hopes of finding things I otherwise would have missed.
2) I'd like to someday make a recommendations system that would work for HN, and starting now to create a corpus of permission-cleared votes would help if I ever get to it.
3) I think it might have a positive effect on social dynamics. While there is in theory greater potential for retaliatory downvotes, I hope that instead people would act more considerately if they felt that others could review their behaviour. I don't see any way to test this other than by trying it out.
I think this option would best be a simple checkbox on each user's settings page: "Make my votes visible to others". The votes would then be visible from a link on that page for others to view. Ideally, it would also be possible to view these from an item-centric viewpoint, accessible from the 'link' page.
If the idea were to catch on, I'd eventually like to see an 'Open' list, parallel to 'Classic', whereby one could view the entire site as it would appear if ordered only by users with their votes set to be visible.
Thanks!
[Originally here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1878591]
1) I'd like to see what people I respect are voting for, in the hopes of finding things I otherwise would have missed.
2) I'd like to someday make a recommendations system that would work for HN, and starting now to create a corpus of permission-cleared votes would help if I ever get to it.
3) I think it might have a positive effect on social dynamics. While there is in theory greater potential for retaliatory downvotes, I hope that instead people would act more considerately if they felt that others could review their behaviour. I don't see any way to test this other than by trying it out.
I think this option would best be a simple checkbox on each user's settings page: "Make my votes visible to others". The votes would then be visible from a link on that page for others to view. Ideally, it would also be possible to view these from an item-centric viewpoint, accessible from the 'link' page.
If the idea were to catch on, I'd eventually like to see an 'Open' list, parallel to 'Classic', whereby one could view the entire site as it would appear if ordered only by users with their votes set to be visible.
Thanks!
[Originally here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1878591]