19 ms·

A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors (2018)

673 points by billme 6y ago

Athas 6y ago
I think there are some "features" missing from this list. I seem to recall that Hacker News will transparently remove some characters from titles (such as emoji and exclamation points), which seems like a bad feature to me, and one that people should be aware of.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  It will remove many emoji from comments as well, although not all of them. Not sure what the criteria is for that, either.
  - Uehreka 6y ago
    That’s a shame, because I could see legit and serious reasons why someone would want emoji in comments. For instance, what if someone was trying to illustrate a point by “drawing” a diagram of a network, using different emoji to represent different types of nodes.
    - criddell 6y ago
      ℑ 𝔴𝔬𝔫𝔡𝔢𝔯 𝔥𝔬𝔴 𝔦𝔱 𝔡𝔢𝔠𝔦𝔡𝔢𝔰 𝔴𝔥𝔦𝔠𝔥 𝔬𝔫𝔢𝔰 𝔱𝔬 𝔯𝔢𝔪𝔬𝔳𝔢?
      - airstrike 6y ago
        ʎɹɐɹʇᴉqɹɐ ʎʇʇǝɹd sɯǝǝs
        fit2rule 6y ago
        C̸̡̙̹̠̪͊̽̉̃̆̎͝ͅó̶̧͇̳̝̇̓̉̇̋ṵ̷͊̃̓̏͊̌̉͊́̈́͐l̴̛̘͓̪͙̣̩̼͙̂̌͂͛̄ḑ̷̗̫̲̣̺̞̣̖̎̊ ̴̢̤̩̭͇͈͚̜̣̯͚̖̞̪̿̈́̃̌͌̀̿̃͝͠b̸̨̢̧̢͙͙̯͕̼̩̼͚̹̘̟͆́̈́̇̈́̆̅̈̇̾͘̚͝ḙ̴̭̾͒̈͒͂̌̍̈̂͗́ ̴̛̝̲͈͍͉̲͈̗̗̪͖͌͆̓̐̽̊̌͂͛̚͘͘͜͝ẅ̷̧̛͚̜̳̬͙̥̦͈̟̺́̉ö̶̧̠̱̭̻̱̓̾ȓ̷͔͍͙̠̳̬͍̻̱̙̭̖̈́͊͆͛̅̕͜s̸͚̳̥̬̖̲̯͉͈͇̓͊̄͒̒̕ḙ̷̫͔͉͚̻̗̆̋͐̾͊͂̒͛͘͝,̴͕̤̹͙̈̎̊̽̈́̉͘ ̷̨̛̤͈̲̥̙̟͙͍̉̆͂̽́̆̈́́̓̀͗̕͘̚ͅͅF̷̠͕̳̬͚̾̎͌̅̓͌̅͝N̸̡̧͔̰̰͎̝͍̪͇͈̠̻̐̏O̶̢͓͙̜͓̤̰̟͚̓̀̈́͛͗́͘͝R̷̛̞͕͙̘̋͛̒͆̽̈́̊͝͝͠Ḏ̵̨̠̔̀́̌̔ ̷̡̯̹͕͇̗̺̗̰̹̑͂̈́͜͠.̵̢̞̈́͂̈́̄.̸̧̹̫̞͔̣̦̼͙̃̏͒́̽͘ ̶̲̹̺̠̠̗͑͋̾̈́̈́̒̾̒̏̈́̈́̕͠͠͝
        isoprophlex 6y ago
        Unicode penis? 𓀐𓂸 edit: yeah hieroglyphics are allowed apparently
        selimthegrim 6y ago
        Get thee behind me, Zalgo!
    - drannex 6y ago
      As someone who despises emojis, I am more than happy that they are removed. There are other ways we could show the hypothetical example.
      - cmroanirgo 6y ago
        Agree. It's almost as if using vocabulary is wrong. I've been watching how our conversations deteriorate by gratuitous use of emoji. It seems that some seem to think that emoji can cut through all language barriers, because they're universally understood. Unfortunately, the effect I see is newspeak to the detriment of all, as we lose the nuances of language itself, and indeed we become more 'visual only' in our language.
    - BlueGh0st 6y ago
      One that comes to mind is the "thrangrycat" vulnerability. I say "thrangrycat" but the researches insist on calling it . I've taken liberty of shortening the excerpt to the more reasonable reasons, as the answer got more nonsensical as it went on. >How do you describe the meaning of this vulnerability name? >We chose to communicate through a visual representation of symbols, rather than “words.” Naming vulnerabilities using emoji sequences instead of other pronounceable natural languages have several advantages. First, emoji sequences are universally understood across nearly all natural languages. Choosing instead of a name rooted in any one language ensures that the technical contents of our research can be discussed democratically and without latent cultural or linguistic bias... from: https://thrangrycat.com/ https://thrangrycat.com/ Edit: and HackerNews has indeed stripped the emojis used to name this vulnerability.
    - u801e 6y ago
      On some platforms, the emoji is so small that is difficult to determine what it is, let alone what it's supposed to represent.
  - masklinn 6y ago
    Not just emoji either e.g. the box-drawing characters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box-drawing_character https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box-drawing_character) also get stripped. OTOH domino or mahjong tiles (🁓, 🀕), playing cards (🃅) or musical symbols (𝅗𝅥) are allowed. So are arrows (↸) including supplementals (⤪), number forms (ↈ), superscripts and subscripts (⁴₂), "miscelllaneous technical" (⎋, ⏱) or geometric symbols (◉), however misc symbols (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscellaneous_Symbols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscellaneous_Symbols) is a no. So yeah, pretty arbitrary. I guess pg likes playing domino but hates chess. Also funny note: we have access to musical symbols but not notes, because the notes are in the misc. symbols block. Unless you want to use byzantine (𝀶) or ancient greek (𝈙) musical notation then it's OK.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      Yeah, I wanted to use U+266A once and it didn't let me, but random emoji gets through: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23028433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23028433
    - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
      On FF on (older) Android I get the symbols here: >So are arrows (↸) including supplementals (⤪), number forms (ↈ), superscripts and subscripts (⁴₂), "miscelllaneous technical" (⎋, ⏱) or geometric symbols (◉), however misc symbols (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscellaneous_Symbols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscellaneous_Symbols) is a no. // But not the others, they're just get boxes; except the boxes which are missing completely (ironic). IIRC, we had access to UTF font formats (using bold, outlaid, double, open, etc., letter forms) and to Zalgo, Z̸̠̽a̷͍̟̱͔͛͘̚ĺ̸͎̌̄̌g̷͓͈̗̓͌̏̉o̴̢̺̹̕ ?
      - masklinn 6y ago
        > But not the others, they're just get boxes; except the boxes which are missing completely (ironic). That's a different issue, the glyphs are missing from your machine's fonts rather than HN stripping them.
    - moonchild 6y ago
- fragmede 6y ago
  Another thing that's undocumented is that comments can be "detached" from a post. The comment isn't deleted, but is removed from view, so the participants can continue having a conversation but that thread is no longer discoverable from the post that spawned the discussion.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Is it no longer visible, or just moved to the top level? I've seen plenty of top-level comment threads that start with something missing context, and then is followed by a reply from dang, of the form "We've detached this thread from $url because $reasons".
    - detaro 6y ago
      it just becomes its own top-level comment, and typically is pushed to the bottom.
- graeme 6y ago
  I wish they had markdown’s list feature
  - snazz 6y ago
    In my opinion, they should implement this by removing the feature that combines two lines without a newline. Most people type entire paragraphs out on a single line (since web browsers word wrap inside <textarea> tags), so I don't really see the point in having this feature anymore.
  - tlb 6y ago
    Lists: - like - this?
    - graeme 6y ago
      That's with an extra newline in between, correct? Most places allow you to make lists without the abnormally large line spacing. * But yes, this is how I * Make a list workaround * It is not ideal
      - tlb 6y ago
        Yes, double newlines between. For paragraph-length bullets that makes sense, but for a few words each it is a lot of extra vertical space.
      - brudgers 6y ago
        There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free List
saagarjha 6y ago
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822 Hacker News has so many strange, undocumented things that even such a list is incomplete. I’ve run into entirely new things I didn’t know existed just by using it more, or by happening upon one of ‘dang’s comments…
- billme 6y ago
  Here’s an example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643177
d0m 6y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors https://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors
- billme 6y ago
  Are these the only supported “custom colors” ? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7432201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7432201
  - Stratoscope 6y ago
    No, you can set any CSS color if you have the minimum karma required. The linked page is just a list of colors that users have actually set. I really wish any user could set a custom topcolor. I found the default orange hard on my eyes, and I was glad when I could change it. Mine is #d0c8b5, which is simply a darker version of the page background color. Plain and unobtrusive, and the bit of orange in the "Y" logo sits nicely in the corner.
    - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
      And you can always use user.css to adjust per site CSS to your preference. I use it for a few sites; there are addons that facilitate it, but I've never bothered.
lsllc 6y ago
Comment "markdown" syntax with some examples would be a nice addition to this.
- Deimorz 6y ago
  I think this official page covers all of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
  - lsllc 6y ago
    I'm don't think that covers everything! I have used that page when commenting, but I'm sure I've seen formatting not described there.
    - snazz 6y ago
      Really? What kind of special formatting have you seen? I think that italics, code blocks, paragraph breaks, and https://lin.ks https://lin.ks are the only formatting options available. I certainly haven't seen anything else.
      - chaorace 6y ago
        I've seen comment citations in the past. I still can't figure out how to get those to work.
