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Sounds like they blacklisted things likely to clutter up the comment threads and left things unlikely to be used. Country flags seem like they could be used fo

Sounds like they blacklisted things likely to clutter up the comment threads and left things unlikely to be used. Country flags seem like they could be used for political trolling. Die faces could lead to weird rolling threads or other things. Musical notes, you got me, can't really think of anything too bad for those. The markup's not great, but too much formatting is distracting. I personally prefer the limited options. You focus more on the content of your comment than making it look pretty. The only thing i really despise about hn's formatting is the code blocks or whatever they are, the one on mobile that vanishes off the side and you have to scroll horizontally to read everything. I really can't stand when people use those for quotes. Other than that though, hn's formatting makes everything uniform and fairly easy to read through. There's no fancy nonsense getting in the way of things. Actually, that's part of why those code block things piss me off, they're probably the fanciest piece of formatting you can do and all it does is obstruct information and make me waste time while reading.

masklinn 6y ago
> Sounds like they blacklisted things likely to clutter up the comment threads and left things unlikely to be used. That’s not really believable given how arbitrary it is. > Die faces could lead to weird rolling threads or other things. As if tiles or playing cards could not be used that way. > The markup's not great, but too much formatting is distracting. The problem is that despite having only two directives half of HN’s markup is actively detrimental: because there is no escaping, no inline literals, and the parsing is sub-par, in my experience the “emphasis” directive causes issues more often than it helps. HN’s markup would be significantly improved by removing it entirely. > I really can't stand when people use those for quotes Which would be way less likely if HN actually supported quotes.
- grawprog 6y ago
  >> I really can't stand when people use those for quotes >Which would be way less likely if HN actually supported quotes. But look how well this works ;p. Sorry...couldn't resist. I dunno, I like the 'hackish' nature of it. You're right i'm sure the tiles or playing cards could be used like that too, it may be arbitrary, I don't know. But, those were just some reasons off the top of my head, i'm sure when HN was being programmed a bit more thought went into it, or maybe not, who knows? My main point is, I like the simplicity of it all, sure it could be better, but better doesn't necessarily lead to better quality content. There's a minimum amount of distractions, most users find reasonable ways to communicate the context of the content of their posts and scrolling through most threads tends to be a mostly uniform experience where if users are following a few established conventions, you can follow the flow of things pretty well. It's not perfect, it's not the best, but I feel like it fits the general vibe and nature of the site. It gives HN an identity among all the other news aggregators and forums.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  > That’s not really believable given how arbitrary it is. No, that's exactly what they did. I asked.
DerekL 6y ago
I don't think that die faces are emojis. They range from U+2680 to U+2685. Let's see if they work here: Edit: No, they were filtered out.

masklinn 6y ago

> Sounds like they blacklisted things likely to clutter up the comment threads and left things unlikely to be used. That’s not really believable given how arbitrary it is. > Die faces could lead to weird rolling threads or other things. As if tiles or playing cards could not be used that way. > The markup's not great, but too much formatting is distracting. The problem is that despite having only two directives half of HN’s markup is actively detrimental: because there is no escaping, no inline literals, and the parsing is sub-par, in my experience the “emphasis” directive causes issues more often than it helps. HN’s markup would be significantly improved by removing it entirely. > I really can't stand when people use those for quotes Which would be way less likely if HN actually supported quotes.

grawprog 6y ago
>> I really can't stand when people use those for quotes >Which would be way less likely if HN actually supported quotes. But look how well this works ;p. Sorry...couldn't resist. I dunno, I like the 'hackish' nature of it. You're right i'm sure the tiles or playing cards could be used like that too, it may be arbitrary, I don't know. But, those were just some reasons off the top of my head, i'm sure when HN was being programmed a bit more thought went into it, or maybe not, who knows? My main point is, I like the simplicity of it all, sure it could be better, but better doesn't necessarily lead to better quality content. There's a minimum amount of distractions, most users find reasonable ways to communicate the context of the content of their posts and scrolling through most threads tends to be a mostly uniform experience where if users are following a few established conventions, you can follow the flow of things pretty well. It's not perfect, it's not the best, but I feel like it fits the general vibe and nature of the site. It gives HN an identity among all the other news aggregators and forums.
saagarjha 6y ago
> That’s not really believable given how arbitrary it is. No, that's exactly what they did. I asked.

DerekL 6y ago

I don't think that die faces are emojis. They range from U+2680 to U+2685. Let's see if they work here: Edit: No, they were filtered out.