
The Unofficial HN FAQ - jacquesm
http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ
======
pchristensen
Another good one:

Q: Why don't people ever email me when I invite them to in a comment?

A: The Email field in your profile is for site administrators only. If you
want other users to be able to see it, you need to include it in your About
box.

~~~
jacquesm
Ok, added.

------
po
_A high average score on your comments will give your comments preference in
the search order (this is part of the 'secret sauce')._

I've wondered about that… I spend a fair amount of time reading through the
"newest" and "ask" lists and often comment on articles that don't end up
making the front page. This can really drag your average down. The best way to
have a high average score is to comment only on top stories where everyone
else is reading, which I think is a bit unfortunate.

~~~
jacquesm
Yes, I fully agree. I remarked as much to PG that this would be an unintended
and negative side effect when he implemented this, but I don't care one bit
about my 'average karma' so that's just too bad, and I'll keep on answering 1
upvote 'Ask HN' posts anyway.

~~~
frossie
The thing that makes me a bit sad is that is that some people do try and be
helpful and respond to Ask HNs that are languishing unresponded... and yet
only have one point of karma on their comment.

Which means that even the person who asked the question didn't upvote the
commenter who was taking the time to respond to them. I've seen this even in
cases where the OP followed up on the comment and said "thanks that's very
useful". So click the up-arrow, dude.

(unless upvotes by the OP are filtered out? but I can't imagine why that would
be)

~~~
qeorge
_(unless upvotes by the OP are filtered out? but I can't imagine why that
would be)_

AFAIK they are. For instance, if I were to upvote your comment it would have
no effect.

This definitely happens if you comment and then upvote. Not sure about the
reverse order.

------
telemachos
I'm not sure how big of a deal this is, but it might be worth mentioning that
many HN users dislike short URLs and will often vote you down if you post one.
Just a community norm that some folks are surprised by.

~~~
RK
And HN currently has no way to remedy accidental down (or up) voting, which is
particularly problematic on touch screens.

------
j_baker
"Simply flag the post, don't bother bitching about it, that will only get you
downvotes."

This isn't _always_ true. I've bitched about submissions and gotten upvoted
for it. :-)

Usually, it's something along the lines of "I'm tired of seeing this crap on
the front page" though. Usually if it's "this is _hacker_ news" or "N00b, this
is a violation of the rules" it will get downvoted.

One other point to make, it's ok to point out that someone is breaking the
rules if you're not _bitching_ about it. I think comments saying "You might
not realize this, but this will likely get downvoted/flagged because it breaks
rule X" comments should be encouraged.

~~~
ugh
I sometimes like to explain exactly why I don't think something should be on
HN (if it's not spam or of really bad quality) - simple one liners like "This
shouldn't be on HN, flagged." aren't helpful at all. Be constructive!

I think feedback helps at least some submitters tremendously.

------
revorad
Great list. You might want to edit the title to replace "HN" with the full
form "Hacker News".

Another noob FAQ is: "Is HN becoming like Reddit and Digg?". pg has given lots
of good answers to that (mainly that people who haven't been around long
enough see patterns in randomness).

Edited to add: You might also want to point out that Reddit and Digg are also
good communities with a different feel, and there is no need to take a moral
high ground.

~~~
jacquesm
Title changed.

I don't see how I could have missed the reddit/digg one, I've added it.

------
mcknz
"Is there an API for HN / is it ok to scrape HN?"

Comment from PG: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1721105>

~~~
jacquesm
Thank you, added that.

------
warwick
A couple of things you might want to include:

The rule about having to be here for a year before you can even talk about if
we're turning into Reddit. It's in the guidelines, but I think it's worth
mentioning under "Is HN becoming like Reddit and Digg?".

It's also pretty courteous around here to note any edits you made to your
comment with a brief footnote, or by adding the additional content as a
footnote itself. The footnote should mention what was edited, not just that
the edit occurred. That bit of etiquette might fit under "Someone edited a
comment I replied to and now I look like an idiot!"

------
tptacek
Does anyone seriously believe that your chances of getting into YC go up
linearly with your karma? If I had to guess, past a certain threshold, your
chances of acceptance probably drop.

~~~
SkyMarshal
I suspect pg is looking for certain traits in your comments - maturity,
technical knowledge and/or experience, and some insightfulness into your
field. "Thoughtful" can comprise all three, and more.

If you have high karma, but most of your comments are noise, that can't help.
Or if you have low karma and rarely post, but your posts are mostly
"thoughtful", that probably helps.

I suspect it varies like that.

~~~
lotharbot
pg has stated that YCombinator is looking for good/great people, even if their
startup idea is weak. He's also stated that skimming your HN comments provides
one way to judge what sort of person you are.

