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This should be a standard feature in HN. The other pain point is the up/down arrows being so close to each other on mobile that I have to zoom in, vote, then z

This should be a standard feature in HN. The other pain point is the up/down arrows being so close to each other on mobile that I have to zoom in, vote, then zoom out.

mizzao 11y ago
Is monkey-patching other people's web apps really the right way to get this done? It's very brittle and it seems that the policy-driven (i.e. convince HN to do it) method is better than the vigilante programmer method.
- jkeat 11y ago
  Why not both? This is an immediate solution.
- patrickmclaren 11y ago
  These two approaches don't need to be exclusive. Community workarounds such as this can also function as building blocks for discussion.
- Kenji 11y ago
  Yes. I made my own collapsible comments Greasemonkey script years ago and only had to update once, about a year ago. I am really happy with it because it has precisely the features I want and need, and every time I log into HN from another machine I miss it sorely. Maybe I'll submit it to HN but my website needs one quick fix first.
- prawn 11y ago
  People have been asking for it for years with no action or even response (that I've seen). I've used the same HN collapse extension in Chrome for a while now with no problems - dislike browsing HN on my phone without it. It's obvious to me which approach has been better.
- mchahn 11y ago
  > It's very brittle So? Things break and then I uninstall them.
Kinnard 11y ago
Or risk accidentally downvoting!!!
irq 11y ago
Completely agree that this should be a standard feature, and I think it's a big mistake that it wasn't introduced back when comment score visibility was removed. Back then, I used a comment's score as a way of finding more interesting comments. I totally understand why this feature was removed, however, without it, I'm left to look for comments that get a lot of replies to weed out the boring comments from the interesting ones, and keeping track of indentation while scrolling through hundreds of comments is tedious. I'm sitting in front of a computer that should be able to do this for me.
- orik 11y ago
  Perhaps this is a feature that would make the comments on hacker news worse? I'd be interested if they tested it, but I can't say for certain if I think it should become a feature or not.
  - krapp 11y ago
    I don't see how it could possibly make the comments worse, if for no other reason than people are already using plugins to accomplish this. Either the damage has already been done, or it's not relevant.
    - Normal_gaussian 11y ago
      I would imagine most users do not use plugins. Though I would be interested if it's possible to get statistics for this.
taylorwc 11y ago
Yes! And on mobile, I manage to flag things on accident at least a few times per week.
- bobwaycott 11y ago
  Exactly the same here.
- andy_ppp 11y ago
  I tried to upvote you both on mobile but to be totally honest I have no idea... Clickable area and distance between buttons is important!!
arasmussen 11y ago
I agree that this is something HN should build rather than be supported via a Chrome extension. I work on a semi-relevant project called Product Pains where people can post and vote on product feedback publicly about any app or website. After seeing this thread, I posted this feedback about HN: https://productpains.com/post/hacker-news/make-comments-collapsible/ https://productpains.com/post/hacker-news/make-comments-coll... The idea is that a lot of votes on a piece of feedback creates a social responsibility for the team to respond and ideally implement the feature. We're still in early stages but consider voting on this and/or posting other feedback for HN. They could definitely use it. :)
sanjeetsuhag 11y ago
Its such a simple thing to ask for too! Hacker News interface is complete trash for such a popular website.
- noarchy 11y ago
  A counter might be that popularity can overcome a dated interface. Look at the Drudge Report website, after all - wildly popular, and it looks like something out of the 1990s. I, too, would like to see collapsible comments on HN, but I also want to keep the interface simple. It never needs to be flashy, just functional.
  - krapp 11y ago
    In what way would collapsible comments be flashy rather than functional, though?
tomphoolery 11y ago
It is if you use HN Special ;) http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/hn-special/ http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/hn-special/
pfarnsworth 11y ago
It makes me wonder why they won't bother spending the 15 minutes to implement the feature which everyone wants.
- Analemma_ 11y ago
  Didn't pg actually say that he deliberately wants the UX of Hacker News to be kind of crappy to keep out the riffraff? There's certainly a discussion to be had about whether that's good thinking, but for better or worse, I think it's intentional.
  - Houshalter 11y ago
    The downvote button doesn't even appear until you have 500 karma. It's an anti feature that only affects experienced users.
- Razengan 11y ago
  Collapsing comment trees and notification of replies, please.
gherkin0 11y ago
> The other pain point is the up/down arrows being so close to each other on mobile that I have to zoom in, vote, then zoom out. Made even worse because there's no way to fix it if you accidentally vote incorrectly.
tzs 11y ago
I'm convinced that the designers of HN deliberately designed the interface to be slightly annoying, although I do not have any theories as to why. That is the only explanation I have come up with for several things that are annoying and would be trivial for them to fix. • The placement of the up/down arrows, as you noted. • On text submissions, such as "Ask HN" submissions, the submitter's text is greyed out similar to the way down voted comments are greyed out. • If you want to see dead comments, which are by default completely hidden, you can turn on the "showdead" option. That makes them visible...but they are greyed out so that it is hard to read them.
- Houshalter 11y ago
  I think they grey out of dead comments is a feature. It lets you read them if you want, but is a huge visual indicator that it isn't worth reading.
  - tzs 11y ago
    They could accomplish this by using some color that is readable, such as red or purple. That would give a huge visual indicator so that you'd know you are dealing with a dead comment. Remember, people who do not want to read any dead comments will have left "showdead" in its default state of "off", and so won't see these at all. The only people who see dead comments are those who explicitly said they want to see them.
    - lmitchell 11y ago
      Is that definitely the way it works? I don't think I've ever configured anything on HN and I see dead comments. I also think it's really nice - as grandparent said, it's a very clear indicator that I'm dealing with something I probably want to ignore.
      - tzs 11y ago
        What does "showdead" say in your settings (click on your username in the orange bar to get to settings)? It should be "no" if you have not changed it. You can test it on the comments on this submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11213213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11213213 There are several dead comments near the bottom that are visible if showdead is "yes", and invisible if it is "no".
Houshalter 11y ago
The worst thing is when people quote text by putting it in a code block. Why? Why would you do such a thing? It makes it impossible to read on mobile, and even in a browser it prevents text wrap.

