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Quiet Hacker News
- faizshah 9y agoWhy does it seem easier to scan the links on the front page of reddit than on HN? Often when I'm looking to upvote a link I just clicked on HN I will scan through all the links but miss the one I'm looking for. Is it the contrast and boldness of the titles that makes reddit better in this regard?
- aldoushuxley001 9y agoI think it's the background-colour. Every other link on reddit has a slightly darker background, which helps separate the links. HN doesn't have this, preferring to simply number the links as its way of differentiating
- jessriedel 9y agoReddit also has thumbnails, which in this use case serve as icons (whose purpose is to be faster to understand at a glance than text).
- reificator 9y ago> Why did you use Go to write this? You know Go does not have generics, right? This is going straight to my quote archive.
- gus_massa 9y agoDon't forget to read the about page: http://tomspeak.co.uk/posts/quiet-hacker-news http://tomspeak.co.uk/posts/quiet-hacker-news I somewhat agree. For example I try to avoid discussion with more than 100 comments. Usually the small discussions are more technical and have a better signal to noise ratio.
- gkya 9y agoThe collapsing feature is helpful, usually longer threads wane into an infinite stream of increasingly off-topic rants. But because it happens after when the page is loaded, it messes up the feature where when you navigate history it jumps to where you left, and with collapsed comments it scrolls past there.
- krapp 9y agoLong threads are paginated too, now. I wonder how long that's been a thing.
- jessriedel 9y agoAgreed, but I wish HN would experiment more with new technical tools to improve civility. For all its flaws, HN is still home to some of the very best discussion, and there's no reason to throw up one's hands. For instance, removing public vote counts seems to have been a net positive (although I mistakenly opposed it at the time). Even a small nudge to get people to vote based on constructiveness rather than agree/disagree could have a large impact.
- krapp 9y agoI'm not certain there is a technical solution to incivility, or at least, I suspect that technical solutions can only go so far. Incivility is a social problem, and that requires community involvement and reinforcement of accepted norms, not attempts at operant conditioning through the UI.
- jessriedel 9y ago
- mezod 9y agoThe FAQ should answer why all the questions are number 1!! :P
- faitswulff 9y agoI wish there was a link to the comments. Oftentimes they're the first (and last) place I go.
- unkown-unknowns 9y agoWait, are you being facetious or did you not catch on to the fact that the comments not being included is what makes it "quiet HN"?
- faitswulff 9y agoYour comment reminds me why "No Feigned Surprise" is a virtue (https://www.recurse.com/manual#no-feigned-surprise https://www.recurse.com/manual#no-feigned-surprise). Yes, it is entirely possible to miss the tiny link at the bottom that says "What is this?" and even then still possible to skim or dismiss it thereafter.
- Chris2048 9y agoexcept there was no "Feigned Surprise" in the comment you respond to..
- unkown-unknowns 9y agoI was asking genuinely because I could not tell whether the person I was replying to was being sarcastic about the idea of not having comments or if they just didn't make the connection between "quiet" and "no comments".
- jack9 9y agoEven after your comment, I do not make that connection. If that was the intent, it fails...e.g, Why not duplicate the site faithfully and just eliminate the comment links? It succeeds in being 'quiet' (less noisy) in design.
- craftyguy 9y agoI think it literally does exactly what you just said, content (posts) is duplicated, comment links are eliminated.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- bdz 9y agoI prefer http://n-gate.com/ http://n-gate.com/
- craftyguy 9y agoThat's literally unreadable: https://lut.im/5GmTj5QDSY/c6fxtEXxgvZlzfvr.png https://lut.im/5GmTj5QDSY/c6fxtEXxgvZlzfvr.png
- chrishacken 9y agoThat font literally hurts my eyes.
- DarkTree 9y agoYeah I can understand the motivation for creating this. When I first started browsing HN, I couldn't believe how supplemental, civil and noiseless the comments were. However, after several years, I've started to jump straight to the comments, especially when I have a vague clue about what the article is about. That's when I don't feel the incentive to actually read and create my own opinions. I've also started to view HN as more entertainment than education because of the way I consume it, instead of the how I used to believe speeding over comments was informative. I've since accepted that it is entertainment veiled as education. I still learn more here than any other news source I follow.
- krapp 9y ago> I've since accepted that it is entertainment veiled as education. Hacker News is neither entertainment nor education. It's just other people having conversations about a common topic of interest.