        snazz 6y ago
        > I've seen comment citations in the past. I still can't figure out how to get those to work. Like this? It's just italics and a > symbol.
        chaorace 6y ago
        Nope, like wiki style citations to external links. Maybe it's just some superscript trickery, but I've seen it from multiple people, so I assumed it's a hidden feature.
ourmandave 6y ago
Don't forget about their API on github. It's simplistic but you can still use it to write a sh*ttier version of HN. https://github.com/HackerNews/API https://github.com/HackerNews/API I just wish they'd open source their We're-Not-Reddit behaviors library.
- minimaxir 6y ago
  The API has no authentication, which makes it useless for anything other than a reader.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    You may find this interesting, and as a bonus it also includes something that you haven't documented: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22788526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22788526
    - minimaxir 6y ago
      That is indeed interesting, but I have a feeling it'll be documented once it launches. :P
      - saagarjha 6y ago
        Was talking more about the existence of an alpha-tester list, which has some additional features itself :)
  - willis936 6y ago
    I'd be interested in a discourse mirror for consumption.
  - gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
    Isn't posting, voting etc just done using POST requests?
- flanbiscuit 6y ago
itchyjunk 6y ago
Ah, there is nothing past 501? I was hoping something else would unlock for user whose karma points are over 9000.
- billme 6y ago
  PG’s phone number used to appear if your rep got high enough, not sure if that’s still a feature.
  - lucb1e 6y ago
    On his profile page (/user?id=pg) you mean? I don't see it there with 11k rep. It might require higher rep nowadays or indeed be removed.
    - billme 6y ago
      Yes, that’s PG’s username, or at least the original & official one, but no, that’s not where it would appear. Here’s example of a prior reference to this feature: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7432526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7432526
      - lucb1e 6y ago
        To save others a click, it would appear: > in the top right corner of the header
    - nostrademons 6y ago
      65K karma (and #22 on /leaders) and I don't see it. I think that was a joke.
      - billme 6y ago
        Not surprising last reference I know of it is years old and PG is busy doing other things now.
      - airstrike 6y ago
YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
>> If a user has 251 Karma, they can set the color of the top bar in their profile settings. The default is #ff6600. Here's the complete set of colors users have set. Happy to see that the most #bada55 colour of all is in that list.
- postsantum 6y ago
  #dadb0d too
- airstrike 6y ago
  Would be nice to see a sorted list and the count for each color. Could even bucket very similar colors so we get a sense for the general HN taste for colors, though I don't know the first thing about bucketing colors. I use #93a1a1, personally (i.e. $base1 from solarized https://ethanschoonover.com/solarized/ https://ethanschoonover.com/solarized/)
  - acheron 6y ago
    I use the Dark Reader extension [0], and the standard HN topcolor stood out too much, so I darkened it to #fff0e6. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/darkreader/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/darkreader/
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- saagarjha 6y ago
  For the curious: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%23bada55 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%23bada55
  - casefields 6y ago
    That is a hideous color. I feel like the person who named it was trolling.
    - 6y ago
zaroth 6y ago
I’ll add one to this list, I’m sorry if it comes off as complaining, but at least it’s topical. There is more than one karma tracking algorithm that can be activated for a given account. That is to say, a downvote is not always a downvote, and an upvote is not always an upvote, and the point score of a comment is not always exactly equal to the number of up and downvotes. Accounts that are flagged for posting flame-baiting or ideological comments can be switched to an alternate voting mode where votes are not counted the same way. This may mean that any manual downvotes are given greater weight, or upvotes are underweighted, or downvoting is automatically applied after some time providing a type of downward gravity which must be overcome. I don’t know the precise algorithm. It’s complicated by the fact that I’ve been getting auto-downvoted by bots. But due to some overly combative COVID related posts my account is in this current state. I’ve found that even researched technical comments of mine will inevitably end up at -1 karma, or struggle to stay above 0. After reaching out to dang about bot-downvoting Daniel was nice enough to look into it and confirmed my account was getting bot-downvoted but also explained that my account had been flagged and made some suggestions on posts that crossed the line. I’ve had a long and mostly enjoyable relationship with HN so hopefully I’ll be out of purgatory soon. To be clear I have no interest in debating whether the feature was misapplied in my own personal case, but rather just it’s abstract technical merits make for great meta-discussion of moderation techniques for social media boards.
- hilyen 6y ago
  This is generally referred to as shadow banning. When the user is unaware their account is being restricted due to content rules or bot like activities.
- billme 6y ago
  Agree, I personally feel this is a major issue, in fact recently posted twice about it: Ask HN: HN user ghosted 5 years, why? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23436276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23436276 Ask HN: Dark Patterns on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439617
  - bluntfang 6y ago
zaroth 6y ago
Can we make feature requests here? Hah. I would absolutely love it if the comment box was taller than 7 lines on mobile, perhaps just at least when editing a comment.
- remote_phone 6y ago
  It took YEARS before they added collapsible threads despite its obvious usefulness and easy implementation. Some people added extensions to do that but HN was entirely unresponsive. I wouldn’t hold my breath for any new features.
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  If you set the delay profile value to X it’ll let you edit and save a comment for up to X minutes before other users can see it. I use it extensively on mobile and have mine set to 7.
  - zaroth 6y ago
    Ooh, that’s a good one because I tend to post then edit, edit, edit, so a little delay would be nice. Thanks for the suggestion!
- billme 6y ago
  Here’s a mod’s recent comment on feature requests to give some context on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23199062 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23199062
buboard 6y ago
Not mentioned, but you can be "rate limited", where you can post up to ~ 3 comments per hour (?not sure), else you get a "posting too fast, please slow down" message. It's keeping us trolls at bay
- ryandrake 6y ago
  Cool fact! I always assumed this applied to everyone. I've seen this message on and off for at least a few years. Now I'm wondering why/when this was applied to my account. Interesting!
- sparkie 6y ago
  In my case it is 5 posts per 3 hours.
- ccmcarey 6y ago
  Didn't know that was a thing. Is it a function of your karma?
  - buboard 6y ago
    No, manually flagged
- billme 6y ago
  Related top level comment in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23440929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23440929
- yters 6y ago
  applies to submissions too
United857 6y ago
I've wondered why we can't comment on YC jobs postings on HN. I imagine commenting would be beneficial for questions/answers about the company or position.
- billme 6y ago
  Because they are officially sponsored YC related ADs.
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    Although it is a fact, that doesn't really answer why you can't comment on them.
    - billme 6y ago
      Generally speaking ADs don’t allow comments. Have an example or reasoning why this would make sense?
      - hirundo 6y ago
        for users: How about "I tried it, I like it" or "this product gave me warts", both things it could be useful to know. for makers of products HN people like: Comments could draw more attention to the product, more clicks, more sales. for makers of products HN people don't like: No, can't think of a reason why allowing comments on ads would make sense.
        billme 6y ago
        Nothing stopping any user from creating posts related to an aspect of the content on any of those ADs, but it’s obvious allowing comments for ADs would potentially cause unneeded overhead for the advertiser; clearly if any YC advertisers want to post on HN, they’re free to do so within the guidelines on HN. HN doesn’t block negative posts about YC companies.
        kick 6y ago
