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A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors (2018-20)

shoto_io 6y ago
This is super neat. Not only for beginners/intermediate to catch up with documented and undocumented features. But also for platforms who are seeking a better moderation approach. For me, HN is a very special place - the way people interact, the way that it is moderated. I still dream that other platforms might follow suit someday.
- seumars 6y ago
  I wouldn't attribute it solely on moderation though. The HN audience isn't very big and thread discussions never last too long because there's almost always something on the frontpage. Not saying it's a bad thing though.
  - b1gtech 6y ago
    I think HN has God Mod syndrome. HN is good due to the network effect, not the heavy hand.
  - Oddskar 6y ago
    HN is probably the only place that maintained its quality somewhat over the last 10 years for me. So many websites and subreddits blew up, grew too quickly, and burned out in quality. I think a lot can be attributed to strict moderation, but also like you say being pretty niche helps in that the mod team doesn't have to be very big.
    - elliekelly 6y ago
      I think it’s also that HN is optimized for “interesting” rather than for eyeballs and outrage.
      - atat7024 6y ago
        It's actually DEoptimized for outrage, if one reads the guidelines closely.
  - dang 6y ago
    HN gets 1400-ish submissions and 12,000-ish comments a day, and 5M-ish users a month. Whether that's big depends on what you're comparing it to. It's big to us.
    - nick__m 6y ago
      The ratio of submissions/comments is impressively high, this surely explains why the upvoted articles are almost always interesting. Thanks for all that work!
ro_bit 6y ago
I never knew that there was a second moderator! (sctb) Their comment history only has some comments from 2019, and is much shorter than dangs. Did they only have a short stint as a moderator on HN, or do they now work from another account/behind the scenes?
- Shoop 6y ago
  Scott stopped working on HN about 18 months ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25055115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25055115
- minimaxir 6y ago
  Scott did leave: looks like I forgot to update it. Will do now.
  - vl 6y ago
    (off) For your list of downranked content: it looks like crypto is either downranked or banned.
    - dang 6y ago
      It isn't. Such threads often get a lot of flags, though. I assume that's because it's at such a late stage in the hype cycle. The huge amount of repetition (not to mention near-spam) makes a topic less interesting.
Nacdor 6y ago
Edited: Nevermind, I guess HN users prefer to remain unaware of certain undocumented behavior. To dang: I disagree with the no-delete policy (our comments are ours and we should have the ability to delete them), but more importantly I refuse to leave a comment up when my ability to reply has been disabled.
- viklove 6y ago
  HN is an extremely authoritarian web forum, maintained this way solely to prop up the reputation of YC as an organization. You're not allowed to have certain opinions because it will make the platform look bad, but of course censorship goes against the core beliefs of the western world so they can't exactly be transparent about it. The more experience I have with this site, the more I've found myself hating it. And the smugness of the users here who believe HN is the one-true-forum is the turd on top of the shitcake for me.
  - TrevorJ 6y ago
    Oh boy - I have been here for 12 years or so, and I don't really agree with this take at all. Maybe I am biased, but I think the conversations here are more open and more frank than most (or any) other places on the internet.
    - seumars 6y ago
      The parent comment is already greyed out, so yes, maybe you're biased.
      - TrevorJ 6y ago
        The parent comment made some bold assertions with no facts (anecdotal or otherwise) to back them up. I'm not surprised that some people feel that the argument is in bad faith.
    - viklove 6y ago
      Yes, it appears that way because of the way the moderation works. Comments that HN wants to be hidden just get sent to the bottom of the comment stack, then grayed out, then hidden. You probably believe that only comments that users downvote get sent to the bottom, but no, there is a secret rating system controlled by the mods that causes certain comments to behave as if they were already downvoted. It's an opaque system that is selectively applied so as to conceal its nature. If the system were honest and fair, the mods would have no reason to hide their behavior. Now I have to be careful, I've posted 3 comments in the last hour and I'm running up against my rate limit since the mods have highlighted me as a troublemaker. Can't say too much exposing the secret system of moderation here, they don't like that.
ChrisArchitect 6y ago
(2018) maybe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822 and discussion less than a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439437 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439437
- momothereal 6y ago
  (2020) I guess because that's the last time it was updated
  - coolreader18 6y ago
    I mean git projects aren't generally given a (YYYY) marker, since they're expected to be continuously updated - no reason it couldn't be updated tomorrow if someone finds something new, and it's not like the url is pinned to the specific current commit. I think it should probably just not have a (YYYY), even though it is prose.
    - kevincox 6y ago
      In fact it seems this discussion has lead to a furry of updates. In fact many of the links on the README now direct to this discussion which is oddly meta.
sammorrowdrums 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. It's so close, why isn't the required karma 256?
- blumomo 6y ago
  if user.karma > 250: css.topbar.bgcolor = ( user.prefs.topbar.bgcolor or “#ff6600” )
  - xqyf 6y ago
    CSS only: [bgcolor="#ff6600"] { background-color: transparent; }
- tchanglington 6y ago
  Error correcting karma
- wingsingweoij 6y ago
  frankly it's ridiculous that there's a karma limit on a client-side cosmetic feature. I understand one can write a custom CSS rule for this, but if it's already built into the website....
  - leephillips 6y ago
    Unless you have to earn it, you won’t appreciate it.
    - windowojji 6y ago
      I appreciate my custom CSS just fine, thanks.
  - Oddskar 6y ago
    It's added flavour, I think. Not every website has to be intuitive or hand people things on a silver platter.
janvdberg 6y ago
I never understood how the vote counts works (the number that is added to your profile). It's certainly not lineair with the submission upvotes and it even seems to slow down over time (i.e. you need more votes to add 100 points to your profile)?
- jedimastert 6y ago
  I think the one point default per comment isn't added? It's only additional points? At least, that's what I've noticed
  - DeusExMachina 6y ago
    There is something more than that. I noticed that the few highly-voted submissions I have didn't add the whole amount to my karma.
    - jfk13 6y ago
      I have the impression that submission votes only count half of what comment votes count, or something along those lines.
      - Tomte 6y ago
        It's certainly not just a factor. The first twenty upvotes count more than, say, the 501st through 520th upvote.
        dang 6y ago
        Earlier upvotes are more impactful in getting a post on the front page and in affecting its rank (because the rank algorithm uses time decay), but they don't count any differently towards karma.
        eslaught 6y ago
        Is there really no delay, or anything else going on? I'm sure I've seen my upvote count be out of sync with the changes I see on my scores for recent comments.
theturn 6y ago
> Accounts which are less than 2 weeks old will appear with a green username. I thought they were "approved" users.
- Taylor_OD 6y ago
  I thought they were the poster or parent comment user. Green probably isnt the best choice for new users.
  - jetpackjoe 6y ago
    "Green" does mean "new" though. I think a bigger issue is that other admins/OPs/etc don't have colors.
  - DeusExMachina 6y ago
    "To be green" is an idiom that means "to be immature in age or judgment; untrained; inexperienced." So it's not completely misplaced.
    - anothernewdude 6y ago
      It is frequently used on other forums and sites to show users as being mods or admins. Why not show account age if the signal is important?
    - Taylor_OD 6y ago
      I can certainly think of some reasons why it makes sense. But I can think of plenty of reasons why it doesnt as well.
      - DeusExMachina 6y ago
        Once you decide you need a color to mark new accounts, the same reasoning can be applied to pretty much any color. Probably the solution is to add a [new] tag like it happens already to dead, flagged, and banned entries or accounts.
  - 6y ago
Nacdor 6y ago
Unable to reply to comments -- edited to remove. Response to dang: I disagree with the no-delete policy (our comments are ours and we should have the ability to delete them), but more importantly I refuse to leave a comment up when my ability to reply has been disabled.
- pugworthy 6y ago
  I'm curious about the potential for comment bots that specifically aim to gain upvotes. Not with long comments, but with shorter more supportive "me too" comments. Target the "I can't be bothered to reply but I agree with this comment so I'll just upvote it" reader.
- hu3 6y ago
  > The original forum style was much better. How was it before? It would be constructive if you could point out some differences. I understand that they can be subtle and hard to discern but I would appreciate any pointers to satiate my curiosity.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ranger207 6y ago
  >our comments are ours and we should have the ability to delete them I strongly disagree with this. When you're part of a conversation your comments are critical to understanding the conversation. By having a conversation in a public space, you're allowing anyone who wants to listen in, and your comments are necessary for that. I can't tell you how frustrated I've been searching through old reddit threads in particular where the user has completely nuked their account, and the only trace of what they said is in replies. (Worst is when it's a technical issue and their comments are the only relevant search results: xkcd.com/979 where the answer has been actively removed.) If you want to have a private conversation, please use a private medium. Otherwise you're gaining the benefit of public spaces (you can view anyone's conversation, their ideas and wisdom, and watch the development of discussions and understanding) while preventing others from gaining those same benefits.
qw3rty01 6y ago
Was the period removed? I remember a few months ago, there would be a `.` after the post age if it was the user's most recent post. Looks like it's not there anymore though.
- dang 6y ago
  A lot of people didn't like it so I made it moderator-only. I'm not sure it's really that useful in the end.
  - eps 6y ago
    Why not make it a user preference, like showdead & co? Just make it off by default.
    - dang 6y ago
      There are only so many slots available for user preferences before things become much too complicated, and I don't think that one clears the bar. It's much harder to remove these things than to add them. Better not to get on the bad side of that Maxwell demon.
      - eps 6y ago
        To be honest, I'd take all the options you can throw at me. And a command line to manage them. It's HN after all. PS. Just hide them behind a karma threshold and a tickbox to acknowledge that they all are ephemeral and can disappear at will. Complications, like in mechanical watches. For people who can appreciate them, to show what's possible :)
theknocker 6y ago
>There's a mod who curates comments based on what's politically expedient according to leftist valley dweebs
- dang 6y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870
  - theknocker 6y ago
    Don't insult my intelligence. Discourse here is confined to the limits of acceptability according to the neoliberal mainstream. This is abundantly obvious to literally everybody. Of course the liberal mainstream endeavors to enforce that. I won't be treated like a moron by a moron.
    - dang 6y ago
      "Abundantly obvious to literally everybody" is something that all the commenters who I quoted at that link would agree with. They just disagree violently about what is abundantly obvious to literally everybody.
      - theknocker 6y ago
        How about this: There is no doubt in my mind -- none -- that you know exactly what I'm talking about. And all anyone really needs to know, in order to suspect dishonesty and censorship from you, is an awareness of your shadowbanning tactics. ----- It's ok though. There are other culturally influential websites where people/groups can market their ideas, cults, viewpoints, albums, etc. And some of them don't shadowban. Some of them do something a little different instead. It all works out. Have a nice day!
    - PhantomGremlin 6y ago
      I won't be treated like a moron by a moron. That's just way inappropriate. Probably the only reason your comment isn't [dead] is you're in a discussion about moderation. I wouldn't attack Dan so personally. Instead, think of the community here. There is a hint of who they are in the following quip. Actually it explains things well enough that it tends to get downvoted whenever I post it. Perhaps because it hits a little too close to home: HN is open minded about intellectual inquiry as long as that inquiry doesn't challenge anything an average Californian already believes I don't remember exactly where I found that. But just think about it. There are so many people on HN from the Bay Area. The submissions, discourse, and moderation all reflect that "bias". What you're observing is simply an emergent behavior.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
> https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#implicit-downranking-of-topics-around-diversity-and-inclusion https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#implic... Disagree with this section, especially since it is basically presenting an opinion as fact in the same class as other verifiable facts on this post. My own anecdote, but I find that diversity and inclusion posts that have a tendency to get downvoted are ones where you can see the flame war coming from a mile away: the post offers little in actual new data, so then you have 2 "sides" arguing and talking past each other, primarily because both sides are unwilling to acknowledge that it is possible that both of these can simultaneously be true: (a) women and minorities experience discrimination in tech, both overt and subconscious, and (b) other factors besides sex or race discrimination can account for different rates of participation in tech. On the contrary, in my experience, posts that offer detailed new information around diversity in tech tend to be highly upvoted (the original Susan Fowler post about Uber was one such example).
