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I imagine hn owes a lot of success to its simplicity. I was always confused by slashdot's filters and the threads in almost every other forum, with Post #18 re

by edw519 16y ago

I imagine hn owes a lot of success to its simplicity. I was always confused by slashdot's filters and the threads in almost every other forum, with Post #18 replying to Post #7 and Post #27 replying to Post #3, but only 10 posts visible per page. Busy people don't have the time to wade through stuff like that, so all you're left with are the trolls. hn's nested threads built with <table> are so simple that they're brilliant. No horizontal scrolling, no flipping between pages, just click "reply" and you're good to go. I have no idea how much time and effort pg puts into hn, but I'm sure it's nontrivial. Something as good as hn doesn't get that way purely organically. Also, I would guess that more of his energy goes into the software, not the site's output. Why deal with an issue once when you can build something that will deal with it forever? It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway: thank you pg!

kierank 16y ago
Hacker News is the craigslist of Social News sites.
- stanleydrew 16y ago
  But I hate using craigslist. I only use it because I have to.
  - seunosewa 16y ago
    What do you hate about it?
    - stanleydrew 16y ago
      I hate apartment search. It's so so painful. Their data model is all wrong. Location is the most important thing about an apartment in my opinion. That should be the primary method by which you search. And they've tried, but you end up searching within these broad "neighborhoods" in the bigger US cities. And a lot of people mischaracterize their apartment's location in order to make it seem nicer or whatever. Why is craigslist wasting my time? Require posters to put in the actual address or at least an intersection for their apartment. Then show me the postings on a map. Something like hotpads.com works really well for me, but they don't have the volume that craigslist does, so I'm stuck.
      - ible 16y ago
        Check out padmapper.com does a nice maps mashup of craigslist plus other sources. May still not work if the data in your city is too poor, but works great for me.
        ericd 16y ago
        Heh thanks for the plug. And to grandparent, PadMapper basically strips away all the listings which don't have an address, which incidentally gets rid of a lot of the spam.
  - random42 16y ago
    But I hate using craigslist. I only use it because I have to. Now, Thats some value creation.
seanalltogether 16y ago
hn owes a lot of it's success to it's small audience. simply put, this site would go down in flames fast if it attracted a larger crowd. all of the complex facilities of a site like digg or slashdot come from trying bubble up relevant content to a wide audience
- jacquesm 16y ago
  That nails it exactly, when slashdot and digg were small they felt just like HN does today (well, maybe digg not, but reddit certainly did). Digg always was more mainstream oriented. The biggest turn-off for me on digg is not so much the complexity of the site but the level of the discussion.
  - jokermatt999 16y ago
    To be fair, it's possible to build a fairly good community in a smaller subreddit. The larger ones have those problems, but it seems like most small sized subreddits actually work out pretty well. Still, I find myself gradually spending more and more time here and less and less time and reddit. I think if I didn't mod a few subreddits there, I'd pretty much have solely switched to HN.
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      That's probably true, and in fact underscores the point even further, smaller == better.
      - eru 16y ago
        I'd say, small is good. Because smaller might lead to too small.
petercooper 16y ago
hn's nested threads built with <table> are so simple that they're brilliant. No horizontal scrolling, no flipping between pages, just click "reply" and you're good to go. I don't think <table>s should get undue praise. With <div>s, the code would be easier to read mechanically (for manipulation with Greasemonkey, say) and even though there'd be a little more CSS, the page weight might be reduced a little (I'd have to make a mockup to be sure ;-))
- omouse 16y ago
  ^^ THIS. I love it when sites use DIVs because it makes much much easier to chop them up and display them the way I want to by using Stylish or GreaseMonkey. The browser is a customizable viewer...your stylesheet is just a suggestion.
  - petercooper 16y ago
    If you use Selector Gadget - http://www.selectorgadget.com/ http://www.selectorgadget.com/ - it's possible to divine pretty horrible and complex CSS and XPath matches for things on Hacker News but.. they're far from entirely reliable. A lot of ugly TABLE TD:nth-child(5) stuff..
- coderdude 16y ago
  I disagree. Tables are still the most reliable way to display content under nearly all circumstances (maybe less so on mobiles, but definitely on the desktop). They've been stable for years and years. I went through the hardcore standards phase where I thought it would be the death of my soul if I ever went back to using tables for layout, but then I read a great article (wish I had the link) that struck a chord with me. It said you don't have to avoid tables for certain small situations where it can save you a ton of time and a few headaches. I would never suggest doing a whole layout in tables, but I think the comments on HN are a good example of something that would have been a pain in the ass to get right across all browsers. Just use tables for layout if it actually makes sense and even then, ever so sparingly.
  - 16y ago
jim_dot 16y ago
I like the simple layout, but sometimes I wish I could minimize threads (kinda like how Reddit does it)
stonemetal 16y ago
I don't know I still find it a bit confusing. Read a thread and come back to it a few hours latter. The vote rearranging makes it feel like an entirely new thread with some deja vu thrown in especially when people reply at the wrong level either to defeat reply aging or just by mistake.

