9 ms·

I wish HN had some kind of labels. I want to filter out web development related posts. I am just bored with the usual "one line of css", "visual code", "icons f

I wish HN had some kind of labels. I want to filter out web development related posts. I am just bored with the usual "one line of css", "visual code", "icons for web" etc. I'd subscribe to just tech, personal projects, psychology and history if I could.

rtpg 4y ago
One alternative mechanism used on a site is to allow for filtering _out_ of tags. You still discover stuff but you can totally opt out of anything tagged “rant”. Imagine if you never had to read another substack post about cancel culture ending everything on your tech forum…
flatiron 4y ago
That’s basically subreddits
- nabaraz 4y ago
  Not really. You can already filter out posts like: https://news.ycombinator.com/show https://news.ycombinator.com/show https://news.ycombinator.com/ask https://news.ycombinator.com/ask https://news.ycombinator.com/asknew https://news.ycombinator.com/asknew
  - dj_mc_merlin 4y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/r/show https://news.ycombinator.com/r/show https://news.ycombinator.com/r/ask https://news.ycombinator.com/r/ask https://news.ycombinator.com/r/ask/new https://news.ycombinator.com/r/ask/new
  - chrononaut 4y ago
    Filter for posts like those, or filter out posts like those? I don't see the ability filter out those in my account settings, although I could be missing something.
- aordano 4y ago
  Is this satire? It says right there on the guidelines, which are also the TFA: > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.
  - remram 4y ago
    No one said that HN is turning into Reddit, just that the described feature sounds like subreddits. If anything, your eagerness to defend HN against any sort of comparison to Reddit feels like satire.
    - aordano 4y ago
      Oh sorry my bad! I misreplied, I wanted to reply to another comment that appended some /r/ to the HN categories :(
boston_clone 4y ago
I believe that feature omission is intentional. There have been dozens of articles - interesting, thought-provoking articles - that were outside my typical interests, but ended up being well worth the read.
u2077 4y ago
I think you’re looking for https://hnrss.github.io/ https://hnrss.github.io/
runarberg 4y ago
I actually kind of like it this way... I already follow some more specialized industry literature like Smashing Magazine or MDN Hacks. I don’t use HN the same way as those. Then when a front-end related news reaches the HN front page it is a cause for celebration. Surely, if HN had a /web-dev I would stop using it as HN and use it more like I already use the specialized blog pages I already follow.
sillysaurusx 4y ago
I forked HN and made that: https://www.laarc.io/l https://www.laarc.io/l The tags ended up being pretty interesting. You can even combine them: https://www.laarc.io/l/video|videos https://www.laarc.io/l/video|videos It was neat watching the community figure out which tags to use.
tkgally 4y ago
> I wish HN had some kind of labels. I want to filter out [...] I was thinking something similar recently. I’m uninterested in well over half of the posts that appear on the front page, usually because they involve technical topics I don’t care about. Most HN readers must be similar, each with different needs and tastes. Then I thought that the perfect solution would be an algorithm that would highlight posts and comments similar to those I’ve liked in the past and hide those I don’t like. Soon I would be seeing only what I want to see, and I wouldn’t be bothered by anything else. Then a shiver went down my spine, and I decided that HN is best as it is.
- el_benhameen 4y ago
  In addition to avoiding the awfulness that is “The Algorithm”, the lack of filtering/recommendations and infinite scroll means that there are generally only 0-5 items interesting enough for me to waste time on. I find that HN is far more interesting than other sites, but because of that limitation, it’s a far less problematic source for procrastination.
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    Infinite scroll, IMHO, is an abysmal anti-pattern. 99% of the implementations don't work well with the back button. I think I can count the number of times on one hand that I was glad to have infinite scroll instead of pagination, and I don't think I've ever said to myself "gee, I wish I didn't have to click 'next' to see more things"
    - el_benhameen 4y ago
      Absolutely. I often wonder if I’m just part of a tiny minority who still uses the back button, given how many large sites disregard it at best and break it at worst.
owlninja 4y ago
I still enjoy those posts. When they get enough traction I usually take notice as something I should store in the memory vault, even if it is of no interest to me or my career. I even find myself appending 'hackernews' to google searches when I am really trying to discover more about a tech I am not well versed in, but want to get started on the best path.
password4321 4y ago
Those willing to do this work tend to come and go, but here's one that's still doing something: https://www.taggernews.com/tags/ https://www.taggernews.com/tags/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14337275 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14337275 (2017)
edgyquant 4y ago
Sounds like you want subreddits, I don’t. Right now HN is one community and everyone sees the same front page, if you add subreddits the community will fragment and we’ll get a lot less insight.
tptacek 4y ago
The site very deliberately doesn't have those; one of its basic premises is that we all see the same feed of stories, instead of a bunch of siloes.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  dang's expressed that point of view pretty substantively here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098
sph 4y ago
I'd rather have more CSS posts personally, because they are in a way still tech related, than seeing the site turn into a generic news aggregator, or as I've said other times, a slightly more techy version of Ars Technica. The guideline that "we should post things hackers [users] would find interesting" was good a decade ago, now we've good a ton of people that post their favourite long form articles and Twitter posts. I don't care for history, commentaries on society or personal philosophy musings with my code. Honestly, I'm not really complaining, at least the quality of the discussion is still higher than elsewhere on the Internet.
- krapp 4y ago
  >The guideline that "we should post things hackers [users] would find interesting" was good a decade ago, now we've good a ton of people that post their favourite long form articles and Twitter posts. I don't care for history, commentaries on society or personal philosophy musings with my code. Do you believe the only thing hackers should find interesting is "code?"
  - sph 4y ago
    No, but that kind of leeway is what kills sites during an Eternal September. And no one ask for proof you're an hacker to open an account here (thankfully I might add). Hacker in the guidelines is just a synonym for user. Again, I don't want to force HN to limits its discussion to tech _only_, I'm just saying that I think it's getting more and more diluted.
    - spoils19 4y ago
      - sph 4y ago
        Personally, I would like to see any political flag-waving and finger-pointing like yours banned with extreme prejudice. It certainly doesn't make for interesting discussion.
dredmorbius 4y ago
There is the option of searching for keywoards. You can do this with a time bound (day, week, month, year). Searches within the past 24 hours should turn up active discussions. The hack I use is to search comments rather than posts, as the latter afford a larger search surface. You risk turning up some digression thread on a topic, but that's an occupational hazard... Otherwise: - Click on the "past" titlebar link to see top-ranked posts from the previous day. You can navigate by day/week/month/year through all of HN history. - Click on the "past" post link to find earlier discussions of a particular story / link, if any. - Click on the submitted link domain URL to find other items from that particular site. - See what specific users are submitting. I occasionally find interesting content navigating HN by user rather than by submissions. - Look to see what's getting submitted on the "New" queue. Voting or flagging early can influence what shows up on HN for discussion. - Submit your own material. Odds are low, I'm lucky to have one in ten items see any activity. It's a numbers game. Submissions which relate to other recent submissions (but aren't merely fad-chasing) seem to do reasonably well. I turn up numerous older references through other research, some of which seems to do well on HN.
ricardo81 4y ago
I guess being able to hide threads would achieve the same thing and save the trouble of scanning over threads you know you won't read/participate in.

