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The fact that favorites are a hidden feature and hard to use made me think the quality of the curation signal would be even better. Also the fact the HackerNews

The fact that favorites are a hidden feature and hard to use made me think the quality of the curation signal would be even better. Also the fact the HackerNews API, Angolia don't expose this feature made it even more interesting to aggregate. Hope you like it and as it was a pain gathering the data, I put it in an observable notebook so hopefully we don't need to gather that dataset again for a while. The learning resources were the most useful thing to me. I have seen most of those links whoosh by me when reading HN, but this list has made me revisit some of them that were lost to the sands of time. In particular the bash shell resource [1] is something I have been trying to re-find for ages! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17057596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17057596

jacquesm 6y ago
Hidden? They're in plain sight at the top of every article page.
- tlarkworthy 6y ago
  See other comments. Maybe higher friction would be a better phrase
  - spicymaki 6y ago
    The favorite feature is hidden in plain sight.
- avree 6y ago
  I've used this website since 2010 and just realized it was a feature. Maybe I'm just unobservant...
  - narag 6y ago
    It's relatively new. Before we used upvotes. Actually I still don't use it and keep using upvotes to favourite stories. I'm sorry for that and even worse: sometimes I upvote a story without following the link, just using the upvote as a "read later" bookmark because I found the title intriguing. Not so bad is when I upvote because there's a very interesting comment, even though the article itself is crappy. Time ago someone posted a script that collects upvoted stories, but I can't find it now, it's in one of those upvoted stories O:) I guess I could make a conversion... but there are probably more than a thousand upvoted stories, I don't know.
    - mikestew 6y ago
      Not so bad is when I upvote because there's a very interesting comment If you didn’t know, you can “favorite” comments, too.
      - narag 6y ago
        That has become my favorite comment :)
    - mindcrime 6y ago
      Actually I still don't use it and keep using upvotes to favourite stories. I'm sorry for that So do I, but I'm not going to apologize for it. Upvoting is the fastest and more convenient way to save a story as "read later", so it's what I do. If they would add the "favorite" link to the front-page items, I'd use it instead of upvoting.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    It's not the most used function because browsers already have a 'favorite' function, bookmarks. I used a scrapbook extension in FireFox for years so even though I know it existed I've never used it. But this post actually serves to shine some light on it and I'll give it a shot for a few weeks to see how well it works for me. HN has some amazing threads every now and then and it is really worth remembering those.
  - jedberg 6y ago
    Same here. Been here since the first week of HN, just learned about favorites.
- krapp 6y ago
  HN's minimalist UI designed to make elements unobtrusive and sometimes difficult to see, and new features being mentioned only in a single thread means most users will just not notice. It also doesn't help that HN is a conservative culture generally antagonistic towards any change to the layout, and people wouldn't want to notice those changes to begin with. I've seen people not notice thread folding or the hide feature despite those also being "in plain sight." People don't know threads can span multiple pages - dang has to go out of his way to point that out because despite the UI being exactly the same as on the list pages, a "more" link at the bottom of the page, no one ever reads past the first thirty links on those pages to begin with.
- bmitc 6y ago
  To favorite a comment, you need to click on the time to be shown the favorite option.
- TheRealPomax 6y ago
  Those are not mutually exclusive facts. You're zero words away from the phrase "hidden in plain sight".
password4321 6y ago
How did you get the list of HN users to scrape favorites from?
- tlarkworthy 6y ago
  BigQuery public dataset https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19304326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19304326 Most active was defined by comment count.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
oefrha 6y ago
When I emailed mods to argue that the 'web' button should be restored[1], I was told by dang that he was actually considering removing 'hide' and 'favorite' too, because people rarely use those features. (I routinely use 'hide' but hardly ever use 'favorite'.) Btw, 'favorite' may be lesser-known but it's certainly not hard to use. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23762479 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23762479
- Folcon 6y ago
  I'd personally find removing favorite rather frustrating as it's a nice way of differentiating posts than just upvoting so that I can easily find them again in the future...
- krapp 6y ago
  > was told by dang that he was actually considering removing 'hide' and 'favorite' too, because people rarely use those features. That's something you do with a corporate site where you're constantly A/B testing and aggressively removing features that don't generate revenue. Hacker News isn't (or shouldn't be) run that way. It's perfectly fine to have features only a few people use.
  - debaserab2 6y ago
    Removing features to decrease maintenance overhead is also a pretty legit reason, and you don't have to be a corporate site for that to apply to you (I would say it applies even more to a hobby site). That said, I really hope favorites isn't removed because even though I only discovered the feature a few years ago, I really cherish the comments I've favorited.
    - ryandrake 6y ago
      Also, “it’s not used frequently” is a really bad reason to remove a feature. Frequency of use is not a proxy for usefulness. I don’t use my backup software’s “restore” feature often but that doesn’t mean it should be removed.
    - 6y ago
plibither8 6y ago
The "favorites" feature is amazing and just rightly inconspicuous. On my website, https://mihir.ch/#hn https://mihir.ch/#hn, I've been collecting and displaying my favorited posts and comments from an API I created for this purpose only. The API: https://hn-faves.now.sh https://hn-faves.now.sh Source: https://github.com/plibither8/hn-faves-api https://github.com/plibither8/hn-faves-api
- gitgud 6y ago
  Thanks for sharing your source too! I was curious how you got a web scraper on a small now.sh server (45mb) Usually I'd use puppeteer, but that would make it like 400mb. I've never heard of [1] x-ray, it looks a great package for lightweight containers! [1] https://www.npmjs.com/package/x-ray https://www.npmjs.com/package/x-ray
TheRealPomax 6y ago
it's nice that HN at least acknowledges that whether you like something or not is something that only matters for you, and no one else, rather than pretending there is value in centering a surfacing algorithm around it.
jellevdv 6y ago
What does Angolia have to do with HN? Edit: found it, it's Algolia. Thought s/he was talking about Angola.
- tlarkworthy 6y ago
  I have never managed to query by its name ever. I default to googling for hn search when I look for it.
dhosek 6y ago
I didn't know about the favorite feature until this post. I may end up using it now.
laurex 6y ago
How many of the top 10k most active members had favourites?

