4 ms·

What makes you think its broken? That's just the way its supposed to work, maintaining a consistent ranking of posts across time/pages in your session. I agree

What makes you think its broken? That's just the way its supposed to work, maintaining a consistent ranking of posts across time/pages in your session. I agree its not a great way to do it (like @cpr suggested) I prefer reddit's "not bad" approach.

27182818284 14y ago
That's a programmer's excuse. Essentially you could have just written "It is a feature not a bug!"
viraptor 14y ago
User gets an error that results from an implementation detail. There is no way to go back unless the previous page is still in your cache. There are no navigation links which allow you to go back to the normal site. The whole usage context is lost. There is no single-link place that gets you back to the position you were in (unless it was the second page). You can trigger it even without an action (let your mobile phone browser be evicted to free up memory, open it again - your page just became a white error page). It's a bug. It could just as well say "500 internal error". Author's name is not Knuth and he's still alive, so yes - it's a bug, not a feature.
- thekevan 14y ago
  I don't think it is a bug. You are clicking a link to ask for the next batch of stories in line. However you have stayed on the present page so long that the line has advanced and many of those stories that would be on the second page are ow on the first or third pages. It tells you what you expected to see is out of date.
  - viraptor 14y ago
    It also times out my history. A timeout measured in days and a javascript-powered popup that says "can't do that because of how we implemented the site" before you go to the next address would be a slight inconvenience and still not a good implementation. Going to an empty page is simply a bug / broken behaviour.
  - squarecat 14y ago
    And what tells the user this? It may not be a "development" bug, in that the error occurs due to faulty code, but it should certainly be filed as a bug and assigned to someone who addresses user experience issues. (Which at Google would mean being thrown into a black hole... http://data.whicdn.com/images/25373715/4171_d7e8_thumb.gif http://data.whicdn.com/images/25373715/4171_d7e8_thumb.gif)
  - drostie 14y ago
    Look, this isn't 4chan: the set of posts in order is not totally changing itself every five seconds. In that context, what you have described would be different and perhaps even useful, but that's just not our contribution model here. Given that, the expectation is not for "the next batch of stories in line", it is for "the current stories ranked from #31-50 inclusive", the way that simply visiting news.ycombinator.com gives you the current stories ranked from #1-30. Someone prematurely optimized this aspect of Hacker News and it became a bit of a nightmare to use in the pursuit of "correctness" -- this would be good if the notion of "correct" were in fact correct, but it is an ideological purity having nothing to do with the needs of the community at large.
  - electrichead 14y ago
    There should still be a mechanism letting you go back to where you were. I don't see the 'clicking more until I recognize where I was' being very user friendly. I usually open up a bunch of links in a new tab and then go read them. When I return to the HN site and click more, everything is gone and I have no idea where I was before.
  - zithtar 14y ago
    If I'm on page 1 for an hour because I'm reading other stories or - gasp - doing actual work, and I click more, I should see whatever the hell is on page 2 at the time, not get an error about my specific version of page 2 no longer existing. Whoever came up with the expiring "More" link idea is a goddamned idiot.
bmm6o 14y ago
> What makes you think its broken? Because any other behavior would be preferable. Seriously, anything. Seeing the page I just left again would be better.

27182818284 14y ago

That's a programmer's excuse. Essentially you could have just written "It is a feature not a bug!"

viraptor 14y ago

User gets an error that results from an implementation detail. There is no way to go back unless the previous page is still in your cache. There are no navigation links which allow you to go back to the normal site. The whole usage context is lost. There is no single-link place that gets you back to the position you were in (unless it was the second page). You can trigger it even without an action (let your mobile phone browser be evicted to free up memory, open it again - your page just became a white error page). It's a bug. It could just as well say "500 internal error". Author's name is not Knuth and he's still alive, so yes - it's a bug, not a feature.

thekevan 14y ago
I don't think it is a bug. You are clicking a link to ask for the next batch of stories in line. However you have stayed on the present page so long that the line has advanced and many of those stories that would be on the second page are ow on the first or third pages. It tells you what you expected to see is out of date.
- viraptor 14y ago
  It also times out my history. A timeout measured in days and a javascript-powered popup that says "can't do that because of how we implemented the site" before you go to the next address would be a slight inconvenience and still not a good implementation. Going to an empty page is simply a bug / broken behaviour.
- squarecat 14y ago
  And what tells the user this? It may not be a "development" bug, in that the error occurs due to faulty code, but it should certainly be filed as a bug and assigned to someone who addresses user experience issues. (Which at Google would mean being thrown into a black hole... http://data.whicdn.com/images/25373715/4171_d7e8_thumb.gif http://data.whicdn.com/images/25373715/4171_d7e8_thumb.gif)
- drostie 14y ago
  Look, this isn't 4chan: the set of posts in order is not totally changing itself every five seconds. In that context, what you have described would be different and perhaps even useful, but that's just not our contribution model here. Given that, the expectation is not for "the next batch of stories in line", it is for "the current stories ranked from #31-50 inclusive", the way that simply visiting news.ycombinator.com gives you the current stories ranked from #1-30. Someone prematurely optimized this aspect of Hacker News and it became a bit of a nightmare to use in the pursuit of "correctness" -- this would be good if the notion of "correct" were in fact correct, but it is an ideological purity having nothing to do with the needs of the community at large.
- electrichead 14y ago
  There should still be a mechanism letting you go back to where you were. I don't see the 'clicking more until I recognize where I was' being very user friendly. I usually open up a bunch of links in a new tab and then go read them. When I return to the HN site and click more, everything is gone and I have no idea where I was before.
- zithtar 14y ago
  If I'm on page 1 for an hour because I'm reading other stories or - gasp - doing actual work, and I click more, I should see whatever the hell is on page 2 at the time, not get an error about my specific version of page 2 no longer existing. Whoever came up with the expiring "More" link idea is a goddamned idiot.

bmm6o 14y ago

> What makes you think its broken? Because any other behavior would be preferable. Seriously, anything. Seeing the page I just left again would be better.