dccoolgai 6y ago
I agree with most of those policies, but "downranking of tutorials" seems kinda dumb. I could see it making sense for "how to React" drivel that people use for self-promotion, but I've learned a lot from 1-off tutorials I saw on HN first.
- billme 6y ago
  Reasoning is HN’s goal, per dang, is to promote substantially new information — unless the tutorial fits this meaning, it’s less of a priority to feature than those posts that do meet it. Worth noting there’s nothing stopping you from building custom HN searches like this to find tutorials posts, though this would not solve the likelihood of the community posting related comments: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=tutorial&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
  - floatingatoll 6y ago
    Citation?
    - billme 6y ago
      Sure, read all the comments by dang (aka HN’s main mod) here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23239164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23239164
- brudgers 6y ago
  I've learned a lot from 1-off tutorials I saw on HN first. Could that reflect survivor bias (among all tutorials)?
booleandilemma 6y ago
I've always found it kind of ironic (or at least funny) that the code for HN isn't open source.
- billme 6y ago
  Not sure that’s always been true, or at least for sure PG was open about subsets if the code. Generally, there’s reason to open source code, and open sourcing it would likely result in more overhead not less; generally HN goal is to very, very slowly change the code, interface, etc. Honestly, cloning HN really would not be that hard, cloning dang, that’s another story. EDIT: Here’s a recent comment from dang on open source HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22791221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22791221
  - krapp 6y ago
    There is an open source fork but it runs on Racket[0], so the Arc documentation isn't always correct, and of course that forum and this one differ in terms of features. [0]https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki
    - gus_massa 6y ago
      HN is written in Arc that is written in Racket. I think HN use a slightly modified version of Racket with a few tweaks to be more friendly with the high amount of memory used in HN.
  - traes 6y ago
    > cloning HN really would not be that hard Isn't that basically what lobste.rs did?
    - billme 6y ago
      Related link: https://lobste.rs/about https://lobste.rs/about And history: https://jcs.org/notaweblog/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker_news/ https://jcs.org/notaweblog/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker...
mhdhn 6y ago
Thanks! Pretty useful. Can anyone supply a good comparison between Hacker News and Reddit?
- billme 6y ago
  Stating the obvious, Reddit was in the first YC batch; YC is HN’s parent company. Further, HN was created in part because Reddit’s intend is more general than HN; HN’s intend is to focus on substantially new information that triggers both curiosity & notable dialogues.
  - dsr_ 6y ago
    Tip: intend is a verb. She intends to win the election. What did you intend? Paul intended not to lose. Intent is a noun. That is her intent. Intent is also a verb: She is intent on winning the election. You wanted "intent" as a noun in both your usages above.
    - billme 6y ago
      Thanks, agree that’s a typo; unfortunately I am unable to fix it since editing is now locked, but appreciate you taking the time to point it out.
    - tchaffee 6y ago
      I don't think intent is a verb. It is either a noun or adjective. In the sentence "She is intent on winning the election" the verb would be "is" and "intent" is an adjective that describes her. Compare: His program focused on dinosaurs. (verb) His program is focused on dinosaurs. (adjective describing his program). You would never say "his program intented on dinosuars" because it's not a verb.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - dsr_ 6y ago
        Correct.
yread 6y ago
Oooh I didn't know about /invited. Few stories of very high quality, looks like HN back in the day
- saagarjha 6y ago
  /invited is basically the second-chance queue for things that have been personally stamped to be interesting by the moderators, so it's generally pretty good.
  - dang 6y ago
    It's only a small part of it, the ones that were too old to put in the queue directly, so we emailed repost invites for them instead. It's on my list to publish a more complete page. The types of stories are much the same on the larger list though.
- billme 6y ago
  Related link: https://news.ycombinator.com/invited https://news.ycombinator.com/invited
- kgwxd 6y ago
  I really wish they'd make RSS feeds for all the different views.
  - l1n 6y ago
    https://hnrss.org/ https://hnrss.org/ provides a bunch of them!
isoprophlex 6y ago
To me HNs biggest feature is the lack of features and the lack of 'innovation', or rather redesigns for the sake of redesigning. Keep up the fantastic moderation and the wonderful lack of innovation, HN people!
- karlakush 6y ago
  For me, the biggest feature is the lack of ads. Well except for the job postings, which I strongly suspect are unlabeled ads.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    They're job ads from YC companies, as mentioned in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    We have ads here, they just have to be carefully crafted infomercials with a high payoff for the advertisee, enough that it could not be an ad ...
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Basically, "Mission. Fucking. Accomplished." - https://xkcd.com/810/ https://xkcd.com/810/.
  - LunaSea 6y ago
    You're joking, right? On tech topics, every third comment is somebody pointing to their company. Sometimes they mention it and sometimes not but it's still advertisement. Not even talking about people spamming their site.
- brianzelip 6y ago
  For sure. This helps to keep it part of the old/weird web like the related articles that get much attention here. I appreciate it.
- 6y ago
simonw 6y ago
This is amazingly useful. I've been on HN for nearly 13 years and I only knew about a fraction of this stuff.
- billme 6y ago
  Agree, not sure why after X amount of rep is earned something like this is not featured for just for new users, users who haven’t viewed it, etc.
Havoc 6y ago
Neat. Been here nearly a decade & didn't know that downvotes are capped to -4 for example.
- billme 6y ago
  Yes, there’s a lot more upside to comments as a result. Generally voting signal to noise ratio goes: upvote, no-vote, downvote — allowing more downvote would most like have more negative than positive impact on the community.
- blattimwind 6y ago
  Is that a recent change? I'm pretty sure some of my less popular remarks earned double digit negative points.
  - minimaxir 6y ago
    No, that's been around forever. Back when comment scores were public via the API, I retrieved the lowest-rating comments for each month. which was always -4: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IfbSDYVBXiHZCuMdHXgprhmeCVc4XDtOGizF9CSGyUo/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IfbSDYVBXiHZCuMdHXgp... Bonus histogram of comment scores calculated in 2014: https://minimaxir.com/img/hn-comments/distribution_comment_points.png https://minimaxir.com/img/hn-comments/distribution_comment_p...
  - brudgers 6y ago
    It's always been -4 for me. At times it's felt like more when I've doubled down on my unpopular comments with more downvoted comments (and because usually every down vote hurts). I think the limit probably discourages long winded "all these downvotes are a badge of honor" comments. People who crave downvotes only get four. People hurt by downvotes only get four, too.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  Greying out goes with downvotes and send to go in more steps than just 4 ... guess I should RTFGAP.
Causality1 6y ago
Also needs a section on muting. If too many of your consecutive comments get downvotes you start encountering "you are posting too fast" messages, even if it there was over an hour between comments and several hours since your most recent.
- billme 6y ago
  For related prior discussion: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22you+are+posting+too+fast%22+AND+(%22hn%22+OR+%22hackernews%22) https://www.google.com/search?q=%22you+are+posting+too+fast%...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
4636760295 6y ago
People should check out https://lobste.rs/ https://lobste.rs/, it's like HN but with less censorship and less content marketing BS.
- jfim 6y ago
  Lobsters requires an invite though. They have a good rationale for it, but it seems like a non-negligible barrier to entry, especially for people that are less connected.
  - 4636760295 6y ago
    If you ask around I'm sure you can get an invite.
    - billme 6y ago
      Per the login page: “Not a user yet? Signup is by invitation only to combat spam and increase accountability. If you know a current user of the site [1], ask them for an invitation or request one in chat [2].” [1] https://lobste.rs/u/ https://lobste.rs/u/ [2] https://lobste.rs/chat https://lobste.rs/chat —— Related comment on the history of lobste.rs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23441470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23441470