jacquesm 6y ago

Hidden? They're in plain sight at the top of every article page.

tlarkworthy 6y ago
See other comments. Maybe higher friction would be a better phrase
- spicymaki 6y ago
  The favorite feature is hidden in plain sight.
avree 6y ago
I've used this website since 2010 and just realized it was a feature. Maybe I'm just unobservant...
- narag 6y ago
  It's relatively new. Before we used upvotes. Actually I still don't use it and keep using upvotes to favourite stories. I'm sorry for that and even worse: sometimes I upvote a story without following the link, just using the upvote as a "read later" bookmark because I found the title intriguing. Not so bad is when I upvote because there's a very interesting comment, even though the article itself is crappy. Time ago someone posted a script that collects upvoted stories, but I can't find it now, it's in one of those upvoted stories O:) I guess I could make a conversion... but there are probably more than a thousand upvoted stories, I don't know.
  - mikestew 6y ago
    Not so bad is when I upvote because there's a very interesting comment If you didn’t know, you can “favorite” comments, too.
    - narag 6y ago
      That has become my favorite comment :)
  - mindcrime 6y ago
    Actually I still don't use it and keep using upvotes to favourite stories. I'm sorry for that So do I, but I'm not going to apologize for it. Upvoting is the fastest and more convenient way to save a story as "read later", so it's what I do. If they would add the "favorite" link to the front-page items, I'd use it instead of upvoting.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  It's not the most used function because browsers already have a 'favorite' function, bookmarks. I used a scrapbook extension in FireFox for years so even though I know it existed I've never used it. But this post actually serves to shine some light on it and I'll give it a shot for a few weeks to see how well it works for me. HN has some amazing threads every now and then and it is really worth remembering those.
- jedberg 6y ago
  Same here. Been here since the first week of HN, just learned about favorites.
krapp 6y ago
HN's minimalist UI designed to make elements unobtrusive and sometimes difficult to see, and new features being mentioned only in a single thread means most users will just not notice. It also doesn't help that HN is a conservative culture generally antagonistic towards any change to the layout, and people wouldn't want to notice those changes to begin with. I've seen people not notice thread folding or the hide feature despite those also being "in plain sight." People don't know threads can span multiple pages - dang has to go out of his way to point that out because despite the UI being exactly the same as on the list pages, a "more" link at the bottom of the page, no one ever reads past the first thirty links on those pages to begin with.
bmitc 6y ago
To favorite a comment, you need to click on the time to be shown the favorite option.
TheRealPomax 6y ago
Those are not mutually exclusive facts. You're zero words away from the phrase "hidden in plain sight".

