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Downvoted but true. HN's pedestrian design makes for a much better experience. - no flair for usernames - means people concentrate on the message not the mess
by beachy 3y ago
Downvoted but true.
HN's pedestrian design makes for a much better experience.
- no flair for usernames - means people concentrate on the message not the messenger
- no visible karma for anyone but the top few - means people don't spend (as much) time karma whoring
- limited formatting, no images or video - increases the value and import of the written word
- no sharing, or @user referencing - means posts live and die more by their merit rather than brigading or other shenanigans
- mikestew 3y agono visible karma for anyone but the top few It took one click to see that user abraae has 6671, as of this writing. Or did I miss the point in dramatic fashion?
- beachy 3y agoOops. I was really meaning no badges, karma etc. showing next to people's posts but forgot you can see it by clicking in.
- foolswisdom 3y agoI wonder the same, I can definitely see the karma of users who have only double digit (and I think I have seen single digit) karma.
- radley 3y agoYou did. His score has little to do with anything on the site. That's the point.
- justech 3y agoI think it's a lot less obvious here than on Reddit you could hover over a username and see it.
- throwanem 3y agoThere's no meaningful leaderboard.
- echelon_musk 3y agoI interpreted this point to mean that there is no visible karma for any of a user's posts. E.g. A reply/comment is at the top of the chain, but you don't know if there is a difference of 1 karma or 100 karma between it and the next comment.
- lnauta 3y agoOn top of that no sharing/@ing: no notifications for responses (there's probably an addon for that if you want it). At first I thought I wouldn't like it, because I tend to post on subjects I'm knowledgeable and want to do my best there. But now I'm so glad to not get the anxiety and rush of the back and forth in heated discussions. Peace and quiet.
- RGamma 3y agoWould be nice to have the option. I've missed more than one belated response for sure...
- toomuchtodo 3y agoOptimized for thoughtful discussion over engagement.
- ho4 3y agoI would say this site user design wise is about the same as reddit, so I don't agree with any of your points. What makes it higher quality is that it has a niche theme (hackery) and it makes it less popular. As in general online, the less popular a resource is, the higher quality communication it has. You can find the same quality of conversation in low population subreddits too, despite the aforementioned design.
- beachy 3y agoGo and look at Reddit again. Every post has a little avatar of the poster right next to it. Some of them are quite funky and some are offensive. The text of the username is bold - bolder than the post content itself. In HN the username is simply plain text. You can't even see it's a link without hovering.
- mcmoor 3y agoThat's new reddit for you. Old reddit is bland af, and some people love it for that.
- baq 3y agoIt isn’t love of old Reddit, it sucked, you needed RES to make it usable. It’s hate of the new Reddit, plain and simple. Well deserved might I add, it embodied the new priorities of the site: number go up. I quit Reddit cold turkey when they took Apollo away.
- vik0 3y agoThere are user flairs on old reddit too. You can see the persons karma if you hover over their username. But even if that wasn't the case, Reddit (99.98% of the time) sucks, regardless of what UI you use.
- ho4 3y agoIt's true. But it's not what contributes to the quality of the conversation. Find a niche (non-meme) subreddit that has at best 10 posts a day and check the conversations on there. They all have flashy avatars, a modern design for their posts, etc. But the conversation is high quality at the end of the day.
- rldjbpin 3y agowith the experimental spirit of the site, the barebones look is enough for the "mvp". but for most of the web users today, it is not quite as engaging to use. most of the readers here don't mind reading text and face a wall of text daily, so it works out here.
- lelanthran 3y ago> most of the readers here don't mind reading text and face a wall of text daily, so it works out here. Even for us, we do mind reading HN as a single wall of text. I've got my userContent.css file set up for HN so that: 1. There are maximum sizes to the paragraphs (I can't read a wall of text stretching across 1080 pixels!) 2. Vertical spacing between comments and lines are larger. 3. Each comment in a thread has a larger indent using padding so that, visually, it's easier to track the parent of any given comment.
- rldjbpin 3y agowould like to check it out and see how to set it up for my browser!
- lelanthran 3y agoPlace this into your `userContent.css` file in `$FIREFOX_PROFILE/chrome`. The case of the filenames may or may not be important, depending on whether on Windows or not. https://gist.github.com/lelanthran/873983febef21450b0afcb99dc97f6a7 https://gist.github.com/lelanthran/873983febef21450b0afcb99d...