- deleted 6y ago
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- deleted 6y ago
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- sammorrowdrums 6y ago
  Admittedly it's merely another anecdote but this post on GitHub changing master -> main comes to mind. Inflammatory title, subject matter related to diversity, and yet huge karma and plenty of substantive conversation. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26487854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26487854
- deanCommie 6y ago
  In my experience, by and large the posts that get traction are the ones that contradict the perceived cultural trends. So a post defending RMS will get much more traction than one explaining why it's important to hold him accountable. A post dismissing Github's default branch name change as empty pandering will get much more traction than one explaining/defending why language and terminology matters, in all contexts. ^ These are feelings, I don't have data on them. So I think minimaxir did a really good job of presenting this problem in a more detached data driven way. D&I posts ARE more likely to be downvoted. Doesn't mean that ALL D&I posts are treated equal, though. The Susan Fowler post is a notable exception. I wrote about this in my own comment at the same time as you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26867142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26867142
xqyf 6y ago
> If the comment desaturation makes Hacker News difficult to read ...then make it accessible. Sighted users do not have to click a timestamp or install extensions to have legible text. Why should the visually impaired? The extension linked to does nothing to improve the legibility of "X points by Y 30 minutes ago..." or "help" etc either.
mey 6y ago
It makes me unreasonably happy that FFOOFF is far up the top color list. Apparently it seems to be hard to Google, but for those who don't know, prior to wide spread support for alpha channels, FF00FF was one of the colors commonly used for bitmap transparency. Not exactly a commonly used color and exceptionally obvious when working with a sprite sheet. Edit: You can probably guess what my banner is set to.
- foresto 6y ago
  I still occasionally see it in games when a texture is missing or otherwise unable to load.
- alternatetwo 6y ago
  This is still my goto colour everytime I want to see if a css rule is actually applied to something.
shubik22 6y ago
This is a really useful list, thanks for putting this together. I was briefly shadow-banned a month or two ago, due to a few submissions of posts on my personal blog from this account (and not much else). What was odd was that when I looked at the "newest" page while logged in, I saw my post on HN but when I looked when not logged in, the post didn't show up. I didn't know shadowbanning existed and thought there was some kind of issue with HN, so I emailed hn@ycombinator.com. dang@ sent back an incredibly thorough and thoughtful reply literally 3 minutes later (this was at 7:15 p.m. on a week night). So while I find it a little odd to 1) shadowban someone without telling them why and 2) intentionally obfuscate the fact that they've been banned by making it seem to them like their submission was successfully submitted, I was really amazed by the care and efficiency of dang's response. So thanks dang!
- leephillips 6y ago
  But that’s what shadowbanning means. Otherwise, it’s just banning.
- b1gtech 6y ago
  Meanwhile million dollar corporations buy accounts and astroturf with no penalty. The little guy is silenced from sharing opinions/links that God Mods don't like, but the big corp can write off a marketing expense that looks like a mature organic account to God Mods.
  - dang 6y ago
    You have no evidence of that, and neither do we (right now). When we do get evidence of that, we crack down hard. We've done that in the past in two different $BigCo cases—but this is very rare. What's not rare is internet users making up stories about it based on their feelings. That's so common that the site guidelines ask HN users not to do it: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
    - rhapsodic 6y ago
      Hey, how about unbanning me?
deanCommie 6y ago
> Implicit Downranking of Topics Around Diversity and Inclusion > Likewise, topics around diversity and inclusion in tech have gained lots of visibility over the past few years. However, despite these discussions not being off-topic, they tend to be flagged to death by users regardless. Unfortunately. (Moderators occasionally unkill such threads if they see it in time, although it rarely sticks). This is a very interesting subject. I would dare say that the majority of technologists (by pure numbers) find the human, philosophical, and psychological impacts of technology less interesting than the pure technical considerations. (Older and more senior technologists gravitate in the opposite direction) Yet, the most interesting and in-depth hackernews discussions directly touch up on privacy, censorship, employee motivation, the entrepreneurial mindset, managerial skills and lack therefor, regulation, corporate responsibility. All of these are strictly "on-topic" by the definition on https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. So clearly, this community is passionate and interested in a wide range of "fuzzy" non-STEM subjects. Yet when it comes to D&I, the community is primarily disinterested and not intellectually curious, or has already concluded that anyone who IS interested is pushing a purely "political" agenda. Therefore, the only "interesting" stories that get upvoted are those that butt against the current cultural movement (e.g. defending James Damore, RMS, etc). I am personally very intellectually curious about this very pattern, but I appear to be in the minority. I wonder if people on HackerNews are aware that a huge percentage of female and minority engineers that I know find the HN community discussions completely disreputable and unappealing. And it's a direct consequence of how they treat these subjects as "uninteresting" and "off topic", because to the dominant in-group these subjects are just not relevant. Personally, as a technologist, a "hacker" (Whatever that may mean, but i identify strongly with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_culture), I consider this blind spot in this community a "bug". I don't know if it's a fixable one, as any attempts to mitigate it would clearly be perceived as intrusion and a restriction on the individual freedoms of expression. But the status quo is the status quo, to the point that even this manual of undocumented "features and behaviours" has to call it out.
- 6y ago
Causality1 6y ago
It needs a section on muting. If you receive too many downvotes in a certain time frame you'll find yourself muted for a while and get a "you're posting too fast" message when you try to comment. This can be triggered well after the comments were made. For example, if you you have a discussion thread where you have four or five comments they can sit on 1 even overnight but if you come back the next day to find the tide has turned and all of them are in the negatives you'll probably be muted for a few hours. This is why it can be smart to take the temperature of the crowd before replying to a thread. Your liability for a bad opinion or picking the wrong side scales linearly with the number of comments.
- aww_dang 6y ago
  "Damn the votes, full speed ahead" Posters should go full speed ahead if issue is with a topically relevant opinion, not the way it is expressed. We're all here for different reasons, but I like to presume we want to discuss a topic online. Gaining Internet points or avoiding moderation penalties shouldn't be a priority. If it is, the result is sycophantic conformance. This makes for uninteresting discussions.
  - Causality1 6y ago
    That's great up until you have something you really want to say on a post you're very interested in and find you're not allowed to say anything at all.
    - aww_dang 6y ago
      Self-censorship or outright muzzling. Pick your poison. I'd rather people speak their mind, even unpopular opinions.
tediousdemise 6y ago
This begs the question: why were these features undocumented, and left to an unpaid volunteer to weed out? The combined valuation of the top YC companies was over US$300 billion as of January 2021. Certainly their news aggregator could get a little bit of love.
- skavi 6y ago
  I’ve always seen these features as something akin to easter eggs. Stuff you learn over time as you become part of the “in” crowd.
  - minimaxir 6y ago
    FWIW, I've never liked this argument, although that's not why I initially made this list. The best case scenario from the community perspective is that it increases elitism, although companies like Snapchat went viral with teens for hiding away features. Note that relatively few companies hide features for serendipity nowadays.
- dang 6y ago
  It isn't lack of love, it's that it isn't in HN's DNA to spell everything out. The site guidelines, for example, make no attempt to be comprehensive (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). The currency on HN is interest, not money, so 'unpaid volunteer' isn't the best way to frame this. If someone is interested enough to put together and maintain a list like this, that's in the spirit of the community in a way having an official list would not be. (Btw we're all in favor of it and I believe I've sent Max some details to add to the list. If pages like this are going to exist—and they will, because online communities are endlessly interested in themselves—better that they be accurate.)
  - dang 6y ago
    Re "better that they be accurate", I figured I'd check it again, since I haven't in a couple years. That led to the following errata, which I will send to Max. I thought I'd share them here too in case people are interested in this level of detail. > it can be [dead] again at which point it can't be re-vouched I don't think that's right? Pretty sure it can be re-vouched. I'd have to check the code to be sure. > the [+x] number on the right Since changed to [x more], to make it easier to click. > will usually be at the top of the front page at that time It would be better to say "on the front page". The "$Person has died" thread is usually at the top for a while, but we leave the black bar up for longer than that. > the line between technology and politics is blurred I've written a lot about how we approach this; it might be helpful to point to some of that. I usually direct people to these links first: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 There's lots more at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=political%20overlap%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... > The web button next to submissions Removed in July 2020. I removed 'past' as well but there was more pushback about that so I put it back. > what the front page looks like at any point in time Not quite - it's a blended view of the front page for a 24-hour period, sort of like a weighted average of a bunch of snapshots. That turns out to be unsatisfyingly hard to get right; different algorithms produce very different blends, and none of them feels like a real front page. You can always look at https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://news.ycombinator.com https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://news.ycombinator.com to see specific snapshots. > https://news.ycombinator.com/lists https://news.ycombinator.com/lists We added one for whoishiring and one for Peter Roberts' immigration AMAs. I should also add the Launch HN list for YC startups. (Edit: added now.) > All public URLS with user-generated content I don't have a comprehensive list but the quantifier "all" there can't be right.
dang 6y ago
Getting less undocumented every year: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439437 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439437 - June 2020 (266 comments) A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20292361 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20292361 - June 2019 (25 comments) A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822 - Feb 2019 (183 comments) Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16437973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16437973 - Feb 2018 (391 comments)
- marshmallow_12 6y ago
  just out of interest, how many active users are on hn?
  - zionic 6y ago
    64
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
seumars 6y ago
Not sure why downvoting would require a minimum point score other than to discourage lurkers (like me) to lazily engage in discussions (even though I believe voting is in fact engaging). This added to the fact that the HN crowd is notorious for downvoting unpopular or even slightly pessimistic comments sounds to me like forced positivity.
- brokenkebab 6y ago
  I suppose it's more to prevent digital mobbing then to force positivity.
  - seumars 6y ago
    Greyed out comments leads to serious downvoting bandwagoning too.
    - samatman 6y ago
      The -4 maximum is there specifically to limit the impact of that. I'd say that 70% of my comments which stay in the negative, I earned it, and the remaining 30%? Well, you can't buck the hive-mind: there are simply some things I believe that most people disagree with, and my choices are to shut up about it or take my licks.
- Sebb767 6y ago
  I presume it's to make it harder to create sockpuppet accounts. Also, reaching those 500 points requires quite a bit of contribution, so there's a good chance that you understand the rules by that time. I know the downvotes here can be annoying, but in comparison to Reddit, for example, it's very calm, probably in part due to that limit.
yamrzou 6y ago
One of the unintended consequences of domain shadowbanning is that sometimes quality content gets buried. Which is an unfortunate trade-off, given the amout of spam content from such domains. For example, here are some recent articles from https://dev.to https://dev.to that were submitted multiple times by different users, but were dead because the domain is shadowbanned: https://dev.to/kprotty/understanding-atomics-and-memory-ordering-2mom https://dev.to/kprotty/understanding-atomics-and-memory-orde... https://dev.to/yyx990803/announcing-vite-2-0-2f0a https://dev.to/yyx990803/announcing-vite-2-0-2f0a https://dev.to/jaredcwhite/why-tailwind-isn-t-for-me-5c90 https://dev.to/jaredcwhite/why-tailwind-isn-t-for-me-5c90 https://dev.to/lazerwalker/using-game-design-to-make-virtual-events-more-social-24o https://dev.to/lazerwalker/using-game-design-to-make-virtual... https://dev.to/nwtgck/the-power-of-pure-http-screen-share-real-time-messaging-ssh-and-vnc-5ghc https://dev.to/nwtgck/the-power-of-pure-http-screen-share-re... https://dev.to/bkolobara/writing-rust-the-elixir-way-2lm8 https://dev.to/bkolobara/writing-rust-the-elixir-way-2lm8