This should be a standard feature in HN. The other pain point is the up/down arrows being so close to each other on mobile that I have to zoom in, vote, then zoom out.

mizzao 11y ago

Is monkey-patching other people's web apps really the right way to get this done? It's very brittle and it seems that the policy-driven (i.e. convince HN to do it) method is better than the vigilante programmer method.

jkeat 11y ago
Why not both? This is an immediate solution.
patrickmclaren 11y ago
These two approaches don't need to be exclusive. Community workarounds such as this can also function as building blocks for discussion.
Kenji 11y ago
Yes. I made my own collapsible comments Greasemonkey script years ago and only had to update once, about a year ago. I am really happy with it because it has precisely the features I want and need, and every time I log into HN from another machine I miss it sorely. Maybe I'll submit it to HN but my website needs one quick fix first.
prawn 11y ago
People have been asking for it for years with no action or even response (that I've seen). I've used the same HN collapse extension in Chrome for a while now with no problems - dislike browsing HN on my phone without it. It's obvious to me which approach has been better.
mchahn 11y ago
> It's very brittle So? Things break and then I uninstall them.

Kinnard 11y ago

Or risk accidentally downvoting!!!

irq 11y ago

Completely agree that this should be a standard feature, and I think it's a big mistake that it wasn't introduced back when comment score visibility was removed. Back then, I used a comment's score as a way of finding more interesting comments. I totally understand why this feature was removed, however, without it, I'm left to look for comments that get a lot of replies to weed out the boring comments from the interesting ones, and keeping track of indentation while scrolling through hundreds of comments is tedious. I'm sitting in front of a computer that should be able to do this for me.

orik 11y ago
Perhaps this is a feature that would make the comments on hacker news worse? I'd be interested if they tested it, but I can't say for certain if I think it should become a feature or not.
- krapp 11y ago
  I don't see how it could possibly make the comments worse, if for no other reason than people are already using plugins to accomplish this. Either the damage has already been done, or it's not relevant.
  - Normal_gaussian 11y ago
    I would imagine most users do not use plugins. Though I would be interested if it's possible to get statistics for this.