- kick 6y ago
  lobste.rs is almost entirely content marketing spam, and it actually has heavier censorship of non-spam than HN does; you can see this pretty easily by checking their mod log.
  - s_y_n_t_a_x 6y ago
    The fact that you can check their mod log makes me like them even more. I have a feeling HN would never publicize that information themselves.
  - greenyoda 6y ago
    I just looked at their mod log. The last article removed by a moderator was deleted because it was "not about computing". I read the same article on HN, and it gave rise to some interesting discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23437529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23437529 Some of the most interesting discussions on HN are not directly related to computing, and they're one of the main reasons why I stick around HN (and would not be interested in moving to lobste.rs).
dfabulich 6y ago
"Posts without URLs get penalized." That's strange. Does that include "Ask HN" posts? I would have thought that submissions with no link would be good discussion starters.
- TwelveNights 6y ago
  Could this be why most Ask HN posts are desaturated? I always wondered why that was the case.
  - floatingatoll 6y ago
    “Desaturated”?
    - nerdponx 6y ago
      The text color is lighter, as if the post had been downvoted.
      - brudgers 6y ago
        On my computer, the default color for visited links is also lighter.
      - floatingatoll 6y ago
        That's the 'visited link' color, which indicates that you've visited a given post's link. Posts do not change color based on votes. For posts without a link, reading the post requires still visiting the post's link, so it works out as expected from there.
        frosted-flakes 6y ago
        No, the actual colour of the text on text-only posts is super light. I read somewhere a while back that it was supposed to discourage people from using it too much. Here's an example from the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23438930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23438930
drdeadringer 6y ago
I'm glad to know about the hex-color change ability.
benjaminsuch 6y ago
/leaders is pretty cool. First place got over 300k points, wtf.
- billme 6y ago
  Related link, leader list: https://news.ycombinator.com/lists https://news.ycombinator.com/lists Direct link to top users by rep: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tptacek https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tptacek (tptacek’s comments are super useful and extremely knowledgeable)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ufmace 6y ago
I was always kind of surprised that there's a relatively high karma threshold for downvoting, but seemingly not for upvoting. Seems like it would invite voting rings. I guess there's already other software to detect that though.
- billme 6y ago
  Downvotes per item are limited to -4 and the signal-to-noise ratio for negative votes beyond pushing them below the “new comment” boost is of little positive impact in filtering content, in my opinion. And yes, there a lot of filters in place for upvotes, many of which are intentionally kept secret. Personally, I don’t use downvotes.
- brudgers 6y ago
  It's easy to engage in anonymous encouraging behavior with upvotes. Anonymous discouraging behavior via downvotes has a higher threshold.
rikkipitt 6y ago
Thanks for posting this. I've been an avid reader of HN for years (with a few modest/minor submissions). I had no idea about a substantial amount of this... I wonder how much is commonly known in the community?
billme 6y ago
Good bye HN! Dang (HN’s mod) just asked me to be identifiable and given that’s not a good fit for me, this will be my last post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23441542 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23441542
- samanator 6y ago
  I don't know who you are but please stay! You seem to have a lot to offer and in a very positive way. EDIT: When I wrote this reply your comment was at the top. 2 minutes later it was at the bottom of the comment section. Looks like it was manually moved to the bottom of the comments by a moderator :(
  - yesenadam 6y ago
    Or new comments appear at the top, and after a couple of downvotes it went to the bottom. No conspiracy theory needed.
- amaccuish 6y ago
  >Dang (HN’s mod) just asked me to be identifiable But that's not what they said. Were you asked to use your real name? Nothing stopping you keeping to one, anonymous sounding username
  - owaty 6y ago
    I see where billme is coming from. I don't do it here (because I don't comment much, because I mostly use https://hackerweb.app https://hackerweb.app for reading), but I do it on reddit. Once you've left enough comments, a motivated party has a good chance of identifying you based on the intersection of your (relatively uncommon) interests, various bits and pieces of the personal info that you tend to drop in comments etc.
- yesenadam 6y ago
  Your protest might be effective if (as you said you don't) you used the same username for a while and people knew who you are. I have a feeling you'll be back soon anyway.
danielecook 6y ago
Does anyone know why the top bar sometimes has a thick black line underneath it?
- sgillen 6y ago
  The black line is a symbol of mourning, used when someone deemed significant to the community passes.
- dang 6y ago
  minimaxir should add that one! It doesn't look like it's on the list.
  - minimaxir 6y ago
    Huh, I thought I did add that. Will do!
elorant 6y ago
One thing that I'd like to know is if there is any kind of penalty if the stories you submit get flagged.
- dang 6y ago
  No.
yesenadam 6y ago
I'd love if I could choose on my user page not to see my HN points total always there next to my name in the top bar. Seeing that often turns me into someone I don't like.
- bondarchuk 6y ago
  Set your top bar colour to black.
  - yesenadam 6y ago
    Haha thanks, I tried it... It 'worked', but unfortunately can't see anything else in the top bar - "ask" etc.
- dang 6y ago
  We might implement that as a profile option. One question is where such a feature should fall between minimal (don't show karma next to usernames in top bar) vs. maximal (don't show any point totals or karma about anything). I feel like it might be better to go the whole hog and just have the maximal option. 'nokarma'.
  - yesenadam 6y ago
    Oh great. Yes, I guess not seeing the voting on one's own comments would be good too. (Looking at the score on my comments is a very small percentage of my HN time, but my HN total score is there every time I return to the main page. Have to learn to ignore it I guess.) As long as it doesn't mess with the voting system too much! Maybe there'd be many more bad comments if people couldn't see their points total/comment scores.
    - dang 6y ago
      The maximal version would hide story points as well.
  - bob1029 6y ago
    I agree with a more comprehensive 'nokarma' approach. If I don't want to see my point total, I probably also don't care to see up/down vote options, or any other related features.
sawyer29 6y ago
The front page way back feature is pretty cool.
waynesonfire 6y ago
incredible that all these features in combination is what make hackernews great.
codeddesign 6y ago
“Moderators will sometimes rescue a post which didn't receive a lot of upvotes and reset the submission time on the post.” This sounds more like manipulation of content based upon moderator viewpoints or interests. HN has a wide enough audience to hit a good post the first time around.
- O_H_E 6y ago
  > HN has a wide enough audience to hit a good post the first time around. Unfortunately, it is widely agreed that a lot of good quality content goes unnoticed. Which might be due to the sheer number of submissions. That could be seen in yesterday's post about quality content that goes under. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23392049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23392049
randyrand 6y ago
I find it interesting that politics and diversity each have their own section on here. I always considered diversity a political topic.
- chaorace 6y ago
  I suspect that it's more about optics than practicality. Not all diversity topics are political, but most diversity topics are probably outside of what the mods believe to be within the purview of HN. Making it a separate category bin bypasses all of the hemming and hawing over particulars.
speg 6y ago
Is there a simple link to get the top stories from the past week? /best seems to only return from the past couple days.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
tripu 6y ago
I think the minimalistic design is appropriate and efficient mostly. …with a couple caveats regarding accessibility: the default font is way, way too small, and some colours don't have enough contrast (eg, the “visited link”). Also, a tiny bit more of formatting would make comments more readable while keeping them sober and focused (eg, blockquotes, monospaced inlines, true hyperlinks).

