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Show HN: Like Button for Hacker News
- pestaa 15y agoI like the idea but if I ever use it, the reason would be backwards: to show how many hackers already upvoted the entry. Most articles hit the front page on HN and in a good case stay there for a day, but rarely more. The votes after that point are so distributed over time the entry would disappear anyway from the most visited page. I'd rather link back to the proper page on HN (where I'd want to read the comments anyway, I think I'm not alone with this). If there was a way to link back and upvote with a single click, I'd raise my hat. Nonetheless, really nice work for a weekend.
- sbashyal 15y agoDid you read my blog post on the topic? I was wondering if I didn't do a good job explaining my pain point well. Just like you have mentioned, I also wanted to let my readers know that the content has received some HN love. So would you be interested if I came-up with a version of the button that displayed the HN Points and Comment count for the content sans the 'like' call for action?
- pestaa 15y agoI do not maintain content sites or technical blogs, I just tried to clearly think through what my use case would be. If I had a blog I'd be as interested now as with the new version. :) However, these additions would in my opinion resonate with other authors.
- sbashyal 15y agoI think that's a good insight
- lubutu 15y agoIt's impressive how lossy-compressed that PNG image is. The button artwork really needs some love...
- ayanb 15y agoAlso, the text beside the button could well be center aligned vertically.
- sbashyal 15y agoYou bet! Let's think of the current version as a mock-up :)
- RobertHubert 15y agoI can mock up a few for you if that helps? Then we can let people "hnLike" the button to see what people prefer? Ill keep adding more to the set throughout the day. http://roberthubert.com/hnlikes.html http://roberthubert.com/hnlikes.html ^ edit: these now include the buttons from acous too! :)
- sbashyal 15y agoLet's do it!
- RobertHubert 15y agoAwesome, Ill keep updating the url and then Ill activate all the buttons when I think I have a fair amount to choose from :) Feel free to keep refreshing the ^URL to watch my progress, Ill upload each one as I make'em.
- ayanb 15y agoI like the second one better, its crisper. Font-size could do with a pixel less?
- acous 15y agoHopefully I'm not being rude, but I thought I might try my hand at some as well. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/103004/hnlike.html http://dl.dropbox.com/u/103004/hnlike.html edit: I can't reply below yet, but I think I'm done at 4 so feel free to incorporate them into a sheet!
- ahmetalpbalkan 15y agoIt actually does not make users "like", right? First it sends you to submit page, then you submit and then you're counted as liked?
- sbashyal 15y agoYes, that's the workflow. HN rightly counts re-submissions by different users as an upvote.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- biturd 15y agoMaybe after the submit the window should go away, because this is what I get, which looks odd http://i.imgur.com/BCvWV.png http://i.imgur.com/BCvWV.png
- sbashyal 15y agoIt does look odd! Because the submission page is a Hacker News page, I can not control its behavior. One of the things I would like to do, after being convinced that the HN community wants this feature, is to discuss possible options with the YCombinator folks.
- biturd 15y agoI thought you mentioned you were using the HN API? Even without it, can't you use something like `curl` to make the post and perhaps some gross regex to strip away the bits you want and load it into your own domain space?
- awaz 15y agoThat would work if I were to submit from a single account but not to submit on your behalf.
- dshah 15y agoNice work! A big improvement would be to not go through the submission step if the article has already been submitted (and has votes). Would be more like the reddit button. Speaking of which, making this look more like the standard social media buttons would be good too. I'll put an open $100 Amazon Gift certificate reward out there if you want to make those changes, and release back to the community.
- sbashyal 15y agoThanks! I am willing to convert this hack into a service for the HN community.
- sahillavingia 15y agoCan you email me? I'd love to make it prettier.
- diminish 15y agohackernews-ed! i cant reach the site.
- artursapek 15y agoSpeaking of which, making this look more like the standard social media buttons would be good too. Why!
- alphakappa 15y agoSo it can share space with other buttons without sticking out as an odd button.
- Andi 15y agoIf you have a good story, you will go to hackernews and post it. I think this "innovation" is going to lead to a lower post quality.
- sbashyal 15y agoThat's a possible side-effect. But it has benefits (for e.g. better content discovery) that I think out-weighs the side-effect. On the other note, if vote count is the measure of content quality, the ease to vote should not adversely affect the system but improve it.
- RobertHubert 15y agoYeah Im kind of realizing this too, we dont want rampant mindless liking. Part of what makes the vote here work is that you can compare posts with one another and see if similar stories were already submitted etc... What if we make the like button really small..."^" so that only people familiar with it will notice it? lol
- pg 15y agoIt's worth thinking about the question of whether this will make HN better or worse. I'm inclined to think worse. It will bring more random people to the site, and (to the extent it works) it will mean that an article's score on HN will depend partially on the completely random factor of whether the author included this button.