rtpg 4y ago

One alternative mechanism used on a site is to allow for filtering _out_ of tags. You still discover stuff but you can totally opt out of anything tagged “rant”. Imagine if you never had to read another substack post about cancel culture ending everything on your tech forum…

flatiron 4y ago

That’s basically subreddits

nabaraz 4y ago
Not really. You can already filter out posts like: https://news.ycombinator.com/show https://news.ycombinator.com/show https://news.ycombinator.com/ask https://news.ycombinator.com/ask https://news.ycombinator.com/asknew https://news.ycombinator.com/asknew
- dj_mc_merlin 4y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/r/show https://news.ycombinator.com/r/show https://news.ycombinator.com/r/ask https://news.ycombinator.com/r/ask https://news.ycombinator.com/r/ask/new https://news.ycombinator.com/r/ask/new
- chrononaut 4y ago
  Filter for posts like those, or filter out posts like those? I don't see the ability filter out those in my account settings, although I could be missing something.
aordano 4y ago
Is this satire? It says right there on the guidelines, which are also the TFA: > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.
- remram 4y ago
  No one said that HN is turning into Reddit, just that the described feature sounds like subreddits. If anything, your eagerness to defend HN against any sort of comparison to Reddit feels like satire.
  - aordano 4y ago
    Oh sorry my bad! I misreplied, I wanted to reply to another comment that appended some /r/ to the HN categories :(

boston_clone 4y ago

I believe that feature omission is intentional. There have been dozens of articles - interesting, thought-provoking articles - that were outside my typical interests, but ended up being well worth the read.

u2077 4y ago

I think you’re looking for https://hnrss.github.io/ https://hnrss.github.io/

runarberg 4y ago

I actually kind of like it this way... I already follow some more specialized industry literature like Smashing Magazine or MDN Hacks. I don’t use HN the same way as those. Then when a front-end related news reaches the HN front page it is a cause for celebration. Surely, if HN had a /web-dev I would stop using it as HN and use it more like I already use the specialized blog pages I already follow.

sillysaurusx 4y ago

I forked HN and made that: https://www.laarc.io/l https://www.laarc.io/l The tags ended up being pretty interesting. You can even combine them: https://www.laarc.io/l/video|videos https://www.laarc.io/l/video|videos It was neat watching the community figure out which tags to use.

