5 ms·

Ask HN: How would you re-design Hacker News?

13 points by sh_tomer 3y ago

HackerNews hasn't change for ages. Would you change its design? If so, how?

mrwnmonm 3y ago
Communication over a distance never works, there is no sympathy in it, because everyone is reduced to a persona, and everyone feels equal to the other which is terrible. Redesigning things won't change that.
- h2odragon 3y ago
  > everyone feels equal to the other which is terrible Assuming I have not misunderstood your thought; I must say i disagree. One of, if not the greatest thing about the text only internet was that no one knew if you were a dog, and had no excuse to care.
  - mrwnmonm 3y ago
    You proved what I said.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
devdude1337 3y ago
Put the "more" link to the right corner, so it’s easier to reach one handed from a smart phone. That’s the one and only thing I’d change
- gabrielsroka 3y ago
  I'm right handed but I use my phone one handed with my left hand. My custom HN app has the More button in full width. Similar to boingboing. https://gabrielsroka.github.io/hn.html?small https://gabrielsroka.github.io/hn.html?small
jstx1 3y ago
1. Add a way to block users. 2. Customizable themes. 3. Some way to indicate responsess to your comments/threads.
- pndy 3y ago
  > 1. Add a way to block users. Along with ability to block whole domains. And perhaps a tag feature that could help to filter out stuff like general news or politics (assuming that tags would be required during submitting) There are paid spammers around who upload almost on hourly basis; there was also a time during pandemic when nothing but links from one domain was constantly posted. I don't expect admins to do anything regarding that but they could at least provide some tools for users to filter out stuff that's being dumped here
h2odragon 3y ago
Fairly satisfied with HN as is. The minimal medium makes for more signal, less noise. not no noise, that's impossible. (there is no spoon) Can list lots of things that I think would be bad. Animated GIF user avatar images. inline images. Cryptocurrency schemes and "realtime chat" systems. ooo. almost forgot: dedicated proprietary client. screw this "open web" stuff, lets add some encryption to nntp and charge $15/mo for a reskinned newsreader app to access it with! We can compile it to webasm and run it in electron on phones!
- mdwalters 3y ago
  You're joking about the last part... Right?
- jaredsohn 3y ago
  also instead of showing a list of all the stories on the front page, show one story at a time and build an algorithm that indicates which story gets shown next. /s
- version_five 3y ago
  There's a great opportunity for someone to make a satirical "modernized" HN page with all the worst features of the modern web.
pndy 3y ago
hn looks fine; not every site has to be embellished with modern design. If you want some fresh looks, check Modern for Hacker News extension - https://www.modernhn.com/ https://www.modernhn.com/
- bjourne 3y ago
  Dude, thanks for that! That extension improves the readability and usability of HN by a million!
mdwalters 3y ago
A little scrolling ticker on the top bar showing posts on the front page. Sadly marquee was discontinued, so I doubt this could be done.
- perilunar 3y ago
  Easy enough to do with CSS, but do not want.
warning26 3y ago
HN is nearly perfect as is IMO -- any changes would ruin a lot of what makes it special. That said, the one change I would probably make is changing the click targets to be slightly larger on the upvote/downvote/collapse on comments. Would be a nice improvement for mobile users.
- albert_e 3y ago
  +1 I also find it hard to click links accurately on a mobile screen
catlover76 3y ago
It should have notifications for replies.
- albert_e 3y ago
  which can be turned off!
- warning26 3y ago
  TBH I think this would would be a negative change. Not being able to see immediately if you got a reply discourages the repeated back-and-forth arguing that is common on Reddit.
  - catlover76 3y ago
    > Not being able to see immediately if you got a reply discourages the repeated back-and-forth arguing that is common on Reddit. People always say that, but while that may be true to a certain extent, it also inhibits productive discussions and also inhibits users from making potentially beneficial connections (I have actually beneficially connected with people IRL from HackerNews, so it is possible, and I think more such connections could occur with some changes to the site). I think a couple add-ons could mitigate the harmful effects: - Ability to turn them off for certain threads - Ability to block users - Perhaps automatically turning off the notifications after x number/count, which would basically put people on notice that they have to exchange contact info or something if they want to continue the convo (??) Ultimately, without notifications a lot of the point of the "reply" functionality is gone. And it's not just about "current" convos either; a number of times, I have found a useful thread via Googling and wanted to ask a question of one of the posters, but of course, if the thread is older than even a day or two, this is a totally pointless endeavor because they will never know I replied to a comment. Who knows if there was even a point in my replying here--you may never see it!!
    - warning26 3y ago
      Hah! I did eventually see it! I'd argue that your proposed fixes merely bolster my original point; not implementing notifications in the first place is a sufficiently positive influence that it negates the need for things like user blocks. If I'm curious how people reacted to my comment (as I did here), I'll go to my user page and see what responses I got. This makes it a deliberate action on the part of the user instead of a reactive one.
albert_e 3y ago
the links are tiny targets for fat fingers on mobile screens. there can be better spacing between links both on topnav bar and also the links next to each post on a thread. same with links in user profile page. spacing.
RGamma 3y ago
Add an option to show only top level comments/collapse threads by default. Auto dupe detection with linking historical discussion (mild QoL). Aggregate dupes posted in a short timeframe (needs manual intervention I fear). Add an at least rudimentary tagging and tag filter/browser system. The search could use some work (but I guess you can do site:news.ycombinator.com searches with other engines). Otherwise pretty neat as is. The ephemeral nature of threads on recurring topics - such as this one - I find somewhat tragic but such is the nature of aggregators. Never add embedded media or "modern web" shenanigans!