- sbashyal 15y agoI agree that this will lead to HN point inflation which in itself is not bad. The community has to decide whether the features out-weigh potential content quality degradation. I have maintained so far that I'll build this service IF the community desires it. In any case, a button that displays the HN points (without upvote feature) for a given content is useful. The question is whether to include the upvote function in it or not. update: there already is a bookmarklet and a Chrome extension for it so this is only an addition to the list in this regard
- shadowsun7 15y ago@sbashyal: Nice hack. That said, read pg's comment carefully: the issue here isn't simply about HN point inflation. It's about submitting stories thoughtfully, upvoting carefully (after evaluating signals such as the quality of the conversation around an article, alongside the article itself), introduction of random strangers to the HN community - these are potential factors tied in with the creation of the like button. pg's raised these issues, and I must say I'd like to see some discussion about them.
- PLejeck 15y agoI think if it never links directly to HN, we'll be safe.
- skeptical 15y agoI've been reading hacker news for maybe two years (not much I know) without registering. It is noticeable that hacker news is becomming more of a so-called social marketing tool and less of a news source. This is not a blindly negative critique, I'm simply stating what I can observe. Possibly this is a milestone for what hacker news can become. I'm not sure that's the right direction either. Personally, I wouldn't mind if hacker news would put the foot on the break and become more content centered rather than community focused. It is my understanding that the site guidelines kind of state this too with different phrasing...?
- g-garron 15y agoIt was just the day before yesterday that I've written this http://garron.me/blog/what-i-have-learned-at-hacker-news.html http://garron.me/blog/what-i-have-learned-at-hacker-news.htm... About how I like HN, and why it is not yet-another-social-site full of kids trying to push their post to the top. Sorry if this sound negative, but I'd rather prefer HN as it is now, If I find something I think might interest this "mature" community I'll come here and post it, It does not matter if this is not as easy as submit the story to Facebook. It worth the "effort" as here I get real good comments about my submissions. We already have Facebook for the "brainless" people. I've to admit that I blog a lot and only maybe 1% of my own posts deserve being here. With this button in my blog, maybe lots of me posts might end up here. Anyway great job designing and creating this. :). Hope my opinion adds something good to this discussion.
- jeremyarussell 15y agoI figure a good compromise exists. Just release the source code and let everyone host their own hackers like button. Then people get to choose what they want. (and even choose to alter the code to not allow "likes" at all.) And, just show details of how many liked it. This ways they can integrate hacker news info with their own blogs displays, etc. Personally, I can see through pulse and news.ycombinator.com how many votes something has. If I want to upvote something I'll take the thirty seconds to find the article on hacker news. Just my two cents. RFE: Typo
- artursapek 15y agoDo we really want submitting a story to HN to be as easy as getting fed inside of a Skinner box?
- dartma 15y agoI would suggest not doing it, although it seems like a nice idea. I honestly do think that content will suffer on HN as a result.
- PetoVera_Matt 15y agoThis is a great idea, but when I try to "like" it it prompts me to resubmit the article to HN. :/
- thelovelyfish 15y agoA "like" button instigates nothing more than a childish popularity competition.
- hm2k 15y agoI'm sure I saw a better implementation of this on someone's blog only last week, but I don't recall where. I can't be the only one who saw this...
- hm2k 15y agoWhy did someone downvote this? That's not helpful towards finding what I was looking for.
- ahmetalpbalkan 15y agoinstead of showing an image, have you considered doing that orange 'Y' logo with HTML+CSS?
- sbashyal 15y agoYes, that is one of the option I am considering. I could surely take someone's help in getting things prettier :)
- dwynings 15y agoSomething like this maybe? http://jsfiddle.net/dwynings/6Fm9M/1/ http://jsfiddle.net/dwynings/6Fm9M/1/
- omaranto 15y agoThat would look better with the Y to the left of "Like" instead of on top covering the i and k (and leaving a blank space to the left of the L).
- dwynings 15y agoProbably a browser issue? This is what it looks like on my end: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10895160/Screenshots/vxfhd-be9gi1.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10895160/Screenshots/vxfhd-be9gi1.pn...
- mike-cardwell 15y agoThe way this button works suggests to me that it would be easy to use CSRF to get people automatically upvoting your articles if they happen to be logged into HN when they come to your site.
- mvts 15y agoI have the feeling, that a social network is the exact opposite of what HN is aiming to be. I'd rather like to think of it as a community.
- PLejeck 15y agoHacker News is like Digg but without so much sucking. If Digg were 100% programmers, it would be Hacker News. I personally think this is a good idea if only to reduce duplicates and such. As long as we never explicitly link to Hacker News itself, no noobs will come here, and the benefits should outweigh the negatives.
- impendia 15y agoSo there are 378 upvotes (and counting) but that could be a little misleading. I venture no opinion on whether this is a good idea or not, but I confess to having upvoted the link because I was curious to try out the button.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- jamesrom 15y agoThis is the exact moment when HN jumps the shark and becomes digg/reddit/slashdot/et al.
- donniefitz2 15y agoPlease don't do this to HN. I really like it here.