taylorwc 11y ago

Yes! And on mobile, I manage to flag things on accident at least a few times per week.

bobwaycott 11y ago
Exactly the same here.
andy_ppp 11y ago
I tried to upvote you both on mobile but to be totally honest I have no idea... Clickable area and distance between buttons is important!!

arasmussen 11y ago

I agree that this is something HN should build rather than be supported via a Chrome extension. I work on a semi-relevant project called Product Pains where people can post and vote on product feedback publicly about any app or website. After seeing this thread, I posted this feedback about HN: https://productpains.com/post/hacker-news/make-comments-collapsible/ https://productpains.com/post/hacker-news/make-comments-coll... The idea is that a lot of votes on a piece of feedback creates a social responsibility for the team to respond and ideally implement the feature. We're still in early stages but consider voting on this and/or posting other feedback for HN. They could definitely use it. :)

sanjeetsuhag 11y ago

Its such a simple thing to ask for too! Hacker News interface is complete trash for such a popular website.

noarchy 11y ago
A counter might be that popularity can overcome a dated interface. Look at the Drudge Report website, after all - wildly popular, and it looks like something out of the 1990s. I, too, would like to see collapsible comments on HN, but I also want to keep the interface simple. It never needs to be flashy, just functional.
- krapp 11y ago
  In what way would collapsible comments be flashy rather than functional, though?

tomphoolery 11y ago

It is if you use HN Special ;) http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/hn-special/ http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/hn-special/

pfarnsworth 11y ago

It makes me wonder why they won't bother spending the 15 minutes to implement the feature which everyone wants.

Analemma_ 11y ago
Didn't pg actually say that he deliberately wants the UX of Hacker News to be kind of crappy to keep out the riffraff? There's certainly a discussion to be had about whether that's good thinking, but for better or worse, I think it's intentional.
- Houshalter 11y ago
  The downvote button doesn't even appear until you have 500 karma. It's an anti feature that only affects experienced users.
Razengan 11y ago
Collapsing comment trees and notification of replies, please.

gherkin0 11y ago

> The other pain point is the up/down arrows being so close to each other on mobile that I have to zoom in, vote, then zoom out. Made even worse because there's no way to fix it if you accidentally vote incorrectly.

tzs 11y ago

I'm convinced that the designers of HN deliberately designed the interface to be slightly annoying, although I do not have any theories as to why. That is the only explanation I have come up with for several things that are annoying and would be trivial for them to fix. • The placement of the up/down arrows, as you noted. • On text submissions, such as "Ask HN" submissions, the submitter's text is greyed out similar to the way down voted comments are greyed out. • If you want to see dead comments, which are by default completely hidden, you can turn on the "showdead" option. That makes them visible...but they are greyed out so that it is hard to read them.

Houshalter 11y ago
I think they grey out of dead comments is a feature. It lets you read them if you want, but is a huge visual indicator that it isn't worth reading.
- tzs 11y ago
  They could accomplish this by using some color that is readable, such as red or purple. That would give a huge visual indicator so that you'd know you are dealing with a dead comment. Remember, people who do not want to read any dead comments will have left "showdead" in its default state of "off", and so won't see these at all. The only people who see dead comments are those who explicitly said they want to see them.
  - lmitchell 11y ago
    Is that definitely the way it works? I don't think I've ever configured anything on HN and I see dead comments. I also think it's really nice - as grandparent said, it's a very clear indicator that I'm dealing with something I probably want to ignore.
    - tzs 11y ago
      What does "showdead" say in your settings (click on your username in the orange bar to get to settings)? It should be "no" if you have not changed it. You can test it on the comments on this submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11213213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11213213 There are several dead comments near the bottom that are visible if showdead is "yes", and invisible if it is "no".

Houshalter 11y ago

The worst thing is when people quote text by putting it in a code block. Why? Why would you do such a thing? It makes it impossible to read on mobile, and even in a browser it prevents text wrap.