673 points by billme 6y ago

I think there are some "features" missing from this list. I seem to recall that Hacker News will transparently remove some characters from titles (such as emoji and exclamation points), which seems like a bad feature to me, and one that people should be aware of.

saagarjha 6y ago
It will remove many emoji from comments as well, although not all of them. Not sure what the criteria is for that, either.
- Uehreka 6y ago
  That’s a shame, because I could see legit and serious reasons why someone would want emoji in comments. For instance, what if someone was trying to illustrate a point by “drawing” a diagram of a network, using different emoji to represent different types of nodes.
  - criddell 6y ago
    ℑ 𝔴𝔬𝔫𝔡𝔢𝔯 𝔥𝔬𝔴 𝔦𝔱 𝔡𝔢𝔠𝔦𝔡𝔢𝔰 𝔴𝔥𝔦𝔠𝔥 𝔬𝔫𝔢𝔰 𝔱𝔬 𝔯𝔢𝔪𝔬𝔳𝔢?
    - airstrike 6y ago
      ʎɹɐɹʇᴉqɹɐ ʎʇʇǝɹd sɯǝǝs
      - fit2rule 6y ago
        C̸̡̙̹̠̪͊̽̉̃̆̎͝ͅó̶̧͇̳̝̇̓̉̇̋ṵ̷͊̃̓̏͊̌̉͊́̈́͐l̴̛̘͓̪͙̣̩̼͙̂̌͂͛̄ḑ̷̗̫̲̣̺̞̣̖̎̊ ̴̢̤̩̭͇͈͚̜̣̯͚̖̞̪̿̈́̃̌͌̀̿̃͝͠b̸̨̢̧̢͙͙̯͕̼̩̼͚̹̘̟͆́̈́̇̈́̆̅̈̇̾͘̚͝ḙ̴̭̾͒̈͒͂̌̍̈̂͗́ ̴̛̝̲͈͍͉̲͈̗̗̪͖͌͆̓̐̽̊̌͂͛̚͘͘͜͝ẅ̷̧̛͚̜̳̬͙̥̦͈̟̺́̉ö̶̧̠̱̭̻̱̓̾ȓ̷͔͍͙̠̳̬͍̻̱̙̭̖̈́͊͆͛̅̕͜s̸͚̳̥̬̖̲̯͉͈͇̓͊̄͒̒̕ḙ̷̫͔͉͚̻̗̆̋͐̾͊͂̒͛͘͝,̴͕̤̹͙̈̎̊̽̈́̉͘ ̷̨̛̤͈̲̥̙̟͙͍̉̆͂̽́̆̈́́̓̀͗̕͘̚ͅͅF̷̠͕̳̬͚̾̎͌̅̓͌̅͝N̸̡̧͔̰̰͎̝͍̪͇͈̠̻̐̏O̶̢͓͙̜͓̤̰̟͚̓̀̈́͛͗́͘͝R̷̛̞͕͙̘̋͛̒͆̽̈́̊͝͝͠Ḏ̵̨̠̔̀́̌̔ ̷̡̯̹͕͇̗̺̗̰̹̑͂̈́͜͠.̵̢̞̈́͂̈́̄.̸̧̹̫̞͔̣̦̼͙̃̏͒́̽͘ ̶̲̹̺̠̠̗͑͋̾̈́̈́̒̾̒̏̈́̈́̕͠͠͝
        isoprophlex 6y ago
        Unicode penis? 𓀐𓂸 edit: yeah hieroglyphics are allowed apparently
        selimthegrim 6y ago
        Get thee behind me, Zalgo!
  - drannex 6y ago
    As someone who despises emojis, I am more than happy that they are removed. There are other ways we could show the hypothetical example.
    - cmroanirgo 6y ago
      Agree. It's almost as if using vocabulary is wrong. I've been watching how our conversations deteriorate by gratuitous use of emoji. It seems that some seem to think that emoji can cut through all language barriers, because they're universally understood. Unfortunately, the effect I see is newspeak to the detriment of all, as we lose the nuances of language itself, and indeed we become more 'visual only' in our language.
  - BlueGh0st 6y ago
    One that comes to mind is the "thrangrycat" vulnerability. I say "thrangrycat" but the researches insist on calling it . I've taken liberty of shortening the excerpt to the more reasonable reasons, as the answer got more nonsensical as it went on. >How do you describe the meaning of this vulnerability name? >We chose to communicate through a visual representation of symbols, rather than “words.” Naming vulnerabilities using emoji sequences instead of other pronounceable natural languages have several advantages. First, emoji sequences are universally understood across nearly all natural languages. Choosing instead of a name rooted in any one language ensures that the technical contents of our research can be discussed democratically and without latent cultural or linguistic bias... from: https://thrangrycat.com/ https://thrangrycat.com/ Edit: and HackerNews has indeed stripped the emojis used to name this vulnerability.
  - u801e 6y ago
    On some platforms, the emoji is so small that is difficult to determine what it is, let alone what it's supposed to represent.
- masklinn 6y ago
  Not just emoji either e.g. the box-drawing characters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box-drawing_character https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box-drawing_character) also get stripped. OTOH domino or mahjong tiles (🁓, 🀕), playing cards (🃅) or musical symbols (𝅗𝅥) are allowed. So are arrows (↸) including supplementals (⤪), number forms (ↈ), superscripts and subscripts (⁴₂), "miscelllaneous technical" (⎋, ⏱) or geometric symbols (◉), however misc symbols (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscellaneous_Symbols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscellaneous_Symbols) is a no. So yeah, pretty arbitrary. I guess pg likes playing domino but hates chess. Also funny note: we have access to musical symbols but not notes, because the notes are in the misc. symbols block. Unless you want to use byzantine (𝀶) or ancient greek (𝈙) musical notation then it's OK.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Yeah, I wanted to use U+266A once and it didn't let me, but random emoji gets through: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23028433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23028433
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    On FF on (older) Android I get the symbols here: >So are arrows (↸) including supplementals (⤪), number forms (ↈ), superscripts and subscripts (⁴₂), "miscelllaneous technical" (⎋, ⏱) or geometric symbols (◉), however misc symbols (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscellaneous_Symbols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscellaneous_Symbols) is a no. // But not the others, they're just get boxes; except the boxes which are missing completely (ironic). IIRC, we had access to UTF font formats (using bold, outlaid, double, open, etc., letter forms) and to Zalgo, Z̸̠̽a̷͍̟̱͔͛͘̚ĺ̸͎̌̄̌g̷͓͈̗̓͌̏̉o̴̢̺̹̕ ?
    - masklinn 6y ago
      > But not the others, they're just get boxes; except the boxes which are missing completely (ironic). That's a different issue, the glyphs are missing from your machine's fonts rather than HN stripping them.
  - moonchild 6y ago
fragmede 6y ago
Another thing that's undocumented is that comments can be "detached" from a post. The comment isn't deleted, but is removed from view, so the participants can continue having a conversation but that thread is no longer discoverable from the post that spawned the discussion.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Is it no longer visible, or just moved to the top level? I've seen plenty of top-level comment threads that start with something missing context, and then is followed by a reply from dang, of the form "We've detached this thread from $url because $reasons".
  - detaro 6y ago
    it just becomes its own top-level comment, and typically is pushed to the bottom.
graeme 6y ago
I wish they had markdown’s list feature
- snazz 6y ago
  In my opinion, they should implement this by removing the feature that combines two lines without a newline. Most people type entire paragraphs out on a single line (since web browsers word wrap inside <textarea> tags), so I don't really see the point in having this feature anymore.
- tlb 6y ago
  Lists: - like - this?
  - graeme 6y ago
    That's with an extra newline in between, correct? Most places allow you to make lists without the abnormally large line spacing. * But yes, this is how I * Make a list workaround * It is not ideal
    - tlb 6y ago
      Yes, double newlines between. For paragraph-length bullets that makes sense, but for a few words each it is a lot of extra vertical space.
    - brudgers 6y ago
      There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free List