kypro 3y ago
I want to preface this with the fact I've been on this site for over 15 years and I do not want to see a "redesign", just some tweaks. 1. The grey self post text is not accessible and hard to read. It needs to be darker. Same is true of user names, etc. 2. HN could improve the UI for mobile users by making clickable elements slightly larger and adding some extra spacing to prevent accidental miss-clicks. 3. Add an inline confirmation step screen when flagging a post – I accidentally flag posts all the time. 4. Change "favourite" to "book mark". Add it to the list view. Add a link to "book marks" in the top bar so they can easily accessed. Sometimes I see something that looks interesting but I don't have time to read. I don't want to click through to the comments just to "favourite" it, then I need to remember to go to my profile and click on "favourites" later. I just want to quickly book mark posts and be able to easily access them later.
- ted_bunny 3y ago
  Maybe the difficulty for mobile users is a good thing
nicbou 3y ago
This website is unreasonably good. I would only make a few minor fixes: - Bigger clickable elements on mobile. - Support for bullet lists - Slightly easier navigation - Optional reply notifications
vasili111 3y ago
It works well. I would not redesign something that works well.
downboots 3y ago
Browse/collapse with arrow keys
dotcoma 3y ago
It’s fine as it is. I would just make the upvote / downvote arrows a bit larger on mobile.
shoebham 3y ago
just one small change, clicking a link on a title should open a new tab instead of opening it in the same tab
perilunar 3y ago
The design is nicely minimal, but I would replace the nested table layout with nested lists (which is what the comment section is). Also: add some way to highlight new messages since you last looked at a discussion.
HellDunkel 3y ago
I would like to see a hackernews for creatives, preferably done by completely different people. Just to clarify: Computer programmers can be creatives too, like writers, painters - anyone producing output. I would keep the simplistic text based appeoach.
nothasan 3y ago
I’d remove flagging or hiding on mobile unless you click on the post because it’s easy to accidentally do it.
gargablegar 3y ago
Automatically link Dupes into a single post and set of comments. And add subsections or maybe a set of tags -nothing like all of Reddit but a handful something like Tech/Buisness/science/art as with ask and show.
throwaway154 3y ago
At 7KB, the favicon often makes up over 10% of total page size. At 256x256px and having only two colours, I think there's plenty of room to slim it down. I'm also curious why HTTP/1.1 is used as it's not 1999 any more.
- WallyFunk 3y ago
  The favicon should be the logo here: https://news.ycombinator.com/y18.svg https://news.ycombinator.com/y18.svg SVG is allowed in favicons.
  - throwaway154 3y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/favicon.ico https://news.ycombinator.com/favicon.ico is still there https://news.ycombinator.com/favicon.ico https://news.ycombinator.com/favicon.ico https://news.ycombinator.com/y18.svg https://news.ycombinator.com/y18.svg appears to be in the orange bar for me.
- mdwalters 3y ago
  > I'm also curious why HTTP/1.1 is used as it's not 1999 any more. Not sure why, but this really helps me use HN on my Wii.
jaredsohn 3y ago
Suggestion: black bars should be clickable to bring to a relevant post. from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37197243 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37197243 or more minimally have a tooltip that indicates the name of the person
logicalmonster 3y ago
In terms of aesthetics and usability, HN is already pretty good, but I might tweak the colors for contrast, maybe increase the default font-size a bit, and play around with the padding to give it a slightly better and more accessible look. In terms of functionality, I'd like to see a few items done for the sake of transparency and/or better content. * I'd like to see some page of HN dedicated to showing posts and that were deleted/blocked for spamming, and one for blocked/shadow-banned domains. In 99% of cases, the moderation seems fine, but there's a weird cult of sycophantic behavior on this site that refuses to believe in even the potential for mistakes being made or for bias to occur. I just want some transparency on what is blocked so it's easier to see if any patterns exist. * Vouching flagged posts should work differently. If you vouch for somebody in real life and they do something bad, your reputation suffers. Right now you can vouch for spam or bad posts with no penalty to you just by clicking a vouch button where you can't see who vouched for it. Users should put their money where their mouth is. A vouching should require a public comment by that user detailing why they vouch for it. If somebody vouches for viagra spam, everybody should see that. * It should be possible to respond to blocked and flagged posts/ for some limited time period after. In the 1% of cases that a moderator makes a mistake, or a good conversation is stymied, or something else happens, you should still be able to respond to give your side of the story or just post an email address to where followup discussions can occur. Abusive accounts should still be suspended, but this gives a better possibility to rectify moderation errors. * Quasi-nonymous posting should be possible. Obviously HN would still know who you are if there was an anonymous post button so users could still be blocked for grossly bad behavior, but it might open up the potential for more honest posts about certain topics if it didn't link to your name. * I don't want HN to turn into a pure image board, but sometimes referring to a diagram in a science or programming discussion can be useful. Is there a solution that enhances the quality of HN possible? I'd say yes. * It might be a good idea to list what users flag a post. If somebody is perenially being a busy-body and trying to stymie speech on a particular comment or has a hate-boner against certain things, it should be possible to see that in some way. If you're only flagging things that should be blocked like viagra spam, there's nothing to be concerned about.