Most high-karma people on HN (like, 5k+) get there by being thoughtful. I'd
imagine pretty much everyone in the top 100 would be helped rather than hurt
by their HN presence. I suppose it's theoretically possible to amass a lot of
karma without making any useful contributions, but I haven't see anybody do it
yet.

------
tnorthcutt
"The thresholds at which this happens changes over time, I believe the
downvote cap is at 50 right now and the flag cap is at 200."

I may be reading this wrong, but I think what you're saying is that once you
reach a karma of 50, you can downvote comments. I'm pretty sure that's
incorrect - I have a karma of 89 as of this writing, and (unless I haven't yet
figured out how to) am unable to downvote comments. Maybe someone who recently
became able to could give a more accurate number.

~~~
jeebusroxors
I'm at 147 and no down vote. I think he has it backwards? I had heard
somewhere else 200 was the magic number for comments.

~~~
jessor
Yes, you need a karma of 200+ to be able to downvote. Reached that just a few
weeks ago. You can only downvote comments which were made after you reached
the treshhold.

~~~
icey
Only partially true - nobody can downvote comments after a certain amount of
time. I'm not sure if it's 12 or 24 hours; but it's a fairly short window.

~~~
jacquesm
24 hours.

edit: proof: <http://pics.ww.com/d/425306-1/downvote-cutoff.png>

That's the 'comments' list.

~~~
jessor
Ah. Thanks for pointing that out.

------
devmonk
'"self" posts, posts that do not link to another website have their own
category in the top menu bar, they are all grouped under the 'Ask' entry...'

But that doesn't happen for every "Ask HN" I've posted. A good number move
there, but not all, and not immediately.

~~~
tsycho
I faced the same problem. Since I couldn't find the "Ask HN" rule clearly
mentioned anywhere, I even tried prefixing "Ask HN" in my post subject
speculating that maybe HN does a string search, but it didn't work.

Is there a minimum karma level for Ask HN posts? Or is this a bug in the
system?

~~~
jacquesm
Which post was that?

~~~
tsycho
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1747909>

~~~
jacquesm
It's there on the third page, currently entry #70.

~~~
tsycho
Thanks, not sure why I couldn't find it on the day I posted.

------
DanielBMarkham
This is a great article, Jacques.

Somebody should put together a list of meta-HN posts. These guides written by
the users have as much or more value than that the stuff pg and the rest put
together. I think part of the reason why is that fellow users are more likely
to see things from a user's point of view.

------
anonymous236
> _Why can't I respond to a comment that responded to me ?_

Current answer is wrong. Commenting is disabled for old threads. For new,
overly active threads only in-thread commenting is disabled, but clicking on
the 'link' link still gives an access to the response form.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
The answer is correct, but is (perhaps deliberately) incomplete. Replying to
recent comments is not disabled, there is an exponentially increasing timeout.
Yes, you can always click on the "link" link and then hit "reply", but in-
thread, the "reply" link only appears after a timeout that gets longer as the
comments get deeper.

In summary:

\+ "reply" on comments in old threads are disabled.

\+ "reply" on comments in new threads have a timeout

\+ the timeout is very short if the comment is shallow

\+ the timeout gets longer as the thread gets deeper

\+ the timeout can be circumvented by clicking "link" - then you are offered a
"reply" link immediately.

\+ PG might put the timeout out the shortcut method, but hasn't yet done so.

~~~
chmike
Do you mean a delay for the reply link to show up ? Timeout is confusing. I
didn't know about this feature.

------
gojomo
A nice summary, but I think a little too casual in recommending 'flags'. The
official guidelines mention flags for "spam and offtopic"; this FAQ says to
flag when you "think it's not HN material", a looser standard.

How about on-topic but trivial, repetitive, frivolous, flimsily-argued,
outside-the-mainstream, etc.? Best to _ignore_ , rather than _flag_ these -- a
flag is not a downvote saying 'less attention', it's a judgment ' _no_
attention; against-the-rules'. (It stings far more when your earnestly-offered
submission is killed than when it simply never musters many votes.)

I've noticed more people using flags as simple downvotes, and some good
submissions have been killed as a result.

~~~
jacquesm
That's true, let me think about that, that's a thing that will impact quite a
few entries actually.

If you want to re-word a specific entry in it's entirety I'd be grateful, this
is a hard one to get right.

------
RiderOfGiraffes
You might want to add a question:

\+ Why can't I downvote comment?

with the answer

\+ You can only downvote comments once you have sufficient karma. The required
level rises over time to account for the karma inflation caused by an
increasing userbase.