saagarjha 6y ago

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822 Hacker News has so many strange, undocumented things that even such a list is incomplete. I’ve run into entirely new things I didn’t know existed just by using it more, or by happening upon one of ‘dang’s comments…

billme 6y ago
Here’s an example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643177

d0m 6y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors https://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors

billme 6y ago
Are these the only supported “custom colors” ? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7432201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7432201
- Stratoscope 6y ago
  No, you can set any CSS color if you have the minimum karma required. The linked page is just a list of colors that users have actually set. I really wish any user could set a custom topcolor. I found the default orange hard on my eyes, and I was glad when I could change it. Mine is #d0c8b5, which is simply a darker version of the page background color. Plain and unobtrusive, and the bit of orange in the "Y" logo sits nicely in the corner.
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    And you can always use user.css to adjust per site CSS to your preference. I use it for a few sites; there are addons that facilitate it, but I've never bothered.

lsllc 6y ago

Comment "markdown" syntax with some examples would be a nice addition to this.

Deimorz 6y ago
I think this official page covers all of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
- lsllc 6y ago
  I'm don't think that covers everything! I have used that page when commenting, but I'm sure I've seen formatting not described there.
  - snazz 6y ago
    Really? What kind of special formatting have you seen? I think that italics, code blocks, paragraph breaks, and https://lin.ks https://lin.ks are the only formatting options available. I certainly haven't seen anything else.
    - chaorace 6y ago
      I've seen comment citations in the past. I still can't figure out how to get those to work.
      - snazz 6y ago
        > I've seen comment citations in the past. I still can't figure out how to get those to work. Like this? It's just italics and a > symbol.
        chaorace 6y ago
        Nope, like wiki style citations to external links. Maybe it's just some superscript trickery, but I've seen it from multiple people, so I assumed it's a hidden feature.

ourmandave 6y ago

Don't forget about their API on github. It's simplistic but you can still use it to write a sh*ttier version of HN. https://github.com/HackerNews/API https://github.com/HackerNews/API I just wish they'd open source their We're-Not-Reddit behaviors library.

minimaxir 6y ago
The API has no authentication, which makes it useless for anything other than a reader.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  You may find this interesting, and as a bonus it also includes something that you haven't documented: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22788526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22788526
  - minimaxir 6y ago
    That is indeed interesting, but I have a feeling it'll be documented once it launches. :P
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      Was talking more about the existence of an alpha-tester list, which has some additional features itself :)
- willis936 6y ago
  I'd be interested in a discourse mirror for consumption.
- gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
  Isn't posting, voting etc just done using POST requests?
flanbiscuit 6y ago

itchyjunk 6y ago

Ah, there is nothing past 501? I was hoping something else would unlock for user whose karma points are over 9000.

billme 6y ago
PG’s phone number used to appear if your rep got high enough, not sure if that’s still a feature.
- lucb1e 6y ago
  On his profile page (/user?id=pg) you mean? I don't see it there with 11k rep. It might require higher rep nowadays or indeed be removed.
  - billme 6y ago
    Yes, that’s PG’s username, or at least the original & official one, but no, that’s not where it would appear. Here’s example of a prior reference to this feature: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7432526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7432526
    - lucb1e 6y ago
      To save others a click, it would appear: > in the top right corner of the header
  - nostrademons 6y ago
    65K karma (and #22 on /leaders) and I don't see it. I think that was a joke.
    - billme 6y ago
      Not surprising last reference I know of it is years old and PG is busy doing other things now.
    - airstrike 6y ago

YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago

>> If a user has 251 Karma, they can set the color of the top bar in their profile settings. The default is #ff6600. Here's the complete set of colors users have set. Happy to see that the most #bada55 colour of all is in that list.

postsantum 6y ago
#dadb0d too
airstrike 6y ago
Would be nice to see a sorted list and the count for each color. Could even bucket very similar colors so we get a sense for the general HN taste for colors, though I don't know the first thing about bucketing colors. I use #93a1a1, personally (i.e. $base1 from solarized https://ethanschoonover.com/solarized/ https://ethanschoonover.com/solarized/)
- acheron 6y ago
  I use the Dark Reader extension [0], and the standard HN topcolor stood out too much, so I darkened it to #fff0e6. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/darkreader/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/darkreader/
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
saagarjha 6y ago
For the curious: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%23bada55 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%23bada55
- casefields 6y ago
  That is a hideous color. I feel like the person who named it was trolling.
  - 6y ago

zaroth 6y ago

I’ll add one to this list, I’m sorry if it comes off as complaining, but at least it’s topical. There is more than one karma tracking algorithm that can be activated for a given account. That is to say, a downvote is not always a downvote, and an upvote is not always an upvote, and the point score of a comment is not always exactly equal to the number of up and downvotes. Accounts that are flagged for posting flame-baiting or ideological comments can be switched to an alternate voting mode where votes are not counted the same way. This may mean that any manual downvotes are given greater weight, or upvotes are underweighted, or downvoting is automatically applied after some time providing a type of downward gravity which must be overcome. I don’t know the precise algorithm. It’s complicated by the fact that I’ve been getting auto-downvoted by bots. But due to some overly combative COVID related posts my account is in this current state. I’ve found that even researched technical comments of mine will inevitably end up at -1 karma, or struggle to stay above 0. After reaching out to dang about bot-downvoting Daniel was nice enough to look into it and confirmed my account was getting bot-downvoted but also explained that my account had been flagged and made some suggestions on posts that crossed the line. I’ve had a long and mostly enjoyable relationship with HN so hopefully I’ll be out of purgatory soon. To be clear I have no interest in debating whether the feature was misapplied in my own personal case, but rather just it’s abstract technical merits make for great meta-discussion of moderation techniques for social media boards.

hilyen 6y ago
This is generally referred to as shadow banning. When the user is unaware their account is being restricted due to content rules or bot like activities.
billme 6y ago
Agree, I personally feel this is a major issue, in fact recently posted twice about it: Ask HN: HN user ghosted 5 years, why? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23436276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23436276 Ask HN: Dark Patterns on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439617
- bluntfang 6y ago

zaroth 6y ago

Can we make feature requests here? Hah. I would absolutely love it if the comment box was taller than 7 lines on mobile, perhaps just at least when editing a comment.

remote_phone 6y ago
It took YEARS before they added collapsible threads despite its obvious usefulness and easy implementation. Some people added extensions to do that but HN was entirely unresponsive. I wouldn’t hold my breath for any new features.
floatingatoll 6y ago
If you set the delay profile value to X it’ll let you edit and save a comment for up to X minutes before other users can see it. I use it extensively on mobile and have mine set to 7.
- zaroth 6y ago
  Ooh, that’s a good one because I tend to post then edit, edit, edit, so a little delay would be nice. Thanks for the suggestion!
billme 6y ago
Here’s a mod’s recent comment on feature requests to give some context on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23199062 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23199062

buboard 6y ago

Not mentioned, but you can be "rate limited", where you can post up to ~ 3 comments per hour (?not sure), else you get a "posting too fast, please slow down" message. It's keeping us trolls at bay

ryandrake 6y ago
Cool fact! I always assumed this applied to everyone. I've seen this message on and off for at least a few years. Now I'm wondering why/when this was applied to my account. Interesting!
sparkie 6y ago
In my case it is 5 posts per 3 hours.
ccmcarey 6y ago
Didn't know that was a thing. Is it a function of your karma?
- buboard 6y ago
  No, manually flagged
billme 6y ago
Related top level comment in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23440929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23440929
yters 6y ago
applies to submissions too