- joshmanders 6y ago
  I'm curious why dev.to is shadow banned, of all domains I'd expect this one to not be on such a list.
  - yamrzou 6y ago
    I guess because it's mostly tutorials, which are downranked: https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#downranking-of-tutorials https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#downra...
    - joshmanders 6y ago
      Oh that's a good point, thank you!
- diplodocusaur 6y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=dev.to https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=dev.to
JulianRaphael 6y ago
dang - are there any features for making HN more accessible? A vision-impaired colleague of mine wanted to check out HN today and made me aware that the contrasts on HN make it really hard for people with impaired vision to read on HN (webaim.org confirms this: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/?fcolor=919191&bcolor=F6F6F0 https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/?fcolor=919191&...). Using his screen reader (NVDA) didn't help much as the front page doesn't seem to take into account screen reading software. Has someone built a more accessible version of HN? Also, does the HN team plan to make HN more accessible in the future?
- dang 6y ago
  It's a problem and yes we plan to fix it. I'm sorry it hasn't been fixed yet; we're just slow at things. Hopefully HN will be around for long enough to justify how slow we are.
  - JulianRaphael 6y ago
    That's great news and thanks for the swift reply. Have you considered asking the HN community for help with this issue? I'm sure there would be lots of volunteers.
    - dang 6y ago
      I will when we actually get to work on it. Before that, it would be counterproductive—just having to process the inputs would cause further delay.
  - ramses0 6y ago
    Markdown? Markdown-ish? Something better than the foot-gun of markup currently supported?
    - function_seven 6y ago
      My wish list is not full Markdown support, but a little more than is currently implemented: 1. Ordered lists - Unordered lists Inline `code snippets` Super^script That's it. I totally get why HN wouldn't want tables, bold headers, etc. There's a danger of comments getting visually "noisy" with these. But for referencing code or mathematical concepts, or just listing things, the 4 things above would be really handy.
systemvoltage 6y ago
I wish there was a feature that doesn't grey out the comments for a couple of hours until everybody has gotten a chance to vote. As it stands currently, a single person downvoting a new comment from +1 to 0 leads to a slightly grey comment. People here usually see this and form an implicit bias. I've seen comments that are perfectly reasonable, has no opinion, it is on topic, and follows guidelines and yet it gets downvoted. I am conjecturing that it is because of this bandwagoning effect. Look into this please. Greying out comments is fine. Just let some time pass, even 30 mins would be a huge improvement. Alternatively, allow minimum 2-3 people to vote before greying out comments.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  At the same time, I try to make it a point to vouch/upvote reasonable posts. If I had no indication it'd been downvoted, I'd never upvote it to compensate. I'd read the comments now and if I came back tomorrow to see if there were more discussion I'd be very confused to see many comments grayed out (The great comment massacre?). Based on how other comments move to gray and back I suspect I'm not alone.
  - fighterpilot 6y ago
    Does this outweigh the bandwagoning effect though? What about HN run an A/B test. Half of all new posts have delayed greying for a few hours. See which category accrues the most downvotes (or most net votes).
- wruza 6y ago
  The effect of such timeout may be quite opposite.
- dang 6y ago
  As Jtsummers points out, people can and do give corrective upvotes in such cases. I do that all the time, and I hope people understand that it's part of being a good citizen here. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=corrective%20upvote https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Layke1123 6y ago
I have noticed a lot of the downvotong of things critical of YCombinator and it's bias against topics it doesn't like. I even have emails where the moderator or employee refuses to acknowledge or explain why I was downvoted and not others. It was eye opening that experience and reading this list doesn't surprise me. Everyone has an agenda.
- dang 6y ago
  What you're "noticing" is not accurate. HN gets tons of comments that are critical of YC and YC-funded startups. We don't censor those, and in fact we moderate less, not more, when YC is involved: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderate%20less%20%22not%20more%22%20yc&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... Your description of those emails doesn't match my memory. I spent hours trying to explain things to you. That was not a refusal to explain.
  - Layke1123 6y ago
    Hours? It was like 6 or 7 emails. How many hours does it take you to write a 5 or 6 sentence email? Don't be upset people are rightly criticizing Hacker News.
elorant 6y ago
Here's a thing I don't like and it's not mentioned in the list. If I submit a story I can't downvote on any of the top level comments. Why is that?
- eatbitseveryday 6y ago
  Probably the same reason you cannot downvote any direct replies to your comments, such as this one.
  - elorant 6y ago
    I can understand why downvoting replies is prohibited, it could harm conversations. But prohibiting downvoting in submitted stories assumes some kind of self interest, which I doubt is the norm.
    - detaro 6y ago
      I think it's generally "the submitter shouldn't be able to shape the discussion too much". I.e. also why you aren't supposed to put your own spin on a headline, text submissions are separate and not supposed to be used for links (with a few exceptions).
      - elorant 6y ago
        Sure, that makes sense.
    - samatman 6y ago
      It could be as simple as: coding this would be an exception, and no one has done so. `(if (not (eq parent.user user)) (set! allow_downvotes true))` (probably not valid Arc!) is easy to code up, an exception would be more convoluted.
- mellosouls 6y ago
  Presumably the same reason you can't downvote immediate replies to your comments which is probably there to discourage toxic back-and-forth downvoting.
teddyh 6y ago
This does not seem to cover HN’s silent rate-limits, apparently for selected “troublemakers”: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20997593 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20997593 This is what seems to cause “You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks.” to appear for up to two hours. Fittingly, I had to wait two hours to post this comment.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/issues/21 https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/issues...
  - dang 6y ago
    Also https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20rate%20limit&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- koheripbal 6y ago
  Anti-spam/Anti-malicious-posters algorithms will, by necessity, never be transparent, nor even consistent or remain the same over time. Fighting spam and bad-faith commenters is a cat-and-mouse game.
  - seumars 6y ago
    You’re twisting the issue by calling it “bad-faith commenters” though. Just take a look at this thread, where even the most polite, yet critical comments are downvoted and quite fittingly really hard to read.
splittingTimes 6y ago
apropos undocumented: Can I limit HNs search functionality to only include my favorites? I often know I favoured something but for the life of me cannot find it via normal search and going through my hundreds of favorites by hand is impractical.
- dang 6y ago
  Alas no. It's something Algolia could build, though, if they wanted—in fact there could be an operator for searching through anyone's favorites ("fave:splittingTimes" similar to "by:splittingTimes"), as they're public.
  - yamrzou 6y ago
    I also have a similar need but for upvoted content. Sometimes I keep scrolling through pages of upvotes to find a specific item. The problem is that favourites and upvotes are not exposed via the API and require scraping, otherwise it would be easier to build a search tool for them.
    - dang 6y ago
      We'd have to build that into HN itself, since upvote data is private (extremely so). But it's the sort of feature whose value grows as the site continues, so I could imagine us adding it eventually.
dredmorbius 6y ago
I believe that explicit banning is also now indicated. I'd requested something like this for long-since-shadowbanned users whose ban event was hidden in the distant mists of time (or who are sockpuppets of banned profiles). This is rare, but does occur. Also can apply to spammers -- this is usually relevant on submissions / new queue. The YC-company bias can also apply to negative reporting on YC companies, which is less moderated as something of a counter to charges of favouratism. See: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderate%20less%20not%20more%20yc&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... Including from this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26868116 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26868116
- dang 6y ago
  If you mean the "[banned]" indicator that appears beside some usernames, that's only for a few banned accounts. The reason is that we were getting indignant emails about some of the most horrible stuff banned accounts have been posting, saying "how can you possibly allow this on Hacker News"? The answer, of course, is we don't. All those accounts had been banned for a long time. The problem seems to be that (a) some people forget they have "showdead" turned on or don't know what it means; and/or (b) some third-party software (e.g. mobile apps, browser extensions, or websites offering alternate views of HN) displays [dead] and [flagged] comments as if they were normal comments. There's not much to be done about (a), but (b) is a disaster. Many users of such software assume that what they're looking at is HN. (Previous comment about that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24335289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24335289.) Possibly we'll have to introduce some sort of standard and enforce it via API keys. Or maybe just stop serving [dead] or [flagged] comments via the API.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    Yes. There's also the confusion between "flagged" and "dead", which still gets unclear at times. Not serving dead/flagged via API mostly makes sense, though it could make some analysis harder.
ehershey 6y ago
The most interesting stuff is toward the bottom. I found this fascinating and unintuitive: > Downranking of Tutorials > HN submissions which are tutorials are downranked by moderators, as they gratify intellectual curiosity less.
- culturestate 6y ago
  Not that long ago, you could very quickly build a decent SEO campaign around "X vs. Y" tutorials and HN - write 5,000 words on e.g. Angular vs. Ember, get some friends to upvote it, and if you made the front page you'd be on the first Google SERP for Angular and Ember the next day. I personally know a couple of early-ish YC companies who took advantage of that to boost their content marketing ops, and it wouldn't surprise me to learn that they were part of the reason this policy exists.
  - dang 6y ago
    They weren't; I don't know anything about that. We just figured out one day that tutorials aren't intellectually interesting, in one of those obvious-once-you-see-it moments.
nextaccountic 6y ago
What's the difference between downvoting a comment and flagging a comment? I ask because I don't have 501 karma and I can flag a comment (but not downvote).
- Sebb767 6y ago
  Downvotes can be countered by upvotes and are more for low-quality content (or things you disagree with, although many - including me - try to refrain from doing this). Flagging is for content violating the rules, for example spam or insults.
codyb 6y ago
Certainly some familiar names on the top 100 accounts ranked by karma totals but seeing the username “toomuchtodo” with some 48,000 internet points gave me a pretty good grin.
canada_dry 6y ago
So, um... what are the "noprocrast maxvisit minaway and delay" options on the user profile setting screen for?? I'm guessing they are documented, but I'm too lazy to find/read. ;)
- Sebb767 6y ago
  No procast locks HN for you after some time (to avoid procrastination, as the name suggests ;). Max visit is the time you allow yourself on the site (starting on the first visit) and minaway is how long it is blocked. It's in minutes, iirc
  - canada_dry 6y ago
    Seriously?!? That's hilarious! Thanks.
    - Sebb767 6y ago
      No problem :) It can actually be pretty useful sometimes, even though I have it disabled right now. You can also use it as a "spree breaker" by setting the values to something very low, like 60 visit/20 away.
  - dang 6y ago
    It originated here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=77173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=77173.
- dang 6y ago
  Ah, a data point for my future essay "Nobody Reads the FAQ". https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
  - canada_dry 6y ago
    Though an FAQ would typically be consumed by those wanting to know what the service provides and how. Not options on how to configure it. Perhaps adding a link on the user's settings page to the 'FAQ' would be helpful.
MichaelMoser123 6y ago
another undocumented feature: HN shows me all of my flagged submissions when i am logged in, when viewing anonymous it shows me only one flagged submission - but that one got 114 comments before it got flagged. is this a bug or is it a feature?
ultamatt 6y ago
This was very helpful. Thank you!
kirrikio 6y ago
I like the feature of green usernames
thinkingemote 6y ago
I'd add the red top bar for Christmas as an Easter Egg (... or a Christmas Egg?)
PostThisTooFast 6y ago
Missing from this is the obnoxious and offensive "you're posting too fast" bullshit, with no explanation of how once per hour or so is "too fast." Up yours for stealing from users, Hacker News.