This would enhance the answer about what one can do with one's karma.

~~~
jacquesm
Ok, thank you! I've added the question and the answer + a bit to it about the
ability to downvote comments that are in reply to your own.

------
yurifury
You may want to add a section on alternative or mobile interfaces to HN, such
as hckrnews.com and icombinator.net.

~~~
jacquesm
Ok, done that. If there are others please let me know and I'll add them.

thanks!

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
HN Droid is an excellent app on the Market for Android phones that even allows
you to login, upvote, and post comments. It's even open source itself:
<http://github.com/amir/HNdroid>

~~~
jacquesm
Ok, it's added. thanks!

------
icey
This is a pretty good list, thanks for putting it together. Definitely going
to have to bookmark it for the times when new people complain about the way of
the world here.

------
bambax
Great post, thanks.

Typos:

 _For one HN has it's own 'flavor'_ => its

 _HN gets it's (more than) fair share of spam_ => its

Weird HTML:

It seems line-breaks are hard-coded with BRs inside of P elements? In this
phrase the BRs are missing and therefore it crosses over to the invisible
right side:

 _The thresholds at which this happens changes over time, the downvote
threshold is at 200 right now and the flag cap is at 100. There_

~~~
jacquesm
fixed.

------
gasull
In the digest question you might want to add the RSS feeds from "A cure for
Hacker News overload":

[http://jmillerinc.com/2010/07/23/a-cure-for-hacker-news-
over...](http://jmillerinc.com/2010/07/23/a-cure-for-hacker-news-overload/)

------
edanm
Great list jacquesm. I had no idea Hacker News was open source! I guess you
learn something new every day.

And thanks for mentioning Resourcey. I've added your FAQ to HN's Resourcey.com
page (gotta love circular recursion!)

------
jacquesm
Update: I've added the possibility to link directly to an entry in the FAQ.

------
duck
One other search tip - I use Duck Duck Go's bang command to search HN using
!hn <search terms>. It takes you to searchyc.com, but is more handy if you are
already using DDG.

------
drtse4
The "Can I post links to my own blog ?", could not be true anymore, or at
least reading the ShelfLuv creator's post
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1754584> this morning i got that
impression (didn't we discuss this in a thread last week?).

~~~
steveklabnik
That shouldn't be true; his domain is probably autodead for a different
reason. This own post is submitted from jacquesm's own blog!

~~~
drtse4
I guess you are both right, but considering there seems not to be other links
to his blog on HN it still seems a bit weird.

------
rwmj
The FAQ is seemingly contradictory on the subject of downvotes. Does anyone
ever seen downvotes on posts? On comments? (I have never seen a "down" button
on either). The FAQ says that there are no such things, but also mentions
downvotes, which I find confusing.

~~~
stingraycharles
From the article:

"At what karma level can I downvote articles ?

There is no karma level that I know of that will allow you to downvote
articles."

and

"What [karma] does give you is that at some point you can downvote other
comments and it gives you the ability to flag posts."

In other words, you can't downvote articles, ever, and you can downvote
comments after a certain karma threshold has been reached.

------
stjarnljuset
Edit: nevermind, the thing I suggested adding was already on the FAQ.

------
chmike
An information I failed to find is text formatting methods. Sometime I see
itallic text, others courrier text. URLs aren't always shown as clickable
links. How can we control this ?

~~~
nitrogen
<http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc> (linked next to the about box on your
account settings page)

A Google search for "link:<http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc>
site:news.ycombinator.com" shows that others have requested more links to the
formatting help.

------
patrickk
Regarding "What can I do with my karma?" another thing you can do once you
reach a certain karma level is to setup a poll, with multiple answers that
people can vote on.

~~~
jacquesm
Ah yes, that's true there is a karma threshold for that too, I'll add that
right away. Thanks!

------
jacquesm
I just added this as a stand-alone article:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1759548>

How to make the homepage.

------
bryanlarsen
Under "alternative ways to read", you're missing some punctuation. Currently,
it seems to imply that hckrnews.com is an Android app...

~~~
jacquesm
I re-organized that section to remove the ambiguity, thank you for the
pointer.

------
mortuus
typo: "otherwise you nobody can see it"

Where did you get the (one boat cruise|two boat race) saying?

~~~
jacquesm
Thank you, fixed the typo.

> Where did you get the (one boat cruise|two boat race) saying?

Long ago I designed a CAD/CAM system for a sailmaker in the Netherlands, the
effect of this is that I spent a ton of time in and around the sailmakery
itself (I even spent some time living in the attic above it because I had no
house) and the sailing related proverbs flew fast and thick there.

It's really true though, if you're on a boat and having a good time sailing
and someone overtakes you the urge to give chase is almost too strong to
resist, it's like having a hound spot a deer that is running away.

------
MarkBook
"Why would you want high karma ?" because I don't have one. Hit me