password4321 6y ago

How did you get the list of HN users to scrape favorites from?

tlarkworthy 6y ago
BigQuery public dataset https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19304326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19304326 Most active was defined by comment count.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

oefrha 6y ago

When I emailed mods to argue that the 'web' button should be restored[1], I was told by dang that he was actually considering removing 'hide' and 'favorite' too, because people rarely use those features. (I routinely use 'hide' but hardly ever use 'favorite'.) Btw, 'favorite' may be lesser-known but it's certainly not hard to use. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23762479 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23762479

Folcon 6y ago
I'd personally find removing favorite rather frustrating as it's a nice way of differentiating posts than just upvoting so that I can easily find them again in the future...
krapp 6y ago
> was told by dang that he was actually considering removing 'hide' and 'favorite' too, because people rarely use those features. That's something you do with a corporate site where you're constantly A/B testing and aggressively removing features that don't generate revenue. Hacker News isn't (or shouldn't be) run that way. It's perfectly fine to have features only a few people use.
- debaserab2 6y ago
  Removing features to decrease maintenance overhead is also a pretty legit reason, and you don't have to be a corporate site for that to apply to you (I would say it applies even more to a hobby site). That said, I really hope favorites isn't removed because even though I only discovered the feature a few years ago, I really cherish the comments I've favorited.
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    Also, “it’s not used frequently” is a really bad reason to remove a feature. Frequency of use is not a proxy for usefulness. I don’t use my backup software’s “restore” feature often but that doesn’t mean it should be removed.
  - 6y ago

plibither8 6y ago

The "favorites" feature is amazing and just rightly inconspicuous. On my website, https://mihir.ch/#hn https://mihir.ch/#hn, I've been collecting and displaying my favorited posts and comments from an API I created for this purpose only. The API: https://hn-faves.now.sh https://hn-faves.now.sh Source: https://github.com/plibither8/hn-faves-api https://github.com/plibither8/hn-faves-api

gitgud 6y ago
Thanks for sharing your source too! I was curious how you got a web scraper on a small now.sh server (45mb) Usually I'd use puppeteer, but that would make it like 400mb. I've never heard of [1] x-ray, it looks a great package for lightweight containers! [1] https://www.npmjs.com/package/x-ray https://www.npmjs.com/package/x-ray

TheRealPomax 6y ago

it's nice that HN at least acknowledges that whether you like something or not is something that only matters for you, and no one else, rather than pretending there is value in centering a surfacing algorithm around it.

jellevdv 6y ago

What does Angolia have to do with HN? Edit: found it, it's Algolia. Thought s/he was talking about Angola.

tlarkworthy 6y ago
I have never managed to query by its name ever. I default to googling for hn search when I look for it.

dhosek 6y ago

I didn't know about the favorite feature until this post. I may end up using it now.

laurex 6y ago

How many of the top 10k most active members had favourites?