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I for one would like to see some improvements. Here is my wishlist: 1. Markdown support 2. More profile capabilities. e.g. avatars, vanity URLs, link to your
by asaph 8y ago
I for one would like to see some improvements. Here is my wishlist:
1. Markdown support
2. More profile capabilities. e.g. avatars, vanity URLs, link to your GitHub, Twitter, Stack Overflow, blog, etc.
3. Automatically create cache link for articles in case their hosts go down after being linked from HN.
4. Revision history for comments.
- anjc 8y agoAvatars! Just use Reddit..?
- leemailll 8y agoI never get the idea for avatars. And in fact I more than often use Adblock to block any of those on the websites I visit frequently. Can any one shed the light on why they like it?
- asaph 8y agoIt's a way to personalize your account and a way for people to easily recognize an online identity across comments, articles and communities. It helps you discover that @asaph on HN is the same person as @asaph on GitHub, Twitter, Stack Overflow, etc.
- huntie 8y agoWhy does it matter if they're the same? Identity is vastly overrated in my opinion.
- thrower123 8y agoOne of the features of HN is that identity is downplayed. Personally, I think that this encourages engaging with the arguments that someone makes, rather than who they are. It's also a throwback to the old internet where pseudonymity was normal. It's refreshing to see usernames like AdmiralAsshat and TooMuchToDo.
- java-man 8y agoit's a way to track you.
- woofcat 8y agoThe only real selling point is it allows you to distinguish users apart from one another really quickly in a threaded conversation. Sometimes someone other than the original commentator replies and unless you're paying attention to the user names you may make a presumption based on assuming they're the same person.
- hiccuphippo 8y agoIt could be simpler to use a different color for their name, like with new users having a green color: When a user comments more than once in the same subtree, change the username color in all their comments. Leave single commenters as grey. This should be pretty easy to do with a greasemonkey script.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoThe unofficial HN mobile app "Materialistic" does something similar to this.
- kaitai 8y agoI kind of like that on HN I read through without necessarily paying attention to who is who. I focus on the comment or discussion rather than the personalities, and if I want to argue with a person rather than a point I have to go back & look at which comments are theirs.
- cabalamat 8y agoMarkdown support would certainly be useful for longer comments.
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoIt's my top feature request, I mean you have to be able to post inline links, bullet points, code segments, etc on a site like this. IMO.
- wild_preference 8y agoYou can already do all of your examples. URLs are autolinked, bullet points just require \n\n, and there's a 4-space prefix for preformatted text. I think extraneous formatting would just create more incentives to write long, pretentious, streams of consciousness comments where someone just screams from their soap box instead of actually engaging anyone.
- 0xcoffee 8y agoAnd an easier way to collapse comments on mobile
- sonar_un 8y agoI just want comment collapsing on mobile, or a way to quickly scroll to the next branch of comments.
- nothrabannosir 8y agoEasier than the [-] next to each comment? If you have javascript enabled, they should show up. Not sure how it could be improved?
- whostolemyhat 8y agoIt's tiny and right next to a couple of other links, so very difficult to press on mobile.
- combatentropy 8y agoThat's a miniature game embedded in the mobile version of the site.
- joshcanhelp 8y agoThis, please. I switched to Firefox mobile and now can't even click the link without zooming in.
- sbinthree 8y agoI would dislike all of this except markdown support.
- rand_r 8y agoEven cache links? Why?
- AckSyn 8y agoI dislike them all, except for someone else's comment above about comment reply notifications - which doesn't even have to be active, just a number next to your username at the top when reloading a page.
- Insanity 8y agocache links sounds like an okay idea. OTOH, the avatars sounds like a horrible idea to me. I'm neutral on the markdown one, it wouldn't be too bad but it might end up making comments look like mini-articles rather than just comments.
- Bartweiss 8y agoI'm opposed to markdown for that reason. It's a bit of a shame that the existing formatting isn't aligned to markdown syntax, and I think lots of people don't know the code trick. But otherwise, I'm grateful to not have posts using headers, multipart essays with horizontal rules, or that "every word a hyperlink" style that people use when they want to intensify a statement by implying it's densely sourced or describing a common issue. The informal standards HN has worked out seem sufficient for the conversations I value most here: - this is sufficient for bullets - since people don't bullet whole paragraphs 1. this works for numbers 2. for the same reason > And this is just fine for pseudo-blockquotes, which can be much longer. And the lack of embedded links encourages human-readable URLs that are either sources[1], or inline links to a page people might want to visit after reading the comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown It's a bit arbitrary what's supported, but HN has always felt to me like a display of how working within constraints can improve quality.
- ihuman 8y ago> 2. More profile capabilities... link to your GitHub, Twitter, Stack Overflow, blog, etc. All they really need to do for that is make URLs into links in the "about" section. They already do this for comments; I'm not sure why they don't do that for profiles.
- java-man 8y agoAvatars. The main purpose of avatars is to track you. Please, HN, do not add avatars.
- personlurking 8y ago5. And tagging. I'd like to remove technical posts from my front page, since I'm not technical. Either I'd like to follow certain tags and only see content related to them, or at least be able to mark tags I don't want to see.
- Ajedi32 8y ago5. Comment reply notifications 6. Responsive design so the site doesn't suck on mobile What else? Honestly there's probably a _ton_ of stuff that could be improved, but given how change-averse the typical HN user seems to be perhaps just leaving it as it is _is_ the best idea.
- erikpukinskis 8y agohttp://hn.premii.com http://hn.premii.com is a nice way to read HN responsively on mobile web. You have to pop out to comment though.
- Max_Mustermann 8y ago> 6. Responsive design so the site doesn't suck on mobile It's responsive on my end, I think they changed it this year.
- l1n 8y ago>3. Automatically create cache link I just implemented this, drinking the hnrss post firehose and archiving each link at archive.is. Great idea!
- Kagerjay 8y agoIf they would add some hackernews enhancement suite extensions natively, that would be nice I prefer userflairs over avatars. Ability to tag certain users would be convenient as well, incase I want to follow certain opinions. I feel mixed about inbox system in hackernews. I prefer not having it actually. Because I don't feel like I have to read anything replied back to me, I do it of my own volition I actually like hackernews as is, less features is better.
- jacquesm 8y agoHere is mine: - cap karma at 1000 points - get rid of the leaderboard Other than that I wouldn't change a thing.
- sixothree 8y agoI would like root level comments collapsed by default.