5 ms·

A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors

55 points by qndev 7y ago

busymom0 7y ago
Are you the person behind that list? If so, thank you! I referenced this list quite extensively last month when I was developing my iOS app HACK as it supports pretty much every endpoint referenced there!
- mkl 7y ago
  No, it's minimaxir: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=minimaxir https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=minimaxir
  - qndev 7y ago
    Thank you mkl for answering me!
jsjolen 7y ago
Does anyone know if 50 was the original karma limit for downvoting? I'm asking because I've always thought it was 50 and was surprised I was wrong by a factor of 10 :-).
- dang 7y ago
  To judge by the version at http://arclanguage.org/install http://arclanguage.org/install, the original was 200.
merricksb 7y ago
Big discussion 4 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822 (437 points/188 comments)
cjfd 7y ago
'If the comment desaturation makes Hacker News difficult to read, you can click on the comment's timestamp to go to its page where the comment will no longer be faded, or you can install the CSS extension discussed here.' Actually, it is also possible to just select the text. This will make it readable again, at least in my firefox.
Down_n_Out 7y ago
It's a great list, I've kept the link from the last time [0] it was posted. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16437973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16437973
- dang 7y ago
  That was the first time! Last time was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822.
ChrisSD 7y ago
Comment collapsing is a useful feature. The problem with giving the largest weight to the most upvoted comment is it also gives a large weight to all replies (unless they're heavily downvoted). It's useful to be able to skip those replies once they get less interesting. However, this does lead to yo-yoing: reading comments downwards, going back up to find the right collapse button then reading down again. It'd be useful to have a more direct "fast forward" button. Though admittedly I haven't thought this through in terms of UI design.
- JFFalcon 7y ago
  The new Reddit desktop site has a good solution for that - each comment draws a bar down the side of its children, which you can click on to collapse the paarent. You collapse any level of parent comment without havign to scroll back up.
mkl 7y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors https://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors is kind of fascinating (and ridiculous - why does it exist?). Let me add some plots to the situation: https://imgur.com/a/KRzcQcU https://imgur.com/a/KRzcQcU Quite a range (I've always been happy with orange).
- dang 7y ago
  See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=97573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=97573 for why the topcolor option exists. See also https://web.archive.org/web/20080115223854/http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html?12jan08 https://web.archive.org/web/20080115223854/http://ycombinato....
Crinus 7y ago
> Downvoted comments (i.e. with a score < 1) reduce their placement on the comment thread and will appear desaturated to other users deemphasize them. This desaturation is the most annoying misfeature of Hacker News IMO, it makes reading comments very hard and negates the "bandwagoning prevention" that not showing a visible score has (which is a good idea). I'd rather judge for myself a comment's worth than have it faded out for me. (yes there are workarounds, like using Stylus to override the CSS, but my comment is against the misfeature not trying to find a workaround) On a similar note, i see a lot of dead comments which i guess are marked as dead by getting flagged too much - essentially using the flag as a super-downvote and driving whoever is flagged out of discussion, not just because of faded out text (which can be worked around) but because you cannot reply to dead comments. The idea is only goon on a surface level (stomp out the bad commenters) but in practice it often backfires since if someone is spreading misinformation and their comment is killed, you cannot reply to it with the correct information so all what people will see is the misinformation.
- ComodoHacker 7y ago
  >I'd rather judge for myself a comment's worth than have it faded out for me. It's not for you, it's a feedback for the commenter. And making your comment unpleasant for others adds an emotional component into the feedback, which is quite effective.
  - charlieegan3 7y ago
    I don't believe it is for the commenter, they can see the number score of their comment.
  - Crinus 7y ago
    But it also affects "me" and anyone who tries to follow a discussion by making the text harder to read. The commenter already has a feedback on the visible-to-them score. Why not make negative scores visible to everyone instead (even make the score red or whatever to point out this is a negative comment)? After all at the moment you introduce this visual change you do not care about the bandwagoning aspect anymore.
kgwxd 7y ago
"One popular "trick" for obfuscating voting manipulation on Hacker News is to link to the Hacker News's /newest page of new submissions (instead of a direct link which would otherwise make voting manipulation obvious), and asking friends to upvote the submission from that page. This trick doesn't actually work." I use /newest to find and upvote new stuff all the time, are my votes being silently ignored?
- kmmbvnr_ 7y ago
  I hope this implemented as filtering for users that cames from a same http referrer and leaves 1 vote only.
- dang 7y ago
  No. I looked at your upvotes from /newest and they have a very high rate of being counted. Thanks for upvoting from /newest!
krapp 7y ago
Also there's https://news.ycombinator.com/whoami https://news.ycombinator.com/whoami which will let you see your cookie values.

