3 ms·
Why do you restate the abstract? Anyone can read it from the link.
by the_af 2mo ago
Why do you restate the abstract? Anyone can read it from the link.
- ronsor 2mo agoThis is Hacker News. You know people don't follow links and read.
- mschuster91 2mo agoPeople don't read no links no more
- Groxx 2mo agoIt's rather common for posters to make a very small summary in a comment. It can help fight the floods of comments working off the title alone (though it's not particularly needed here for that purpose, imo)
- the_af 2mo agoI totally missed that this was the same person who had submitted the link to begin with. My bad!
- Barbing 2mo agoThis is a non-transparent aspect of submitting a link to HN that is quite misleading. You think that you are adding a description for your post when in fact you're simply submitting a regular comment not promoted or distinguished in any way. It's even worse considering posts without URLs would take the same text from the same input box on the HN submission form and append it under the post title, locking it to the top of the page - so if you've browsed linkless posts you think maybe the submission text is gonna end up just like that, but it doesn't. (Also I think you'll even see URLs like an archive link end up appended just below the submission title for URL posts. Which I guess is a special feature.[1]) Any reason I should not send HN an email requesting clarification of this the submission page? Edit: quoting https://news.ycombinator.com/submit https://news.ycombinator.com/submit : “If there is no url, text will appear at the top of the thread.” OK, now I finally understand what that means in practice, but it doesn’t imply an entirely separate undistinguished comment will be simultaneously submitted on my behalf. [1]modpowers(?) used to directly append links to URL submissions further confuse the matter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49243880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49243880
- the_af 2mo agoWow! I totally missed that the person I was replying to was the one who had submitted the link. What you describe is surely what happened. I feel bad now :(
- Barbing 2mo agoThere must be a reason HN does not colorize the OP username or something. But there totally could be some indicator of “post submission text” without too much in the way of negative consequences… (the fact this has never been added tells me I’m being naïve) Feedback emailed to HN!