13 points by sh_tomer 3y ago

HackerNews hasn't change for ages. Would you change its design? If so, how?

Communication over a distance never works, there is no sympathy in it, because everyone is reduced to a persona, and everyone feels equal to the other which is terrible. Redesigning things won't change that.

h2odragon 3y ago
> everyone feels equal to the other which is terrible Assuming I have not misunderstood your thought; I must say i disagree. One of, if not the greatest thing about the text only internet was that no one knew if you were a dog, and had no excuse to care.
- mrwnmonm 3y ago
  You proved what I said.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

devdude1337 3y ago

Put the "more" link to the right corner, so it’s easier to reach one handed from a smart phone. That’s the one and only thing I’d change

gabrielsroka 3y ago
I'm right handed but I use my phone one handed with my left hand. My custom HN app has the More button in full width. Similar to boingboing. https://gabrielsroka.github.io/hn.html?small https://gabrielsroka.github.io/hn.html?small

jstx1 3y ago

1. Add a way to block users. 2. Customizable themes. 3. Some way to indicate responsess to your comments/threads.

pndy 3y ago
> 1. Add a way to block users. Along with ability to block whole domains. And perhaps a tag feature that could help to filter out stuff like general news or politics (assuming that tags would be required during submitting) There are paid spammers around who upload almost on hourly basis; there was also a time during pandemic when nothing but links from one domain was constantly posted. I don't expect admins to do anything regarding that but they could at least provide some tools for users to filter out stuff that's being dumped here

h2odragon 3y ago

Fairly satisfied with HN as is. The minimal medium makes for more signal, less noise. not no noise, that's impossible. (there is no spoon) Can list lots of things that I think would be bad. Animated GIF user avatar images. inline images. Cryptocurrency schemes and "realtime chat" systems. ooo. almost forgot: dedicated proprietary client. screw this "open web" stuff, lets add some encryption to nntp and charge $15/mo for a reskinned newsreader app to access it with! We can compile it to webasm and run it in electron on phones!