This is super neat. Not only for beginners/intermediate to catch up with documented and undocumented features. But also for platforms who are seeking a better moderation approach. For me, HN is a very special place - the way people interact, the way that it is moderated. I still dream that other platforms might follow suit someday.

seumars 6y ago
I wouldn't attribute it solely on moderation though. The HN audience isn't very big and thread discussions never last too long because there's almost always something on the frontpage. Not saying it's a bad thing though.
- b1gtech 6y ago
  I think HN has God Mod syndrome. HN is good due to the network effect, not the heavy hand.
- Oddskar 6y ago
  HN is probably the only place that maintained its quality somewhat over the last 10 years for me. So many websites and subreddits blew up, grew too quickly, and burned out in quality. I think a lot can be attributed to strict moderation, but also like you say being pretty niche helps in that the mod team doesn't have to be very big.
  - elliekelly 6y ago
    I think it’s also that HN is optimized for “interesting” rather than for eyeballs and outrage.
    - atat7024 6y ago
      It's actually DEoptimized for outrage, if one reads the guidelines closely.
- dang 6y ago
  HN gets 1400-ish submissions and 12,000-ish comments a day, and 5M-ish users a month. Whether that's big depends on what you're comparing it to. It's big to us.
  - nick__m 6y ago
    The ratio of submissions/comments is impressively high, this surely explains why the upvoted articles are almost always interesting. Thanks for all that work!