by edw519 16y ago

kierank 16y ago

Hacker News is the craigslist of Social News sites.

stanleydrew 16y ago
But I hate using craigslist. I only use it because I have to.
- seunosewa 16y ago
  What do you hate about it?
  - stanleydrew 16y ago
    I hate apartment search. It's so so painful. Their data model is all wrong. Location is the most important thing about an apartment in my opinion. That should be the primary method by which you search. And they've tried, but you end up searching within these broad "neighborhoods" in the bigger US cities. And a lot of people mischaracterize their apartment's location in order to make it seem nicer or whatever. Why is craigslist wasting my time? Require posters to put in the actual address or at least an intersection for their apartment. Then show me the postings on a map. Something like hotpads.com works really well for me, but they don't have the volume that craigslist does, so I'm stuck.
    - ible 16y ago
      Check out padmapper.com does a nice maps mashup of craigslist plus other sources. May still not work if the data in your city is too poor, but works great for me.
      - ericd 16y ago
        Heh thanks for the plug. And to grandparent, PadMapper basically strips away all the listings which don't have an address, which incidentally gets rid of a lot of the spam.
- random42 16y ago
  But I hate using craigslist. I only use it because I have to. Now, Thats some value creation.

seanalltogether 16y ago

hn owes a lot of it's success to it's small audience. simply put, this site would go down in flames fast if it attracted a larger crowd. all of the complex facilities of a site like digg or slashdot come from trying bubble up relevant content to a wide audience

jacquesm 16y ago
That nails it exactly, when slashdot and digg were small they felt just like HN does today (well, maybe digg not, but reddit certainly did). Digg always was more mainstream oriented. The biggest turn-off for me on digg is not so much the complexity of the site but the level of the discussion.
- jokermatt999 16y ago
  To be fair, it's possible to build a fairly good community in a smaller subreddit. The larger ones have those problems, but it seems like most small sized subreddits actually work out pretty well. Still, I find myself gradually spending more and more time here and less and less time and reddit. I think if I didn't mod a few subreddits there, I'd pretty much have solely switched to HN.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    That's probably true, and in fact underscores the point even further, smaller == better.
    - eru 16y ago
      I'd say, small is good. Because smaller might lead to too small.

petercooper 16y ago

hn's nested threads built with <table> are so simple that they're brilliant. No horizontal scrolling, no flipping between pages, just click "reply" and you're good to go. I don't think <table>s should get undue praise. With <div>s, the code would be easier to read mechanically (for manipulation with Greasemonkey, say) and even though there'd be a little more CSS, the page weight might be reduced a little (I'd have to make a mockup to be sure ;-))

omouse 16y ago
^^ THIS. I love it when sites use DIVs because it makes much much easier to chop them up and display them the way I want to by using Stylish or GreaseMonkey. The browser is a customizable viewer...your stylesheet is just a suggestion.
- petercooper 16y ago
  If you use Selector Gadget - http://www.selectorgadget.com/ http://www.selectorgadget.com/ - it's possible to divine pretty horrible and complex CSS and XPath matches for things on Hacker News but.. they're far from entirely reliable. A lot of ugly TABLE TD:nth-child(5) stuff..
coderdude 16y ago
I disagree. Tables are still the most reliable way to display content under nearly all circumstances (maybe less so on mobiles, but definitely on the desktop). They've been stable for years and years. I went through the hardcore standards phase where I thought it would be the death of my soul if I ever went back to using tables for layout, but then I read a great article (wish I had the link) that struck a chord with me. It said you don't have to avoid tables for certain small situations where it can save you a ton of time and a few headaches. I would never suggest doing a whole layout in tables, but I think the comments on HN are a good example of something that would have been a pain in the ass to get right across all browsers. Just use tables for layout if it actually makes sense and even then, ever so sparingly.
- 16y ago

jim_dot 16y ago

I like the simple layout, but sometimes I wish I could minimize threads (kinda like how Reddit does it)

stonemetal 16y ago

I don't know I still find it a bit confusing. Read a thread and come back to it a few hours latter. The vote rearranging makes it feel like an entirely new thread with some deja vu thrown in especially when people reply at the wrong level either to defeat reply aging or just by mistake.