mdwalters 3y ago
You're joking about the last part... Right?
jaredsohn 3y ago
also instead of showing a list of all the stories on the front page, show one story at a time and build an algorithm that indicates which story gets shown next. /s
version_five 3y ago
There's a great opportunity for someone to make a satirical "modernized" HN page with all the worst features of the modern web.

pndy 3y ago

hn looks fine; not every site has to be embellished with modern design. If you want some fresh looks, check Modern for Hacker News extension - https://www.modernhn.com/ https://www.modernhn.com/

bjourne 3y ago
Dude, thanks for that! That extension improves the readability and usability of HN by a million!

mdwalters 3y ago

A little scrolling ticker on the top bar showing posts on the front page. Sadly marquee was discontinued, so I doubt this could be done.

perilunar 3y ago
Easy enough to do with CSS, but do not want.

warning26 3y ago

HN is nearly perfect as is IMO -- any changes would ruin a lot of what makes it special. That said, the one change I would probably make is changing the click targets to be slightly larger on the upvote/downvote/collapse on comments. Would be a nice improvement for mobile users.

albert_e 3y ago
+1 I also find it hard to click links accurately on a mobile screen

catlover76 3y ago

It should have notifications for replies.

albert_e 3y ago
which can be turned off!
warning26 3y ago
TBH I think this would would be a negative change. Not being able to see immediately if you got a reply discourages the repeated back-and-forth arguing that is common on Reddit.
- catlover76 3y ago
  > Not being able to see immediately if you got a reply discourages the repeated back-and-forth arguing that is common on Reddit. People always say that, but while that may be true to a certain extent, it also inhibits productive discussions and also inhibits users from making potentially beneficial connections (I have actually beneficially connected with people IRL from HackerNews, so it is possible, and I think more such connections could occur with some changes to the site). I think a couple add-ons could mitigate the harmful effects: - Ability to turn them off for certain threads - Ability to block users - Perhaps automatically turning off the notifications after x number/count, which would basically put people on notice that they have to exchange contact info or something if they want to continue the convo (??) Ultimately, without notifications a lot of the point of the "reply" functionality is gone. And it's not just about "current" convos either; a number of times, I have found a useful thread via Googling and wanted to ask a question of one of the posters, but of course, if the thread is older than even a day or two, this is a totally pointless endeavor because they will never know I replied to a comment. Who knows if there was even a point in my replying here--you may never see it!!
  - warning26 3y ago
    Hah! I did eventually see it! I'd argue that your proposed fixes merely bolster my original point; not implementing notifications in the first place is a sufficiently positive influence that it negates the need for things like user blocks. If I'm curious how people reacted to my comment (as I did here), I'll go to my user page and see what responses I got. This makes it a deliberate action on the part of the user instead of a reactive one.

albert_e 3y ago

the links are tiny targets for fat fingers on mobile screens. there can be better spacing between links both on topnav bar and also the links next to each post on a thread. same with links in user profile page. spacing.

RGamma 3y ago

Add an option to show only top level comments/collapse threads by default. Auto dupe detection with linking historical discussion (mild QoL). Aggregate dupes posted in a short timeframe (needs manual intervention I fear). Add an at least rudimentary tagging and tag filter/browser system. The search could use some work (but I guess you can do site:news.ycombinator.com searches with other engines). Otherwise pretty neat as is. The ephemeral nature of threads on recurring topics - such as this one - I find somewhat tragic but such is the nature of aggregators. Never add embedded media or "modern web" shenanigans!

kypro 3y ago

I want to preface this with the fact I've been on this site for over 15 years and I do not want to see a "redesign", just some tweaks. 1. The grey self post text is not accessible and hard to read. It needs to be darker. Same is true of user names, etc. 2. HN could improve the UI for mobile users by making clickable elements slightly larger and adding some extra spacing to prevent accidental miss-clicks. 3. Add an inline confirmation step screen when flagging a post – I accidentally flag posts all the time. 4. Change "favourite" to "book mark". Add it to the list view. Add a link to "book marks" in the top bar so they can easily accessed. Sometimes I see something that looks interesting but I don't have time to read. I don't want to click through to the comments just to "favourite" it, then I need to remember to go to my profile and click on "favourites" later. I just want to quickly book mark posts and be able to easily access them later.