55 points by qndev 7y ago

Are you the person behind that list? If so, thank you! I referenced this list quite extensively last month when I was developing my iOS app HACK as it supports pretty much every endpoint referenced there!

mkl 7y ago
No, it's minimaxir: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=minimaxir https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=minimaxir
- qndev 7y ago
  Thank you mkl for answering me!

jsjolen 7y ago

Does anyone know if 50 was the original karma limit for downvoting? I'm asking because I've always thought it was 50 and was surprised I was wrong by a factor of 10 :-).

dang 7y ago
To judge by the version at http://arclanguage.org/install http://arclanguage.org/install, the original was 200.

merricksb 7y ago

Big discussion 4 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822 (437 points/188 comments)

cjfd 7y ago

'If the comment desaturation makes Hacker News difficult to read, you can click on the comment's timestamp to go to its page where the comment will no longer be faded, or you can install the CSS extension discussed here.' Actually, it is also possible to just select the text. This will make it readable again, at least in my firefox.

Down_n_Out 7y ago

It's a great list, I've kept the link from the last time [0] it was posted. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16437973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16437973

dang 7y ago
That was the first time! Last time was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822.

ChrisSD 7y ago

Comment collapsing is a useful feature. The problem with giving the largest weight to the most upvoted comment is it also gives a large weight to all replies (unless they're heavily downvoted). It's useful to be able to skip those replies once they get less interesting. However, this does lead to yo-yoing: reading comments downwards, going back up to find the right collapse button then reading down again. It'd be useful to have a more direct "fast forward" button. Though admittedly I haven't thought this through in terms of UI design.

JFFalcon 7y ago
The new Reddit desktop site has a good solution for that - each comment draws a bar down the side of its children, which you can click on to collapse the paarent. You collapse any level of parent comment without havign to scroll back up.

mkl 7y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors https://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors is kind of fascinating (and ridiculous - why does it exist?). Let me add some plots to the situation: https://imgur.com/a/KRzcQcU https://imgur.com/a/KRzcQcU Quite a range (I've always been happy with orange).

dang 7y ago
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=97573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=97573 for why the topcolor option exists. See also https://web.archive.org/web/20080115223854/http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html?12jan08 https://web.archive.org/web/20080115223854/http://ycombinato....

Crinus 7y ago

> Downvoted comments (i.e. with a score < 1) reduce their placement on the comment thread and will appear desaturated to other users deemphasize them. This desaturation is the most annoying misfeature of Hacker News IMO, it makes reading comments very hard and negates the "bandwagoning prevention" that not showing a visible score has (which is a good idea). I'd rather judge for myself a comment's worth than have it faded out for me. (yes there are workarounds, like using Stylus to override the CSS, but my comment is against the misfeature not trying to find a workaround) On a similar note, i see a lot of dead comments which i guess are marked as dead by getting flagged too much - essentially using the flag as a super-downvote and driving whoever is flagged out of discussion, not just because of faded out text (which can be worked around) but because you cannot reply to dead comments. The idea is only goon on a surface level (stomp out the bad commenters) but in practice it often backfires since if someone is spreading misinformation and their comment is killed, you cannot reply to it with the correct information so all what people will see is the misinformation.

ComodoHacker 7y ago
>I'd rather judge for myself a comment's worth than have it faded out for me. It's not for you, it's a feedback for the commenter. And making your comment unpleasant for others adds an emotional component into the feedback, which is quite effective.
- charlieegan3 7y ago
  I don't believe it is for the commenter, they can see the number score of their comment.
- Crinus 7y ago
  But it also affects "me" and anyone who tries to follow a discussion by making the text harder to read. The commenter already has a feedback on the visible-to-them score. Why not make negative scores visible to everyone instead (even make the score red or whatever to point out this is a negative comment)? After all at the moment you introduce this visual change you do not care about the bandwagoning aspect anymore.

kgwxd 7y ago

"One popular "trick" for obfuscating voting manipulation on Hacker News is to link to the Hacker News's /newest page of new submissions (instead of a direct link which would otherwise make voting manipulation obvious), and asking friends to upvote the submission from that page. This trick doesn't actually work." I use /newest to find and upvote new stuff all the time, are my votes being silently ignored?

kmmbvnr_ 7y ago
I hope this implemented as filtering for users that cames from a same http referrer and leaves 1 vote only.
dang 7y ago
No. I looked at your upvotes from /newest and they have a very high rate of being counted. Thanks for upvoting from /newest!

krapp 7y ago

Also there's https://news.ycombinator.com/whoami https://news.ycombinator.com/whoami which will let you see your cookie values.