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Why does the Hacker News API not have a comment score?

2 points by oalders 11y ago

I've been playing with the API a bit and I fully expected comments to have a score, just like stories do, but that doesn't appear to be the case: https://github.com/HackerNews/API#items It looks like issues are disabled on the Github repo, so I can't easily ask there. Is there a specific reason this has not been made available? https://github.com/HackerNews/API#items

gus_massa 11y ago
Score of comments is hidden, if it were available in the API someone would write in 30 minutes an extension to show them in the main site. Perhaps they can add a "graycolor" field, that is somewhat related to the score.
- oalders 11y ago
  Thanks! I didn't know about the graycolor field.
  - gus_massa 11y ago
    No, the graycolor field don't exist. Each comment has a graycolor in the site that somewhat indicate how many negative points the comment has. But to read it you need to scrap the site, it's not available from the API.
brudgers 11y ago
If it really matters this is probably a good question to ask dang, the moderator. Just use the email on the contact link at the bottom of the page.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
redox_ 11y ago
From what I remember it's because HN keep the comments score private for the first N days. Not sure whether the Firebase API send an `updated` event once disclosed (doesn't seem so).