- ue_ 9y agoI would love to agree that comments on HN can be substantive and civil, but the downvote power afforeded to 'elite' users is horrible, leaving a comment which is perhaps a little challenging to a charged view or commonly held belief is often simply downvoted without explanation, usually once but sometimes up to thrice. Downvoting on HN serves the ingenious function of signalling to others "This comment isn't worth reading", by making is appear gray, similar to the site's background. It is only one step above Reddit in which comments are hidden completely (though that appears to happen here too sometimes). Edit: Good to know the system works?
- weberc2 9y agoReminds me of Churchill's quip on democracy: "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." HN users will definitely downvote challenges to their deeply-held convictions, but so will any other community, and almost always more vigorously. I say this as the proud recipient of many such downvotes. :)
- samat 9y agodocument.querySelectorAll("td.subtext").forEach( function(currentValue, currentIndex, listObj) { currentValue.hidden = true; } );
- polote 9y agoyou can't use forEach with a NodeList ;)
- sillysaurus3 9y agoJS's lack of macros strikes again.
- AgentME 9y agoEasiest solution is to wrap the NodeList with Array.from(...) first. Just wanted to point out how handy that function is. Also if we're going to make a snazzy one-liner, let's cut out the unused arguments: Array.from(document.querySelectorAll("td.subtext")).forEach(currentValue => { currentValue.hidden = true; });
- AndrewCHM 9y agoor just inject (via extension or JS) .itemlist .subtext {display: none;}
- justboxing 9y agoI would likely never use this. I'm almost always here for the comments on the Show HN & Ask HNs as well as the Stories. The comments on the Ask HN, Show HN are usually very informative, and have helped me a lot in my own side projects and entrepreneurial pursuits. The comments on stories (for me) act as a curation tool, and based on what I read, I actually decide to either read the posted story, or pass on it. W.r.t. stories posted, 9 /10 times, the comments are more insightful and offer unbiased commentary that the original stories -- many of which (on the internets, not HN) are click-baity / shock'n'awe type posts -- often lack.
- lhuser123 9y agoCouldn't agree more. So many times I have searched if something was discussed in HN, just to read the comments.
- simple1 9y agoYou might be interested in a site I created, Day Old Hacker News (http://dayoldhackernews.com http://dayoldhackernews.com). This shows Hacker News as it was exactly one day ago, so the comments are always full.
- sillysaurus3 9y agoOnly four articles are visible at a time on mobile, vs 6 on HN.
- cyberferret 9y agoNice idea, but I must admit though, that I often look at the comments first to ascertain the quality of the article posted. If I see civil, structured discussion, then I am more likely to visit the link afterwards. However, if I see off topic rants and arguments, then I tend to dismiss the article as an opinion or puff piece. Generally like that the comments on here tend to stay on topic and thoughtful, although I am disappointed that some of my posts on here lately, which have merely been questions about aspects of the article, have been downvoted. Hope HN doesn't turn into another StackOverflow imitating over-moderated "that doesn't belong here" type site.
- anitil 9y agoThis is exactly my behaviour. I end up with a bunch of tabs and ctrl-w/ctrl-tab through them with a small set of simple heuristics, the primary being quality of the first few comments.
- apple4ever 9y agoWhat's the point? The comments are the best part of HN.
- elorant 9y agoThis contradicts the very essence of HN. Personally I come here mostly for the comments. Regardless of how good (or bad) a story is, the comments are what give it value because you get to read educated opinions that make remarks even the original article doesn't. HN is the only place in the web where you can see such quality in comments. Remove them and then everything becomes blunt.
- m3kw9 9y agoAnd I thought this was pretty quiet in terms of UI and simplicity
- boyaka 9y agoI care about the comments. I use http://hckrnews.com/ http://hckrnews.com/
- smnplk 9y agoI visit mostly for the comments.
- kup0 9y agoCan't you just use the regular HN site and avoid clicking the comments link? How hard is that? I do it daily and comment rarely. The only time I ever see HN comments is when I choose to see them. Also if you want to avoid comments in general on the internet or on a per-site basis, install something like the ShutUp extension (which I use to remove comments on some areas of the web, such as YouTube)
- etelej 9y agoNice. Sorry for plugging this but I also wrote a similar one https://hn.etelej.com https://hn.etelej.com as a PWA that just focuses on the top 60 posts every 5mins and allows searching through the; links to comments though