Ask HN: What feature would you want HN to have? - jeho
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oftenwrong
Comment threads collapsed by default, so that initially only the top-level
comments are visible. Then I could drill down into threads only if I am
interested in continuing.

However, one of the best "features" of HN is its relative lack of features.

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bloodorange
\- Exchanging the position of the vote and the collapse buttons or just moving
the collapse button the the leftmost spot.

\- Also a way to filter out (to make invisible) comments based on when the
comment matches a regex (or at least a direct string match)

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abdusco
Proper Markdown support for inline elements such as __bold __, _italic_,
[link]() and `code` (and maybe ```fenced code blocks```). While having full
GitHub Flavored Markdown would be nice, I think image, headers and tables and
other block elements should stay turned off, because they disrupt the flow of
the text

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cimmanom
Larger vote and collapse buttons for mobile so you're not constantly tapping
the wrong thing by accident.

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Tomte
I would very much love a "feature" to disappear: the silent rewriting of
titles in submissions.

Just right now: "The Forgotten Lens" became "The Lens".

Some time ago, someone posted "How I Choose What to Read" (an essay on how he
selects books) which became "I Choose What to Read" (must be an angry rant
about main stream media shoving fake news into his face).

Unfortunately, the mods have already clarified that this "feature" is here to
stay.

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mrfusion
I call it commment thread bailout collapsing.

I’ll often have read ten deep into a long thread and have reached my fill of
the discussion but it’s a but cumbersome to scroll back and find the parent to
collapse the thread. I want to just bail out.

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unixhero
Hashtags / labels som that the content becomes curated.

Only sorting by upvotes / comments is too 1 dimensional for me, and it does
not favours to the future readers of the site, nor to the goldmine content
posted here.

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elamje
Not a perfect solution, but the algolia search index is pretty good at finding
topical articles that are most popular. If you don't use it already, it's the
search bar at the very bottom of the front page.

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mrfusion
Ability to only see new comments. Maybe kind of gray out previously read
comments. On the main page tell you how many new comments there are.

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dave84
History of recently viewed posts like Reddit, things can disappear from the
front page fast.

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devwastaken
Probably just web push notifications for when users directly reply to your
comment.

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herohamp
This. Or just some way to keep track of a conversation without constantly
refreshing

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thijsvandien
An option to highlight comments that were added since I last read the thread.
Often when I find one interesting, I start reading comments (and possibly
replying) early and check back several times. It's annoying to have to go over
everything again that was already there last time. Right now I have to search
repeatedly for '2 hours ago', '1 hour ago' and 'minutes ago', or wait until
the thread has cooled down to read all at once.

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perilunar
Decent styles and markup. I like the simple design, but:

\- the font is too small. It's impossible to read on a mobile or tablet. Body
font is set to 10pt; comments to 9pt. Just use the browser default size (1em
~= 16px)

\- the markup is really bloated for what it does. The nested tables are
unnecessary.

Bookmarklet to fix the font size on mobile:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19468463](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19468463)

~~~
cimmanom
Agree about the markup, but the current font is perfect on small phones.
Anything larger would have a line length with too few characters to be
legible; and reader mode doesn’t work.

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Tomte
A kill file.

Automatic highlighting of not-yet-seen comments.

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DoreenMichele
There is a "hide" button. Not sure if that's what you mean by "kill file."

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greenyoda
A "kill file" was a feature popularized by Usenet news readers. It lets you
save a list of terms that you're not interested in seeing. For example, you
may never want to see articles or comments from a particular user or which
contain a particular phrase.

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muzani
I'd like to see downvotes only used when a comment doesn't add to the
conversation, not when the comment gives a wrong answer. Some comments
highlight a popular misconception which is useful to the conversation.

I think this is more a UX problem, where sites like Stack Overflow use
downvotes to indicate that they disagree with the answer.

Maybe instead of a downvote button it should be a flag or -_- emoji. (edit:
apparently HN removes emojis)

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rahimnathwani
Ability for me to mark a user as "someone I'd like to meet". If they also mark
me within 12 months, then we both get an automated email. If they don't,
nothing happens.

It would probably need some anti-abuse mechanism, to prevent someone from just
marking every single user.

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wishinghand
Auto wrapping code quotes.

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jamieweb
Ability to make links open in a new tab by default.

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Adamantcheese
Middle click links? It's a good habit.

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zzo38computer
Perhaps NNTP service