tkgally 4y ago

> I wish HN had some kind of labels. I want to filter out [...] I was thinking something similar recently. I’m uninterested in well over half of the posts that appear on the front page, usually because they involve technical topics I don’t care about. Most HN readers must be similar, each with different needs and tastes. Then I thought that the perfect solution would be an algorithm that would highlight posts and comments similar to those I’ve liked in the past and hide those I don’t like. Soon I would be seeing only what I want to see, and I wouldn’t be bothered by anything else. Then a shiver went down my spine, and I decided that HN is best as it is.

el_benhameen 4y ago
In addition to avoiding the awfulness that is “The Algorithm”, the lack of filtering/recommendations and infinite scroll means that there are generally only 0-5 items interesting enough for me to waste time on. I find that HN is far more interesting than other sites, but because of that limitation, it’s a far less problematic source for procrastination.
- zdragnar 4y ago
  Infinite scroll, IMHO, is an abysmal anti-pattern. 99% of the implementations don't work well with the back button. I think I can count the number of times on one hand that I was glad to have infinite scroll instead of pagination, and I don't think I've ever said to myself "gee, I wish I didn't have to click 'next' to see more things"
  - el_benhameen 4y ago
    Absolutely. I often wonder if I’m just part of a tiny minority who still uses the back button, given how many large sites disregard it at best and break it at worst.

owlninja 4y ago

I still enjoy those posts. When they get enough traction I usually take notice as something I should store in the memory vault, even if it is of no interest to me or my career. I even find myself appending 'hackernews' to google searches when I am really trying to discover more about a tech I am not well versed in, but want to get started on the best path.

password4321 4y ago

Those willing to do this work tend to come and go, but here's one that's still doing something: https://www.taggernews.com/tags/ https://www.taggernews.com/tags/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14337275 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14337275 (2017)

edgyquant 4y ago

Sounds like you want subreddits, I don’t. Right now HN is one community and everyone sees the same front page, if you add subreddits the community will fragment and we’ll get a lot less insight.

tptacek 4y ago

The site very deliberately doesn't have those; one of its basic premises is that we all see the same feed of stories, instead of a bunch of siloes.

dredmorbius 4y ago
dang's expressed that point of view pretty substantively here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098

sph 4y ago

I'd rather have more CSS posts personally, because they are in a way still tech related, than seeing the site turn into a generic news aggregator, or as I've said other times, a slightly more techy version of Ars Technica. The guideline that "we should post things hackers [users] would find interesting" was good a decade ago, now we've good a ton of people that post their favourite long form articles and Twitter posts. I don't care for history, commentaries on society or personal philosophy musings with my code. Honestly, I'm not really complaining, at least the quality of the discussion is still higher than elsewhere on the Internet.

krapp 4y ago
>The guideline that "we should post things hackers [users] would find interesting" was good a decade ago, now we've good a ton of people that post their favourite long form articles and Twitter posts. I don't care for history, commentaries on society or personal philosophy musings with my code. Do you believe the only thing hackers should find interesting is "code?"
- sph 4y ago
  No, but that kind of leeway is what kills sites during an Eternal September. And no one ask for proof you're an hacker to open an account here (thankfully I might add). Hacker in the guidelines is just a synonym for user. Again, I don't want to force HN to limits its discussion to tech _only_, I'm just saying that I think it's getting more and more diluted.
  - spoils19 4y ago
    - sph 4y ago
      Personally, I would like to see any political flag-waving and finger-pointing like yours banned with extreme prejudice. It certainly doesn't make for interesting discussion.

dredmorbius 4y ago

There is the option of searching for keywoards. You can do this with a time bound (day, week, month, year). Searches within the past 24 hours should turn up active discussions. The hack I use is to search comments rather than posts, as the latter afford a larger search surface. You risk turning up some digression thread on a topic, but that's an occupational hazard... Otherwise: - Click on the "past" titlebar link to see top-ranked posts from the previous day. You can navigate by day/week/month/year through all of HN history. - Click on the "past" post link to find earlier discussions of a particular story / link, if any. - Click on the submitted link domain URL to find other items from that particular site. - See what specific users are submitting. I occasionally find interesting content navigating HN by user rather than by submissions. - Look to see what's getting submitted on the "New" queue. Voting or flagging early can influence what shows up on HN for discussion. - Submit your own material. Odds are low, I'm lucky to have one in ten items see any activity. It's a numbers game. Submissions which relate to other recent submissions (but aren't merely fad-chasing) seem to do reasonably well. I turn up numerous older references through other research, some of which seems to do well on HN.

ricardo81 4y ago

I guess being able to hide threads would achieve the same thing and save the trouble of scanning over threads you know you won't read/participate in.