7 ms·

New HN users: do not overlook the "Lists" feature

89 points by gsivil 16y ago

jaxn 16y ago
I have been on HN for almost 3 years and never knew about that page.
solipsist 16y ago
Special HN pages like this one have to be made more well known. They are referenced throughout the site, but there is no central place to find all of them. Most of the new users will have never seen them before. Even the older users will have trouble finding them when the need to use them. Here are some of these "special" pages for anyone who is curious: New Polls (http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll) Top Colors (http://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors http://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors) Formatting Options (http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc) Front Page with Threshold (http://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=100 http://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=100) Classic Front Page [1] (http://news.ycombinator.com/classic http://news.ycombinator.com/classic) [1] - The classic front page only counts votes from accounts that signed up in the first year that HN was released.
- richbradshaw 16y ago
  How does top colors work? Where can you set the colors?
  - solipsist 16y ago
    You need to reach a certain threshold before you can use Top Colors. I think it maybe 500 karma points, but don't take my word for that. When you do get the feature, you can go to settings and enter a hexadecimal entry for topcolor. The banner on every page of HN (except in Add Comment) will then change from the default orange to the color you specified.
    - pluies 16y ago
      The threshold is indeed a bit lower than that; I have topcolor with 296 karma.
      - solipsist 16y ago
        Ok, thanks for pointing this out. It may be a 250 karma threshold, although we can't know for sure as it is always changing (due to inflation from new users): http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ#cantdownvote http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ#cantdow...
  - hugh3 16y ago
    Am I right in thinking that the page of topcolors is a list of the topcolors that some account is currently using? (I just set my topcolor to b000b5 because I am incredibly easily amused.)
- sahillavingia 16y ago
  The classic front page only counts submissions (not votes), I believe.
  - solipsist 16y ago
    PG: To measure any possible decline I created an alternative version of the frontpage that only counted the votes of users who signed up in the first year. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2073513 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2073513)
    - barrkel 16y ago
      Unfortunately, first-year users will only vote on what they see, and if they don't consistently use the classic view - which I expect very few would - then they will most likely only vote on what everyone else has voted on. Thus, classic wouldn't be expected to be significantly different from the regular home page, and thus it cannot measure the decline.
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
      - rkudeshi 16y ago
        As a newer user, what are the differences between the standard view and the classic view?
        kgermino 16y ago
        Classic view (news.ycombinator.com/classic) looks the same, however the stories are ranked using only votes from older users. The cutoff is either (1)accounts that have been around for more than a year or (2)accounts that were made in the first year the site was running. I believe that it's (1), but I've heard it both ways.
- simonw 16y ago
  I think the current Hacker News UI balance with regards to karma points is about right. Exposing top ten lists etc too prominently on the site will inevitably encourage people to game the system, which will damage the quality of discussion.
- solipsist 16y ago
  Here's another page that many may not know about: Change Password (http://news.ycombinator.com/changepw http://news.ycombinator.com/changepw)
  - andyking 16y ago
    Thanks for this - my account was linked with Clickpass before and it was a bit of a pain to log in - going through three or four different pages on a mobile isn't fun. I didn't know I could just use this and change it to a normal username/password account.
RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
I am constantly surprised by people who call themselves "hackers" not exploring the entire site. I always had the idea that being a hacker was that one didn't ask "What does this do?", but instead asks: "What can I make this do?" Exploration is at the heart of hacking. It's odd that people don't know about, for example, the "lists" page. The link is there. ADDED IN EDIT: I see that at least one person has down-voted this comment. Do you disagree? Do you think hacking is something else? Or are you simply stung by the apparent criticism, and feel the need to lash out? Do you not have the instinct to explore? Is that not a critical part of being a hacker? (And in a further edit - clearly someone agrees and has up-voted again. Interesting.)
- solipsist 16y ago
  You're right that "hackers" should be able to explore and navigate by themselves, but why should they have to? Do you think pg intends to scatter all the links to these special pages in order to ensure that we're true "hackers"? No, he simply hasn't gotten around to putting them all in a central location. You are basically saying that we need to make life hard for all the "hackers" just because they should be able to deal with the unnecessary challenge that we give them. ADDED IN EDIT: > Do you not have the instinct to explore? Is that not a critical part of being a hacker? It's the nature of a hacker to explore, but this nature exists for a reason. We use our talents when we have to, but that does not mean we like it or need the practice. Most people come to HN for quick information. Telling them to spend unnecessary time looking around the site in their spare time is asking too much for some users. While it may not seem big to you and me, it probably does to others. What's funny about this debate is that is trivial to fix it. Add a page with all the links and you're done. Saves everyone time. It seems as if a lot of people are divided on this topic. I've seen you been downvoted and upvoted a few times in past 10 or 15 minutes already. Let's see what others have to say.
- charlief 16y ago
  I am a user of the lists functionality, but in all fairness, novice HN users can come in many forms. There are some industry experts that simply read the front page briefly and go back to their work. There is an opportunity cost to exploring something hard-to-find, and some people may be better off spending the time exploring or hacking something else outside of HN. I agree with your point, but not the generalizations that accompany it.
swolchok 16y ago
Title needs a colon or a comma after "New HN users." It looks like a story about how new HN users do not overlook the "Lists" feature.
bmccormack 16y ago
Maybe the reason these lists are not easily discovered is because they are taxing the server pretty heavily. It took quite a while to return the "leaders" list the first time I ran it, but it wasn't as bad the second time.
RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
User jacquesm has an unofficial HN FAQ: http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ It was submitted and discussed here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1755533 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1755533 The official FAQ can be found here: http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
- Poiesis 16y ago
  Ok, two things that I've never found answers to: 1. How do people do the really small font size? It's not in the formatting document. 2. Assuming you've been upvoted some, how can you tell you've been downvoted? Do people keep such close tabs on their karma that they just...know? I haven't seen a UI element for "you've been downvoted".
  - RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
    1. I'm not sure what you mean by "the really small font size." Can you link to an example? 2. You can't.
    - Poiesis 16y ago
      Re: the font size, in this sub-thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2163862 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2163862 All the comments are normal sized except for keiferski's, which appears smaller. I don't see any obvious reason in the stylesheet, and it seems to only happen on the iPhone (and not in Safari 5 on the Mac), so perhaps it's a Mobile Safari rendering oddity--maybe something to do with tables. It does only seem to happen on rather short comments.
turar 16y ago
Why not put links to these on the top nav bar? It's not like there's no room up there.
- patrickk 16y ago
  Or a link to a complete sitemap.
jacquesm 16y ago
There are a bunch of links at the bottom of every page, 'Lists' is one of them.
mlok 16y ago
Search YC may not be a Hacker News page, it is still an important tool for me : http://searchyc.com/ http://searchyc.com/ I wish I had bookmarked along the way all those little tools built around HN... Which ones do you use?
kylec 16y ago
Not just new users - I had no idea the page existed and I've been here for a while.
winfred 16y ago
That's so funny... I noticed something was wrong when I received more karma than expected for my first couple of posts, but I didn't know why. Some people are probably using noobcomments to reward new posters with karma (I thought HN used a secret internal multiplier for the first couple of posts, but this is a much better explanation).