ro_bit 6y ago

I never knew that there was a second moderator! (sctb) Their comment history only has some comments from 2019, and is much shorter than dangs. Did they only have a short stint as a moderator on HN, or do they now work from another account/behind the scenes?

Shoop 6y ago
Scott stopped working on HN about 18 months ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25055115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25055115
minimaxir 6y ago
Scott did leave: looks like I forgot to update it. Will do now.
- vl 6y ago
  (off) For your list of downranked content: it looks like crypto is either downranked or banned.
  - dang 6y ago
    It isn't. Such threads often get a lot of flags, though. I assume that's because it's at such a late stage in the hype cycle. The huge amount of repetition (not to mention near-spam) makes a topic less interesting.

Nacdor 6y ago

Edited: Nevermind, I guess HN users prefer to remain unaware of certain undocumented behavior. To dang: I disagree with the no-delete policy (our comments are ours and we should have the ability to delete them), but more importantly I refuse to leave a comment up when my ability to reply has been disabled.

viklove 6y ago
HN is an extremely authoritarian web forum, maintained this way solely to prop up the reputation of YC as an organization. You're not allowed to have certain opinions because it will make the platform look bad, but of course censorship goes against the core beliefs of the western world so they can't exactly be transparent about it. The more experience I have with this site, the more I've found myself hating it. And the smugness of the users here who believe HN is the one-true-forum is the turd on top of the shitcake for me.
- TrevorJ 6y ago
  Oh boy - I have been here for 12 years or so, and I don't really agree with this take at all. Maybe I am biased, but I think the conversations here are more open and more frank than most (or any) other places on the internet.
  - seumars 6y ago
    The parent comment is already greyed out, so yes, maybe you're biased.
    - TrevorJ 6y ago
      The parent comment made some bold assertions with no facts (anecdotal or otherwise) to back them up. I'm not surprised that some people feel that the argument is in bad faith.
  - viklove 6y ago
    Yes, it appears that way because of the way the moderation works. Comments that HN wants to be hidden just get sent to the bottom of the comment stack, then grayed out, then hidden. You probably believe that only comments that users downvote get sent to the bottom, but no, there is a secret rating system controlled by the mods that causes certain comments to behave as if they were already downvoted. It's an opaque system that is selectively applied so as to conceal its nature. If the system were honest and fair, the mods would have no reason to hide their behavior. Now I have to be careful, I've posted 3 comments in the last hour and I'm running up against my rate limit since the mods have highlighted me as a troublemaker. Can't say too much exposing the secret system of moderation here, they don't like that.

ChrisArchitect 6y ago

(2018) maybe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822 and discussion less than a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439437 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439437

momothereal 6y ago
(2020) I guess because that's the last time it was updated
- coolreader18 6y ago
  I mean git projects aren't generally given a (YYYY) marker, since they're expected to be continuously updated - no reason it couldn't be updated tomorrow if someone finds something new, and it's not like the url is pinned to the specific current commit. I think it should probably just not have a (YYYY), even though it is prose.
  - kevincox 6y ago
    In fact it seems this discussion has lead to a furry of updates. In fact many of the links on the README now direct to this discussion which is oddly meta.

sammorrowdrums 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. It's so close, why isn't the required karma 256?

blumomo 6y ago
if user.karma > 250: css.topbar.bgcolor = ( user.prefs.topbar.bgcolor or “#ff6600” )
- xqyf 6y ago
  CSS only: [bgcolor="#ff6600"] { background-color: transparent; }
tchanglington 6y ago
Error correcting karma
wingsingweoij 6y ago
frankly it's ridiculous that there's a karma limit on a client-side cosmetic feature. I understand one can write a custom CSS rule for this, but if it's already built into the website....
- leephillips 6y ago
  Unless you have to earn it, you won’t appreciate it.
  - windowojji 6y ago
    I appreciate my custom CSS just fine, thanks.
- Oddskar 6y ago
  It's added flavour, I think. Not every website has to be intuitive or hand people things on a silver platter.

janvdberg 6y ago

I never understood how the vote counts works (the number that is added to your profile). It's certainly not lineair with the submission upvotes and it even seems to slow down over time (i.e. you need more votes to add 100 points to your profile)?

jedimastert 6y ago
I think the one point default per comment isn't added? It's only additional points? At least, that's what I've noticed
- DeusExMachina 6y ago
  There is something more than that. I noticed that the few highly-voted submissions I have didn't add the whole amount to my karma.
  - jfk13 6y ago
    I have the impression that submission votes only count half of what comment votes count, or something along those lines.
    - Tomte 6y ago
      It's certainly not just a factor. The first twenty upvotes count more than, say, the 501st through 520th upvote.
      - dang 6y ago
        Earlier upvotes are more impactful in getting a post on the front page and in affecting its rank (because the rank algorithm uses time decay), but they don't count any differently towards karma.
        eslaught 6y ago
        Is there really no delay, or anything else going on? I'm sure I've seen my upvote count be out of sync with the changes I see on my scores for recent comments.

theturn 6y ago

> Accounts which are less than 2 weeks old will appear with a green username. I thought they were "approved" users.

Taylor_OD 6y ago
I thought they were the poster or parent comment user. Green probably isnt the best choice for new users.
- jetpackjoe 6y ago
  "Green" does mean "new" though. I think a bigger issue is that other admins/OPs/etc don't have colors.
- DeusExMachina 6y ago
  "To be green" is an idiom that means "to be immature in age or judgment; untrained; inexperienced." So it's not completely misplaced.
  - anothernewdude 6y ago
    It is frequently used on other forums and sites to show users as being mods or admins. Why not show account age if the signal is important?
  - Taylor_OD 6y ago
    I can certainly think of some reasons why it makes sense. But I can think of plenty of reasons why it doesnt as well.
    - DeusExMachina 6y ago
      Once you decide you need a color to mark new accounts, the same reasoning can be applied to pretty much any color. Probably the solution is to add a [new] tag like it happens already to dead, flagged, and banned entries or accounts.
- 6y ago

Nacdor 6y ago

Unable to reply to comments -- edited to remove. Response to dang: I disagree with the no-delete policy (our comments are ours and we should have the ability to delete them), but more importantly I refuse to leave a comment up when my ability to reply has been disabled.

pugworthy 6y ago
I'm curious about the potential for comment bots that specifically aim to gain upvotes. Not with long comments, but with shorter more supportive "me too" comments. Target the "I can't be bothered to reply but I agree with this comment so I'll just upvote it" reader.
hu3 6y ago
> The original forum style was much better. How was it before? It would be constructive if you could point out some differences. I understand that they can be subtle and hard to discern but I would appreciate any pointers to satiate my curiosity.
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ranger207 6y ago
>our comments are ours and we should have the ability to delete them I strongly disagree with this. When you're part of a conversation your comments are critical to understanding the conversation. By having a conversation in a public space, you're allowing anyone who wants to listen in, and your comments are necessary for that. I can't tell you how frustrated I've been searching through old reddit threads in particular where the user has completely nuked their account, and the only trace of what they said is in replies. (Worst is when it's a technical issue and their comments are the only relevant search results: xkcd.com/979 where the answer has been actively removed.) If you want to have a private conversation, please use a private medium. Otherwise you're gaining the benefit of public spaces (you can view anyone's conversation, their ideas and wisdom, and watch the development of discussions and understanding) while preventing others from gaining those same benefits.