ted_bunny 3y ago
Maybe the difficulty for mobile users is a good thing

nicbou 3y ago

This website is unreasonably good. I would only make a few minor fixes: - Bigger clickable elements on mobile. - Support for bullet lists - Slightly easier navigation - Optional reply notifications

vasili111 3y ago

It works well. I would not redesign something that works well.

downboots 3y ago

Browse/collapse with arrow keys

dotcoma 3y ago

It’s fine as it is. I would just make the upvote / downvote arrows a bit larger on mobile.

shoebham 3y ago

just one small change, clicking a link on a title should open a new tab instead of opening it in the same tab

perilunar 3y ago

The design is nicely minimal, but I would replace the nested table layout with nested lists (which is what the comment section is). Also: add some way to highlight new messages since you last looked at a discussion.

HellDunkel 3y ago

I would like to see a hackernews for creatives, preferably done by completely different people. Just to clarify: Computer programmers can be creatives too, like writers, painters - anyone producing output. I would keep the simplistic text based appeoach.

nothasan 3y ago

I’d remove flagging or hiding on mobile unless you click on the post because it’s easy to accidentally do it.

gargablegar 3y ago

Automatically link Dupes into a single post and set of comments. And add subsections or maybe a set of tags -nothing like all of Reddit but a handful something like Tech/Buisness/science/art as with ask and show.

throwaway154 3y ago

At 7KB, the favicon often makes up over 10% of total page size. At 256x256px and having only two colours, I think there's plenty of room to slim it down. I'm also curious why HTTP/1.1 is used as it's not 1999 any more.

WallyFunk 3y ago
The favicon should be the logo here: https://news.ycombinator.com/y18.svg https://news.ycombinator.com/y18.svg SVG is allowed in favicons.
- throwaway154 3y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/favicon.ico https://news.ycombinator.com/favicon.ico is still there https://news.ycombinator.com/favicon.ico https://news.ycombinator.com/favicon.ico https://news.ycombinator.com/y18.svg https://news.ycombinator.com/y18.svg appears to be in the orange bar for me.
mdwalters 3y ago
> I'm also curious why HTTP/1.1 is used as it's not 1999 any more. Not sure why, but this really helps me use HN on my Wii.

jaredsohn 3y ago

Suggestion: black bars should be clickable to bring to a relevant post. from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37197243 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37197243 or more minimally have a tooltip that indicates the name of the person

logicalmonster 3y ago

In terms of aesthetics and usability, HN is already pretty good, but I might tweak the colors for contrast, maybe increase the default font-size a bit, and play around with the padding to give it a slightly better and more accessible look. In terms of functionality, I'd like to see a few items done for the sake of transparency and/or better content. * I'd like to see some page of HN dedicated to showing posts and that were deleted/blocked for spamming, and one for blocked/shadow-banned domains. In 99% of cases, the moderation seems fine, but there's a weird cult of sycophantic behavior on this site that refuses to believe in even the potential for mistakes being made or for bias to occur. I just want some transparency on what is blocked so it's easier to see if any patterns exist. * Vouching flagged posts should work differently. If you vouch for somebody in real life and they do something bad, your reputation suffers. Right now you can vouch for spam or bad posts with no penalty to you just by clicking a vouch button where you can't see who vouched for it. Users should put their money where their mouth is. A vouching should require a public comment by that user detailing why they vouch for it. If somebody vouches for viagra spam, everybody should see that. * It should be possible to respond to blocked and flagged posts/ for some limited time period after. In the 1% of cases that a moderator makes a mistake, or a good conversation is stymied, or something else happens, you should still be able to respond to give your side of the story or just post an email address to where followup discussions can occur. Abusive accounts should still be suspended, but this gives a better possibility to rectify moderation errors. * Quasi-nonymous posting should be possible. Obviously HN would still know who you are if there was an anonymous post button so users could still be blocked for grossly bad behavior, but it might open up the potential for more honest posts about certain topics if it didn't link to your name. * I don't want HN to turn into a pure image board, but sometimes referring to a diagram in a science or programming discussion can be useful. Is there a solution that enhances the quality of HN possible? I'd say yes. * It might be a good idea to list what users flag a post. If somebody is perenially being a busy-body and trying to stymie speech on a particular comment or has a hate-boner against certain things, it should be possible to see that in some way. If you're only flagging things that should be blocked like viagra spam, there's nothing to be concerned about.