United857 6y ago

I've wondered why we can't comment on YC jobs postings on HN. I imagine commenting would be beneficial for questions/answers about the company or position.

billme 6y ago
Because they are officially sponsored YC related ADs.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  Although it is a fact, that doesn't really answer why you can't comment on them.
  - billme 6y ago
    Generally speaking ADs don’t allow comments. Have an example or reasoning why this would make sense?
    - hirundo 6y ago
      for users: How about "I tried it, I like it" or "this product gave me warts", both things it could be useful to know. for makers of products HN people like: Comments could draw more attention to the product, more clicks, more sales. for makers of products HN people don't like: No, can't think of a reason why allowing comments on ads would make sense.
      - billme 6y ago
        Nothing stopping any user from creating posts related to an aspect of the content on any of those ADs, but it’s obvious allowing comments for ADs would potentially cause unneeded overhead for the advertiser; clearly if any YC advertisers want to post on HN, they’re free to do so within the guidelines on HN. HN doesn’t block negative posts about YC companies.
      - kick 6y ago

dccoolgai 6y ago

I agree with most of those policies, but "downranking of tutorials" seems kinda dumb. I could see it making sense for "how to React" drivel that people use for self-promotion, but I've learned a lot from 1-off tutorials I saw on HN first.

billme 6y ago
Reasoning is HN’s goal, per dang, is to promote substantially new information — unless the tutorial fits this meaning, it’s less of a priority to feature than those posts that do meet it. Worth noting there’s nothing stopping you from building custom HN searches like this to find tutorials posts, though this would not solve the likelihood of the community posting related comments: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=tutorial&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  Citation?
  - billme 6y ago
    Sure, read all the comments by dang (aka HN’s main mod) here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23239164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23239164
brudgers 6y ago
I've learned a lot from 1-off tutorials I saw on HN first. Could that reflect survivor bias (among all tutorials)?

booleandilemma 6y ago

I've always found it kind of ironic (or at least funny) that the code for HN isn't open source.

billme 6y ago
Not sure that’s always been true, or at least for sure PG was open about subsets if the code. Generally, there’s reason to open source code, and open sourcing it would likely result in more overhead not less; generally HN goal is to very, very slowly change the code, interface, etc. Honestly, cloning HN really would not be that hard, cloning dang, that’s another story. EDIT: Here’s a recent comment from dang on open source HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22791221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22791221
- krapp 6y ago
  There is an open source fork but it runs on Racket[0], so the Arc documentation isn't always correct, and of course that forum and this one differ in terms of features. [0]https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki
  - gus_massa 6y ago
    HN is written in Arc that is written in Racket. I think HN use a slightly modified version of Racket with a few tweaks to be more friendly with the high amount of memory used in HN.
- traes 6y ago
  > cloning HN really would not be that hard Isn't that basically what lobste.rs did?
  - billme 6y ago
    Related link: https://lobste.rs/about https://lobste.rs/about And history: https://jcs.org/notaweblog/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker_news/ https://jcs.org/notaweblog/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker...

mhdhn 6y ago

Thanks! Pretty useful. Can anyone supply a good comparison between Hacker News and Reddit?

billme 6y ago
Stating the obvious, Reddit was in the first YC batch; YC is HN’s parent company. Further, HN was created in part because Reddit’s intend is more general than HN; HN’s intend is to focus on substantially new information that triggers both curiosity & notable dialogues.
- dsr_ 6y ago
  Tip: intend is a verb. She intends to win the election. What did you intend? Paul intended not to lose. Intent is a noun. That is her intent. Intent is also a verb: She is intent on winning the election. You wanted "intent" as a noun in both your usages above.
  - billme 6y ago
    Thanks, agree that’s a typo; unfortunately I am unable to fix it since editing is now locked, but appreciate you taking the time to point it out.
  - tchaffee 6y ago
    I don't think intent is a verb. It is either a noun or adjective. In the sentence "She is intent on winning the election" the verb would be "is" and "intent" is an adjective that describes her. Compare: His program focused on dinosaurs. (verb) His program is focused on dinosaurs. (adjective describing his program). You would never say "his program intented on dinosuars" because it's not a verb.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - dsr_ 6y ago
      Correct.

yread 6y ago

Oooh I didn't know about /invited. Few stories of very high quality, looks like HN back in the day

saagarjha 6y ago
/invited is basically the second-chance queue for things that have been personally stamped to be interesting by the moderators, so it's generally pretty good.
- dang 6y ago
  It's only a small part of it, the ones that were too old to put in the queue directly, so we emailed repost invites for them instead. It's on my list to publish a more complete page. The types of stories are much the same on the larger list though.
billme 6y ago
Related link: https://news.ycombinator.com/invited https://news.ycombinator.com/invited
kgwxd 6y ago
I really wish they'd make RSS feeds for all the different views.
- l1n 6y ago
  https://hnrss.org/ https://hnrss.org/ provides a bunch of them!

isoprophlex 6y ago

To me HNs biggest feature is the lack of features and the lack of 'innovation', or rather redesigns for the sake of redesigning. Keep up the fantastic moderation and the wonderful lack of innovation, HN people!

karlakush 6y ago
For me, the biggest feature is the lack of ads. Well except for the job postings, which I strongly suspect are unlabeled ads.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  They're job ads from YC companies, as mentioned in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  We have ads here, they just have to be carefully crafted infomercials with a high payoff for the advertisee, enough that it could not be an ad ...
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Basically, "Mission. Fucking. Accomplished." - https://xkcd.com/810/ https://xkcd.com/810/.
- LunaSea 6y ago
  You're joking, right? On tech topics, every third comment is somebody pointing to their company. Sometimes they mention it and sometimes not but it's still advertisement. Not even talking about people spamming their site.
brianzelip 6y ago
For sure. This helps to keep it part of the old/weird web like the related articles that get much attention here. I appreciate it.
6y ago

simonw 6y ago

This is amazingly useful. I've been on HN for nearly 13 years and I only knew about a fraction of this stuff.

billme 6y ago
Agree, not sure why after X amount of rep is earned something like this is not featured for just for new users, users who haven’t viewed it, etc.

Havoc 6y ago

Neat. Been here nearly a decade & didn't know that downvotes are capped to -4 for example.

billme 6y ago
Yes, there’s a lot more upside to comments as a result. Generally voting signal to noise ratio goes: upvote, no-vote, downvote — allowing more downvote would most like have more negative than positive impact on the community.
blattimwind 6y ago
Is that a recent change? I'm pretty sure some of my less popular remarks earned double digit negative points.
- minimaxir 6y ago
  No, that's been around forever. Back when comment scores were public via the API, I retrieved the lowest-rating comments for each month. which was always -4: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IfbSDYVBXiHZCuMdHXgprhmeCVc4XDtOGizF9CSGyUo/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IfbSDYVBXiHZCuMdHXgp... Bonus histogram of comment scores calculated in 2014: https://minimaxir.com/img/hn-comments/distribution_comment_points.png https://minimaxir.com/img/hn-comments/distribution_comment_p...
- brudgers 6y ago
  It's always been -4 for me. At times it's felt like more when I've doubled down on my unpopular comments with more downvoted comments (and because usually every down vote hurts). I think the limit probably discourages long winded "all these downvotes are a badge of honor" comments. People who crave downvotes only get four. People hurt by downvotes only get four, too.
pbhjpbhj 6y ago
Greying out goes with downvotes and send to go in more steps than just 4 ... guess I should RTFGAP.