qw3rty01 6y ago

Was the period removed? I remember a few months ago, there would be a `.` after the post age if it was the user's most recent post. Looks like it's not there anymore though.

dang 6y ago
A lot of people didn't like it so I made it moderator-only. I'm not sure it's really that useful in the end.
- eps 6y ago
  Why not make it a user preference, like showdead & co? Just make it off by default.
  - dang 6y ago
    There are only so many slots available for user preferences before things become much too complicated, and I don't think that one clears the bar. It's much harder to remove these things than to add them. Better not to get on the bad side of that Maxwell demon.
    - eps 6y ago
      To be honest, I'd take all the options you can throw at me. And a command line to manage them. It's HN after all. PS. Just hide them behind a karma threshold and a tickbox to acknowledge that they all are ephemeral and can disappear at will. Complications, like in mechanical watches. For people who can appreciate them, to show what's possible :)

theknocker 6y ago

>There's a mod who curates comments based on what's politically expedient according to leftist valley dweebs

dang 6y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870
- theknocker 6y ago
  Don't insult my intelligence. Discourse here is confined to the limits of acceptability according to the neoliberal mainstream. This is abundantly obvious to literally everybody. Of course the liberal mainstream endeavors to enforce that. I won't be treated like a moron by a moron.
  - dang 6y ago
    "Abundantly obvious to literally everybody" is something that all the commenters who I quoted at that link would agree with. They just disagree violently about what is abundantly obvious to literally everybody.
    - theknocker 6y ago
      How about this: There is no doubt in my mind -- none -- that you know exactly what I'm talking about. And all anyone really needs to know, in order to suspect dishonesty and censorship from you, is an awareness of your shadowbanning tactics. ----- It's ok though. There are other culturally influential websites where people/groups can market their ideas, cults, viewpoints, albums, etc. And some of them don't shadowban. Some of them do something a little different instead. It all works out. Have a nice day!
  - PhantomGremlin 6y ago
    I won't be treated like a moron by a moron. That's just way inappropriate. Probably the only reason your comment isn't [dead] is you're in a discussion about moderation. I wouldn't attack Dan so personally. Instead, think of the community here. There is a hint of who they are in the following quip. Actually it explains things well enough that it tends to get downvoted whenever I post it. Perhaps because it hits a little too close to home: HN is open minded about intellectual inquiry as long as that inquiry doesn't challenge anything an average Californian already believes I don't remember exactly where I found that. But just think about it. There are so many people on HN from the Bay Area. The submissions, discourse, and moderation all reflect that "bias". What you're observing is simply an emergent behavior.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago

> https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#implicit-downranking-of-topics-around-diversity-and-inclusion https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#implic... Disagree with this section, especially since it is basically presenting an opinion as fact in the same class as other verifiable facts on this post. My own anecdote, but I find that diversity and inclusion posts that have a tendency to get downvoted are ones where you can see the flame war coming from a mile away: the post offers little in actual new data, so then you have 2 "sides" arguing and talking past each other, primarily because both sides are unwilling to acknowledge that it is possible that both of these can simultaneously be true: (a) women and minorities experience discrimination in tech, both overt and subconscious, and (b) other factors besides sex or race discrimination can account for different rates of participation in tech. On the contrary, in my experience, posts that offer detailed new information around diversity in tech tend to be highly upvoted (the original Susan Fowler post about Uber was one such example).

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sammorrowdrums 6y ago
Admittedly it's merely another anecdote but this post on GitHub changing master -> main comes to mind. Inflammatory title, subject matter related to diversity, and yet huge karma and plenty of substantive conversation. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26487854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26487854
deanCommie 6y ago
In my experience, by and large the posts that get traction are the ones that contradict the perceived cultural trends. So a post defending RMS will get much more traction than one explaining why it's important to hold him accountable. A post dismissing Github's default branch name change as empty pandering will get much more traction than one explaining/defending why language and terminology matters, in all contexts. ^ These are feelings, I don't have data on them. So I think minimaxir did a really good job of presenting this problem in a more detached data driven way. D&I posts ARE more likely to be downvoted. Doesn't mean that ALL D&I posts are treated equal, though. The Susan Fowler post is a notable exception. I wrote about this in my own comment at the same time as you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26867142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26867142

xqyf 6y ago

> If the comment desaturation makes Hacker News difficult to read ...then make it accessible. Sighted users do not have to click a timestamp or install extensions to have legible text. Why should the visually impaired? The extension linked to does nothing to improve the legibility of "X points by Y 30 minutes ago..." or "help" etc either.

mey 6y ago

It makes me unreasonably happy that FFOOFF is far up the top color list. Apparently it seems to be hard to Google, but for those who don't know, prior to wide spread support for alpha channels, FF00FF was one of the colors commonly used for bitmap transparency. Not exactly a commonly used color and exceptionally obvious when working with a sprite sheet. Edit: You can probably guess what my banner is set to.

foresto 6y ago
I still occasionally see it in games when a texture is missing or otherwise unable to load.
alternatetwo 6y ago
This is still my goto colour everytime I want to see if a css rule is actually applied to something.

shubik22 6y ago

This is a really useful list, thanks for putting this together. I was briefly shadow-banned a month or two ago, due to a few submissions of posts on my personal blog from this account (and not much else). What was odd was that when I looked at the "newest" page while logged in, I saw my post on HN but when I looked when not logged in, the post didn't show up. I didn't know shadowbanning existed and thought there was some kind of issue with HN, so I emailed hn@ycombinator.com. dang@ sent back an incredibly thorough and thoughtful reply literally 3 minutes later (this was at 7:15 p.m. on a week night). So while I find it a little odd to 1) shadowban someone without telling them why and 2) intentionally obfuscate the fact that they've been banned by making it seem to them like their submission was successfully submitted, I was really amazed by the care and efficiency of dang's response. So thanks dang!

leephillips 6y ago
But that’s what shadowbanning means. Otherwise, it’s just banning.
b1gtech 6y ago
Meanwhile million dollar corporations buy accounts and astroturf with no penalty. The little guy is silenced from sharing opinions/links that God Mods don't like, but the big corp can write off a marketing expense that looks like a mature organic account to God Mods.
- dang 6y ago
  You have no evidence of that, and neither do we (right now). When we do get evidence of that, we crack down hard. We've done that in the past in two different $BigCo cases—but this is very rare. What's not rare is internet users making up stories about it based on their feelings. That's so common that the site guidelines ask HN users not to do it: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
  - rhapsodic 6y ago
    Hey, how about unbanning me?

deanCommie 6y ago

> Implicit Downranking of Topics Around Diversity and Inclusion > Likewise, topics around diversity and inclusion in tech have gained lots of visibility over the past few years. However, despite these discussions not being off-topic, they tend to be flagged to death by users regardless. Unfortunately. (Moderators occasionally unkill such threads if they see it in time, although it rarely sticks). This is a very interesting subject. I would dare say that the majority of technologists (by pure numbers) find the human, philosophical, and psychological impacts of technology less interesting than the pure technical considerations. (Older and more senior technologists gravitate in the opposite direction) Yet, the most interesting and in-depth hackernews discussions directly touch up on privacy, censorship, employee motivation, the entrepreneurial mindset, managerial skills and lack therefor, regulation, corporate responsibility. All of these are strictly "on-topic" by the definition on https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. So clearly, this community is passionate and interested in a wide range of "fuzzy" non-STEM subjects. Yet when it comes to D&I, the community is primarily disinterested and not intellectually curious, or has already concluded that anyone who IS interested is pushing a purely "political" agenda. Therefore, the only "interesting" stories that get upvoted are those that butt against the current cultural movement (e.g. defending James Damore, RMS, etc). I am personally very intellectually curious about this very pattern, but I appear to be in the minority. I wonder if people on HackerNews are aware that a huge percentage of female and minority engineers that I know find the HN community discussions completely disreputable and unappealing. And it's a direct consequence of how they treat these subjects as "uninteresting" and "off topic", because to the dominant in-group these subjects are just not relevant. Personally, as a technologist, a "hacker" (Whatever that may mean, but i identify strongly with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_culture), I consider this blind spot in this community a "bug". I don't know if it's a fixable one, as any attempts to mitigate it would clearly be perceived as intrusion and a restriction on the individual freedoms of expression. But the status quo is the status quo, to the point that even this manual of undocumented "features and behaviours" has to call it out.