89 points by gsivil 16y ago

jaxn 16y ago

I have been on HN for almost 3 years and never knew about that page.

Special HN pages like this one have to be made more well known. They are referenced throughout the site, but there is no central place to find all of them. Most of the new users will have never seen them before. Even the older users will have trouble finding them when the need to use them. Here are some of these "special" pages for anyone who is curious: New Polls (http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll) Top Colors (http://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors http://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors) Formatting Options (http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc) Front Page with Threshold (http://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=100 http://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=100) Classic Front Page [1] (http://news.ycombinator.com/classic http://news.ycombinator.com/classic) [1] - The classic front page only counts votes from accounts that signed up in the first year that HN was released.

richbradshaw 16y ago
How does top colors work? Where can you set the colors?
- solipsist 16y ago
  You need to reach a certain threshold before you can use Top Colors. I think it maybe 500 karma points, but don't take my word for that. When you do get the feature, you can go to settings and enter a hexadecimal entry for topcolor. The banner on every page of HN (except in Add Comment) will then change from the default orange to the color you specified.
  - pluies 16y ago
    The threshold is indeed a bit lower than that; I have topcolor with 296 karma.
    - solipsist 16y ago
      Ok, thanks for pointing this out. It may be a 250 karma threshold, although we can't know for sure as it is always changing (due to inflation from new users): http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ#cantdownvote http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ#cantdow...
- hugh3 16y ago
  Am I right in thinking that the page of topcolors is a list of the topcolors that some account is currently using? (I just set my topcolor to b000b5 because I am incredibly easily amused.)
sahillavingia 16y ago
The classic front page only counts submissions (not votes), I believe.
- solipsist 16y ago
  PG: To measure any possible decline I created an alternative version of the frontpage that only counted the votes of users who signed up in the first year. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2073513 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2073513)
  - barrkel 16y ago
    Unfortunately, first-year users will only vote on what they see, and if they don't consistently use the classic view - which I expect very few would - then they will most likely only vote on what everyone else has voted on. Thus, classic wouldn't be expected to be significantly different from the regular home page, and thus it cannot measure the decline.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - rkudeshi 16y ago
      As a newer user, what are the differences between the standard view and the classic view?
      - kgermino 16y ago
        Classic view (news.ycombinator.com/classic) looks the same, however the stories are ranked using only votes from older users. The cutoff is either (1)accounts that have been around for more than a year or (2)accounts that were made in the first year the site was running. I believe that it's (1), but I've heard it both ways.
simonw 16y ago
I think the current Hacker News UI balance with regards to karma points is about right. Exposing top ten lists etc too prominently on the site will inevitably encourage people to game the system, which will damage the quality of discussion.
solipsist 16y ago
Here's another page that many may not know about: Change Password (http://news.ycombinator.com/changepw http://news.ycombinator.com/changepw)
- andyking 16y ago
  Thanks for this - my account was linked with Clickpass before and it was a bit of a pain to log in - going through three or four different pages on a mobile isn't fun. I didn't know I could just use this and change it to a normal username/password account.

RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago

I am constantly surprised by people who call themselves "hackers" not exploring the entire site. I always had the idea that being a hacker was that one didn't ask "What does this do?", but instead asks: "What can I make this do?" Exploration is at the heart of hacking. It's odd that people don't know about, for example, the "lists" page. The link is there. ADDED IN EDIT: I see that at least one person has down-voted this comment. Do you disagree? Do you think hacking is something else? Or are you simply stung by the apparent criticism, and feel the need to lash out? Do you not have the instinct to explore? Is that not a critical part of being a hacker? (And in a further edit - clearly someone agrees and has up-voted again. Interesting.)

solipsist 16y ago
You're right that "hackers" should be able to explore and navigate by themselves, but why should they have to? Do you think pg intends to scatter all the links to these special pages in order to ensure that we're true "hackers"? No, he simply hasn't gotten around to putting them all in a central location. You are basically saying that we need to make life hard for all the "hackers" just because they should be able to deal with the unnecessary challenge that we give them. ADDED IN EDIT: > Do you not have the instinct to explore? Is that not a critical part of being a hacker? It's the nature of a hacker to explore, but this nature exists for a reason. We use our talents when we have to, but that does not mean we like it or need the practice. Most people come to HN for quick information. Telling them to spend unnecessary time looking around the site in their spare time is asking too much for some users. While it may not seem big to you and me, it probably does to others. What's funny about this debate is that is trivial to fix it. Add a page with all the links and you're done. Saves everyone time. It seems as if a lot of people are divided on this topic. I've seen you been downvoted and upvoted a few times in past 10 or 15 minutes already. Let's see what others have to say.
charlief 16y ago
I am a user of the lists functionality, but in all fairness, novice HN users can come in many forms. There are some industry experts that simply read the front page briefly and go back to their work. There is an opportunity cost to exploring something hard-to-find, and some people may be better off spending the time exploring or hacking something else outside of HN. I agree with your point, but not the generalizations that accompany it.

swolchok 16y ago

Title needs a colon or a comma after "New HN users." It looks like a story about how new HN users do not overlook the "Lists" feature.

bmccormack 16y ago

Maybe the reason these lists are not easily discovered is because they are taxing the server pretty heavily. It took quite a while to return the "leaders" list the first time I ran it, but it wasn't as bad the second time.

RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago

User jacquesm has an unofficial HN FAQ: http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ It was submitted and discussed here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1755533 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1755533 The official FAQ can be found here: http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

Poiesis 16y ago
Ok, two things that I've never found answers to: 1. How do people do the really small font size? It's not in the formatting document. 2. Assuming you've been upvoted some, how can you tell you've been downvoted? Do people keep such close tabs on their karma that they just...know? I haven't seen a UI element for "you've been downvoted".
- RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
  1. I'm not sure what you mean by "the really small font size." Can you link to an example? 2. You can't.
  - Poiesis 16y ago
    Re: the font size, in this sub-thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2163862 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2163862 All the comments are normal sized except for keiferski's, which appears smaller. I don't see any obvious reason in the stylesheet, and it seems to only happen on the iPhone (and not in Safari 5 on the Mac), so perhaps it's a Mobile Safari rendering oddity--maybe something to do with tables. It does only seem to happen on rather short comments.

turar 16y ago

Why not put links to these on the top nav bar? It's not like there's no room up there.

patrickk 16y ago
Or a link to a complete sitemap.

jacquesm 16y ago

There are a bunch of links at the bottom of every page, 'Lists' is one of them.

mlok 16y ago

Search YC may not be a Hacker News page, it is still an important tool for me : http://searchyc.com/ http://searchyc.com/ I wish I had bookmarked along the way all those little tools built around HN... Which ones do you use?

kylec 16y ago

Not just new users - I had no idea the page existed and I've been here for a while.

winfred 16y ago

That's so funny... I noticed something was wrong when I received more karma than expected for my first couple of posts, but I didn't know why. Some people are probably using noobcomments to reward new posters with karma (I thought HN used a secret internal multiplier for the first couple of posts, but this is a much better explanation).