Causality1 6y ago

Also needs a section on muting. If too many of your consecutive comments get downvotes you start encountering "you are posting too fast" messages, even if it there was over an hour between comments and several hours since your most recent.

billme 6y ago
For related prior discussion: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22you+are+posting+too+fast%22+AND+(%22hn%22+OR+%22hackernews%22) https://www.google.com/search?q=%22you+are+posting+too+fast%...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

4636760295 6y ago

People should check out https://lobste.rs/ https://lobste.rs/, it's like HN but with less censorship and less content marketing BS.

jfim 6y ago
Lobsters requires an invite though. They have a good rationale for it, but it seems like a non-negligible barrier to entry, especially for people that are less connected.
- 4636760295 6y ago
  If you ask around I'm sure you can get an invite.
  - billme 6y ago
    Per the login page: “Not a user yet? Signup is by invitation only to combat spam and increase accountability. If you know a current user of the site [1], ask them for an invitation or request one in chat [2].” [1] https://lobste.rs/u/ https://lobste.rs/u/ [2] https://lobste.rs/chat https://lobste.rs/chat —— Related comment on the history of lobste.rs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23441470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23441470
kick 6y ago
lobste.rs is almost entirely content marketing spam, and it actually has heavier censorship of non-spam than HN does; you can see this pretty easily by checking their mod log.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 6y ago
  The fact that you can check their mod log makes me like them even more. I have a feeling HN would never publicize that information themselves.
- greenyoda 6y ago
  I just looked at their mod log. The last article removed by a moderator was deleted because it was "not about computing". I read the same article on HN, and it gave rise to some interesting discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23437529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23437529 Some of the most interesting discussions on HN are not directly related to computing, and they're one of the main reasons why I stick around HN (and would not be interested in moving to lobste.rs).

dfabulich 6y ago

"Posts without URLs get penalized." That's strange. Does that include "Ask HN" posts? I would have thought that submissions with no link would be good discussion starters.

TwelveNights 6y ago
Could this be why most Ask HN posts are desaturated? I always wondered why that was the case.
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  “Desaturated”?
  - nerdponx 6y ago
    The text color is lighter, as if the post had been downvoted.
    - brudgers 6y ago
      On my computer, the default color for visited links is also lighter.
    - floatingatoll 6y ago
      That's the 'visited link' color, which indicates that you've visited a given post's link. Posts do not change color based on votes. For posts without a link, reading the post requires still visiting the post's link, so it works out as expected from there.
      - frosted-flakes 6y ago
        No, the actual colour of the text on text-only posts is super light. I read somewhere a while back that it was supposed to discourage people from using it too much. Here's an example from the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23438930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23438930

drdeadringer 6y ago

I'm glad to know about the hex-color change ability.

benjaminsuch 6y ago

/leaders is pretty cool. First place got over 300k points, wtf.

billme 6y ago
Related link, leader list: https://news.ycombinator.com/lists https://news.ycombinator.com/lists Direct link to top users by rep: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tptacek https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tptacek (tptacek’s comments are super useful and extremely knowledgeable)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

ufmace 6y ago

I was always kind of surprised that there's a relatively high karma threshold for downvoting, but seemingly not for upvoting. Seems like it would invite voting rings. I guess there's already other software to detect that though.

billme 6y ago
Downvotes per item are limited to -4 and the signal-to-noise ratio for negative votes beyond pushing them below the “new comment” boost is of little positive impact in filtering content, in my opinion. And yes, there a lot of filters in place for upvotes, many of which are intentionally kept secret. Personally, I don’t use downvotes.
brudgers 6y ago
It's easy to engage in anonymous encouraging behavior with upvotes. Anonymous discouraging behavior via downvotes has a higher threshold.

rikkipitt 6y ago

Thanks for posting this. I've been an avid reader of HN for years (with a few modest/minor submissions). I had no idea about a substantial amount of this... I wonder how much is commonly known in the community?

billme 6y ago

Good bye HN! Dang (HN’s mod) just asked me to be identifiable and given that’s not a good fit for me, this will be my last post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23441542 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23441542

samanator 6y ago
I don't know who you are but please stay! You seem to have a lot to offer and in a very positive way. EDIT: When I wrote this reply your comment was at the top. 2 minutes later it was at the bottom of the comment section. Looks like it was manually moved to the bottom of the comments by a moderator :(
- yesenadam 6y ago
  Or new comments appear at the top, and after a couple of downvotes it went to the bottom. No conspiracy theory needed.
amaccuish 6y ago
>Dang (HN’s mod) just asked me to be identifiable But that's not what they said. Were you asked to use your real name? Nothing stopping you keeping to one, anonymous sounding username
- owaty 6y ago
  I see where billme is coming from. I don't do it here (because I don't comment much, because I mostly use https://hackerweb.app https://hackerweb.app for reading), but I do it on reddit. Once you've left enough comments, a motivated party has a good chance of identifying you based on the intersection of your (relatively uncommon) interests, various bits and pieces of the personal info that you tend to drop in comments etc.
yesenadam 6y ago
Your protest might be effective if (as you said you don't) you used the same username for a while and people knew who you are. I have a feeling you'll be back soon anyway.

danielecook 6y ago

Does anyone know why the top bar sometimes has a thick black line underneath it?

sgillen 6y ago
The black line is a symbol of mourning, used when someone deemed significant to the community passes.
dang 6y ago
minimaxir should add that one! It doesn't look like it's on the list.
- minimaxir 6y ago
  Huh, I thought I did add that. Will do!

elorant 6y ago

One thing that I'd like to know is if there is any kind of penalty if the stories you submit get flagged.

dang 6y ago
No.

yesenadam 6y ago

I'd love if I could choose on my user page not to see my HN points total always there next to my name in the top bar. Seeing that often turns me into someone I don't like.

bondarchuk 6y ago
Set your top bar colour to black.
- yesenadam 6y ago
  Haha thanks, I tried it... It 'worked', but unfortunately can't see anything else in the top bar - "ask" etc.
dang 6y ago
We might implement that as a profile option. One question is where such a feature should fall between minimal (don't show karma next to usernames in top bar) vs. maximal (don't show any point totals or karma about anything). I feel like it might be better to go the whole hog and just have the maximal option. 'nokarma'.
- yesenadam 6y ago
  Oh great. Yes, I guess not seeing the voting on one's own comments would be good too. (Looking at the score on my comments is a very small percentage of my HN time, but my HN total score is there every time I return to the main page. Have to learn to ignore it I guess.) As long as it doesn't mess with the voting system too much! Maybe there'd be many more bad comments if people couldn't see their points total/comment scores.
  - dang 6y ago
    The maximal version would hide story points as well.
- bob1029 6y ago
  I agree with a more comprehensive 'nokarma' approach. If I don't want to see my point total, I probably also don't care to see up/down vote options, or any other related features.

sawyer29 6y ago

The front page way back feature is pretty cool.

waynesonfire 6y ago

incredible that all these features in combination is what make hackernews great.

codeddesign 6y ago

“Moderators will sometimes rescue a post which didn't receive a lot of upvotes and reset the submission time on the post.” This sounds more like manipulation of content based upon moderator viewpoints or interests. HN has a wide enough audience to hit a good post the first time around.

O_H_E 6y ago
> HN has a wide enough audience to hit a good post the first time around. Unfortunately, it is widely agreed that a lot of good quality content goes unnoticed. Which might be due to the sheer number of submissions. That could be seen in yesterday's post about quality content that goes under. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23392049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23392049

randyrand 6y ago

I find it interesting that politics and diversity each have their own section on here. I always considered diversity a political topic.

chaorace 6y ago
I suspect that it's more about optics than practicality. Not all diversity topics are political, but most diversity topics are probably outside of what the mods believe to be within the purview of HN. Making it a separate category bin bypasses all of the hemming and hawing over particulars.

speg 6y ago

Is there a simple link to get the top stories from the past week? /best seems to only return from the past couple days.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

tripu 6y ago

I think the minimalistic design is appropriate and efficient mostly. …with a couple caveats regarding accessibility: the default font is way, way too small, and some colours don't have enough contrast (eg, the “visited link”). Also, a tiny bit more of formatting would make comments more readable while keeping them sober and focused (eg, blockquotes, monospaced inlines, true hyperlinks).