6y ago

Causality1 6y ago

It needs a section on muting. If you receive too many downvotes in a certain time frame you'll find yourself muted for a while and get a "you're posting too fast" message when you try to comment. This can be triggered well after the comments were made. For example, if you you have a discussion thread where you have four or five comments they can sit on 1 even overnight but if you come back the next day to find the tide has turned and all of them are in the negatives you'll probably be muted for a few hours. This is why it can be smart to take the temperature of the crowd before replying to a thread. Your liability for a bad opinion or picking the wrong side scales linearly with the number of comments.

aww_dang 6y ago
"Damn the votes, full speed ahead" Posters should go full speed ahead if issue is with a topically relevant opinion, not the way it is expressed. We're all here for different reasons, but I like to presume we want to discuss a topic online. Gaining Internet points or avoiding moderation penalties shouldn't be a priority. If it is, the result is sycophantic conformance. This makes for uninteresting discussions.
- Causality1 6y ago
  That's great up until you have something you really want to say on a post you're very interested in and find you're not allowed to say anything at all.
  - aww_dang 6y ago
    Self-censorship or outright muzzling. Pick your poison. I'd rather people speak their mind, even unpopular opinions.

tediousdemise 6y ago

This begs the question: why were these features undocumented, and left to an unpaid volunteer to weed out? The combined valuation of the top YC companies was over US$300 billion as of January 2021. Certainly their news aggregator could get a little bit of love.

skavi 6y ago
I’ve always seen these features as something akin to easter eggs. Stuff you learn over time as you become part of the “in” crowd.
- minimaxir 6y ago
  FWIW, I've never liked this argument, although that's not why I initially made this list. The best case scenario from the community perspective is that it increases elitism, although companies like Snapchat went viral with teens for hiding away features. Note that relatively few companies hide features for serendipity nowadays.
dang 6y ago
It isn't lack of love, it's that it isn't in HN's DNA to spell everything out. The site guidelines, for example, make no attempt to be comprehensive (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). The currency on HN is interest, not money, so 'unpaid volunteer' isn't the best way to frame this. If someone is interested enough to put together and maintain a list like this, that's in the spirit of the community in a way having an official list would not be. (Btw we're all in favor of it and I believe I've sent Max some details to add to the list. If pages like this are going to exist—and they will, because online communities are endlessly interested in themselves—better that they be accurate.)
- dang 6y ago
  Re "better that they be accurate", I figured I'd check it again, since I haven't in a couple years. That led to the following errata, which I will send to Max. I thought I'd share them here too in case people are interested in this level of detail. > it can be [dead] again at which point it can't be re-vouched I don't think that's right? Pretty sure it can be re-vouched. I'd have to check the code to be sure. > the [+x] number on the right Since changed to [x more], to make it easier to click. > will usually be at the top of the front page at that time It would be better to say "on the front page". The "$Person has died" thread is usually at the top for a while, but we leave the black bar up for longer than that. > the line between technology and politics is blurred I've written a lot about how we approach this; it might be helpful to point to some of that. I usually direct people to these links first: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 There's lots more at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=political%20overlap%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... > The web button next to submissions Removed in July 2020. I removed 'past' as well but there was more pushback about that so I put it back. > what the front page looks like at any point in time Not quite - it's a blended view of the front page for a 24-hour period, sort of like a weighted average of a bunch of snapshots. That turns out to be unsatisfyingly hard to get right; different algorithms produce very different blends, and none of them feels like a real front page. You can always look at https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://news.ycombinator.com https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://news.ycombinator.com to see specific snapshots. > https://news.ycombinator.com/lists https://news.ycombinator.com/lists We added one for whoishiring and one for Peter Roberts' immigration AMAs. I should also add the Launch HN list for YC startups. (Edit: added now.) > All public URLS with user-generated content I don't have a comprehensive list but the quantifier "all" there can't be right.

dang 6y ago

Getting less undocumented every year: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439437 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439437 - June 2020 (266 comments) A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20292361 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20292361 - June 2019 (25 comments) A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822 - Feb 2019 (183 comments) Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16437973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16437973 - Feb 2018 (391 comments)

marshmallow_12 6y ago
just out of interest, how many active users are on hn?
- zionic 6y ago
  64

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

seumars 6y ago

Not sure why downvoting would require a minimum point score other than to discourage lurkers (like me) to lazily engage in discussions (even though I believe voting is in fact engaging). This added to the fact that the HN crowd is notorious for downvoting unpopular or even slightly pessimistic comments sounds to me like forced positivity.

brokenkebab 6y ago
I suppose it's more to prevent digital mobbing then to force positivity.
- seumars 6y ago
  Greyed out comments leads to serious downvoting bandwagoning too.
  - samatman 6y ago
    The -4 maximum is there specifically to limit the impact of that. I'd say that 70% of my comments which stay in the negative, I earned it, and the remaining 30%? Well, you can't buck the hive-mind: there are simply some things I believe that most people disagree with, and my choices are to shut up about it or take my licks.
Sebb767 6y ago
I presume it's to make it harder to create sockpuppet accounts. Also, reaching those 500 points requires quite a bit of contribution, so there's a good chance that you understand the rules by that time. I know the downvotes here can be annoying, but in comparison to Reddit, for example, it's very calm, probably in part due to that limit.

yamrzou 6y ago

One of the unintended consequences of domain shadowbanning is that sometimes quality content gets buried. Which is an unfortunate trade-off, given the amout of spam content from such domains. For example, here are some recent articles from https://dev.to https://dev.to that were submitted multiple times by different users, but were dead because the domain is shadowbanned: https://dev.to/kprotty/understanding-atomics-and-memory-ordering-2mom https://dev.to/kprotty/understanding-atomics-and-memory-orde... https://dev.to/yyx990803/announcing-vite-2-0-2f0a https://dev.to/yyx990803/announcing-vite-2-0-2f0a https://dev.to/jaredcwhite/why-tailwind-isn-t-for-me-5c90 https://dev.to/jaredcwhite/why-tailwind-isn-t-for-me-5c90 https://dev.to/lazerwalker/using-game-design-to-make-virtual-events-more-social-24o https://dev.to/lazerwalker/using-game-design-to-make-virtual... https://dev.to/nwtgck/the-power-of-pure-http-screen-share-real-time-messaging-ssh-and-vnc-5ghc https://dev.to/nwtgck/the-power-of-pure-http-screen-share-re... https://dev.to/bkolobara/writing-rust-the-elixir-way-2lm8 https://dev.to/bkolobara/writing-rust-the-elixir-way-2lm8

joshmanders 6y ago
I'm curious why dev.to is shadow banned, of all domains I'd expect this one to not be on such a list.
- yamrzou 6y ago
  I guess because it's mostly tutorials, which are downranked: https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#downranking-of-tutorials https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#downra...
  - joshmanders 6y ago
    Oh that's a good point, thank you!
diplodocusaur 6y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=dev.to https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=dev.to

JulianRaphael 6y ago

dang - are there any features for making HN more accessible? A vision-impaired colleague of mine wanted to check out HN today and made me aware that the contrasts on HN make it really hard for people with impaired vision to read on HN (webaim.org confirms this: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/?fcolor=919191&bcolor=F6F6F0 https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/?fcolor=919191&...). Using his screen reader (NVDA) didn't help much as the front page doesn't seem to take into account screen reading software. Has someone built a more accessible version of HN? Also, does the HN team plan to make HN more accessible in the future?

dang 6y ago
It's a problem and yes we plan to fix it. I'm sorry it hasn't been fixed yet; we're just slow at things. Hopefully HN will be around for long enough to justify how slow we are.
- JulianRaphael 6y ago
  That's great news and thanks for the swift reply. Have you considered asking the HN community for help with this issue? I'm sure there would be lots of volunteers.
  - dang 6y ago
    I will when we actually get to work on it. Before that, it would be counterproductive—just having to process the inputs would cause further delay.
- ramses0 6y ago
  Markdown? Markdown-ish? Something better than the foot-gun of markup currently supported?
  - function_seven 6y ago
    My wish list is not full Markdown support, but a little more than is currently implemented: 1. Ordered lists - Unordered lists Inline `code snippets` Super^script That's it. I totally get why HN wouldn't want tables, bold headers, etc. There's a danger of comments getting visually "noisy" with these. But for referencing code or mathematical concepts, or just listing things, the 4 things above would be really handy.

systemvoltage 6y ago

I wish there was a feature that doesn't grey out the comments for a couple of hours until everybody has gotten a chance to vote. As it stands currently, a single person downvoting a new comment from +1 to 0 leads to a slightly grey comment. People here usually see this and form an implicit bias. I've seen comments that are perfectly reasonable, has no opinion, it is on topic, and follows guidelines and yet it gets downvoted. I am conjecturing that it is because of this bandwagoning effect. Look into this please. Greying out comments is fine. Just let some time pass, even 30 mins would be a huge improvement. Alternatively, allow minimum 2-3 people to vote before greying out comments.

Jtsummers 6y ago
At the same time, I try to make it a point to vouch/upvote reasonable posts. If I had no indication it'd been downvoted, I'd never upvote it to compensate. I'd read the comments now and if I came back tomorrow to see if there were more discussion I'd be very confused to see many comments grayed out (The great comment massacre?). Based on how other comments move to gray and back I suspect I'm not alone.
- fighterpilot 6y ago
  Does this outweigh the bandwagoning effect though? What about HN run an A/B test. Half of all new posts have delayed greying for a few hours. See which category accrues the most downvotes (or most net votes).
wruza 6y ago
The effect of such timeout may be quite opposite.
dang 6y ago
As Jtsummers points out, people can and do give corrective upvotes in such cases. I do that all the time, and I hope people understand that it's part of being a good citizen here. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=corrective%20upvote https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Layke1123 6y ago

I have noticed a lot of the downvotong of things critical of YCombinator and it's bias against topics it doesn't like. I even have emails where the moderator or employee refuses to acknowledge or explain why I was downvoted and not others. It was eye opening that experience and reading this list doesn't surprise me. Everyone has an agenda.

dang 6y ago
What you're "noticing" is not accurate. HN gets tons of comments that are critical of YC and YC-funded startups. We don't censor those, and in fact we moderate less, not more, when YC is involved: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderate%20less%20%22not%20more%22%20yc&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... Your description of those emails doesn't match my memory. I spent hours trying to explain things to you. That was not a refusal to explain.
- Layke1123 6y ago
  Hours? It was like 6 or 7 emails. How many hours does it take you to write a 5 or 6 sentence email? Don't be upset people are rightly criticizing Hacker News.

elorant 6y ago

Here's a thing I don't like and it's not mentioned in the list. If I submit a story I can't downvote on any of the top level comments. Why is that?

eatbitseveryday 6y ago
Probably the same reason you cannot downvote any direct replies to your comments, such as this one.
- elorant 6y ago
  I can understand why downvoting replies is prohibited, it could harm conversations. But prohibiting downvoting in submitted stories assumes some kind of self interest, which I doubt is the norm.
  - detaro 6y ago
    I think it's generally "the submitter shouldn't be able to shape the discussion too much". I.e. also why you aren't supposed to put your own spin on a headline, text submissions are separate and not supposed to be used for links (with a few exceptions).
    - elorant 6y ago
      Sure, that makes sense.
  - samatman 6y ago
    It could be as simple as: coding this would be an exception, and no one has done so. `(if (not (eq parent.user user)) (set! allow_downvotes true))` (probably not valid Arc!) is easy to code up, an exception would be more convoluted.
mellosouls 6y ago
Presumably the same reason you can't downvote immediate replies to your comments which is probably there to discourage toxic back-and-forth downvoting.

teddyh 6y ago

This does not seem to cover HN’s silent rate-limits, apparently for selected “troublemakers”: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20997593 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20997593 This is what seems to cause “You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks.” to appear for up to two hours. Fittingly, I had to wait two hours to post this comment.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
toomuchtodo 6y ago
https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/issues/21 https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/issues...
- dang 6y ago
  Also https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20rate%20limit&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
koheripbal 6y ago
Anti-spam/Anti-malicious-posters algorithms will, by necessity, never be transparent, nor even consistent or remain the same over time. Fighting spam and bad-faith commenters is a cat-and-mouse game.
- seumars 6y ago
  You’re twisting the issue by calling it “bad-faith commenters” though. Just take a look at this thread, where even the most polite, yet critical comments are downvoted and quite fittingly really hard to read.

splittingTimes 6y ago

apropos undocumented: Can I limit HNs search functionality to only include my favorites? I often know I favoured something but for the life of me cannot find it via normal search and going through my hundreds of favorites by hand is impractical.

dang 6y ago
Alas no. It's something Algolia could build, though, if they wanted—in fact there could be an operator for searching through anyone's favorites ("fave:splittingTimes" similar to "by:splittingTimes"), as they're public.
- yamrzou 6y ago
  I also have a similar need but for upvoted content. Sometimes I keep scrolling through pages of upvotes to find a specific item. The problem is that favourites and upvotes are not exposed via the API and require scraping, otherwise it would be easier to build a search tool for them.
  - dang 6y ago
    We'd have to build that into HN itself, since upvote data is private (extremely so). But it's the sort of feature whose value grows as the site continues, so I could imagine us adding it eventually.

dredmorbius 6y ago

I believe that explicit banning is also now indicated. I'd requested something like this for long-since-shadowbanned users whose ban event was hidden in the distant mists of time (or who are sockpuppets of banned profiles). This is rare, but does occur. Also can apply to spammers -- this is usually relevant on submissions / new queue. The YC-company bias can also apply to negative reporting on YC companies, which is less moderated as something of a counter to charges of favouratism. See: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderate%20less%20not%20more%20yc&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... Including from this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26868116 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26868116

dang 6y ago
If you mean the "[banned]" indicator that appears beside some usernames, that's only for a few banned accounts. The reason is that we were getting indignant emails about some of the most horrible stuff banned accounts have been posting, saying "how can you possibly allow this on Hacker News"? The answer, of course, is we don't. All those accounts had been banned for a long time. The problem seems to be that (a) some people forget they have "showdead" turned on or don't know what it means; and/or (b) some third-party software (e.g. mobile apps, browser extensions, or websites offering alternate views of HN) displays [dead] and [flagged] comments as if they were normal comments. There's not much to be done about (a), but (b) is a disaster. Many users of such software assume that what they're looking at is HN. (Previous comment about that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24335289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24335289.) Possibly we'll have to introduce some sort of standard and enforce it via API keys. Or maybe just stop serving [dead] or [flagged] comments via the API.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Yes. There's also the confusion between "flagged" and "dead", which still gets unclear at times. Not serving dead/flagged via API mostly makes sense, though it could make some analysis harder.

ehershey 6y ago

The most interesting stuff is toward the bottom. I found this fascinating and unintuitive: > Downranking of Tutorials > HN submissions which are tutorials are downranked by moderators, as they gratify intellectual curiosity less.

culturestate 6y ago
Not that long ago, you could very quickly build a decent SEO campaign around "X vs. Y" tutorials and HN - write 5,000 words on e.g. Angular vs. Ember, get some friends to upvote it, and if you made the front page you'd be on the first Google SERP for Angular and Ember the next day. I personally know a couple of early-ish YC companies who took advantage of that to boost their content marketing ops, and it wouldn't surprise me to learn that they were part of the reason this policy exists.
- dang 6y ago
  They weren't; I don't know anything about that. We just figured out one day that tutorials aren't intellectually interesting, in one of those obvious-once-you-see-it moments.

nextaccountic 6y ago

What's the difference between downvoting a comment and flagging a comment? I ask because I don't have 501 karma and I can flag a comment (but not downvote).

Sebb767 6y ago
Downvotes can be countered by upvotes and are more for low-quality content (or things you disagree with, although many - including me - try to refrain from doing this). Flagging is for content violating the rules, for example spam or insults.

codyb 6y ago

Certainly some familiar names on the top 100 accounts ranked by karma totals but seeing the username “toomuchtodo” with some 48,000 internet points gave me a pretty good grin.

canada_dry 6y ago

So, um... what are the "noprocrast maxvisit minaway and delay" options on the user profile setting screen for?? I'm guessing they are documented, but I'm too lazy to find/read. ;)

Sebb767 6y ago
No procast locks HN for you after some time (to avoid procrastination, as the name suggests ;). Max visit is the time you allow yourself on the site (starting on the first visit) and minaway is how long it is blocked. It's in minutes, iirc
- canada_dry 6y ago
  Seriously?!? That's hilarious! Thanks.
  - Sebb767 6y ago
    No problem :) It can actually be pretty useful sometimes, even though I have it disabled right now. You can also use it as a "spree breaker" by setting the values to something very low, like 60 visit/20 away.
- dang 6y ago
  It originated here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=77173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=77173.
dang 6y ago
Ah, a data point for my future essay "Nobody Reads the FAQ". https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
- canada_dry 6y ago
  Though an FAQ would typically be consumed by those wanting to know what the service provides and how. Not options on how to configure it. Perhaps adding a link on the user's settings page to the 'FAQ' would be helpful.

MichaelMoser123 6y ago

another undocumented feature: HN shows me all of my flagged submissions when i am logged in, when viewing anonymous it shows me only one flagged submission - but that one got 114 comments before it got flagged. is this a bug or is it a feature?

ultamatt 6y ago

This was very helpful. Thank you!

kirrikio 6y ago

I like the feature of green usernames

thinkingemote 6y ago

I'd add the red top bar for Christmas as an Easter Egg (... or a Christmas Egg?)

PostThisTooFast 6y ago

Missing from this is the obnoxious and offensive "you're posting too fast" bullshit, with no explanation of how once per hour or so is "too fast." Up yours for stealing from users, Hacker News.