
The case for pictures next to usernames on Hacker News - epi0Bauqu
I’ve been using this site for a while now, and though I do recognize some usernames, I only have a vague sense of personalities for very few of them (excluding people I’ve actually met in person).  I think the problem is that when I’m reading comments I see the username and the comment, but I don’t really associate them together in order to form a bond over time between that username and those set of comments.  Instead, I tend to remember a set of comments and a set of usernames, independently.  Am I alone here in this behavior?<p>In any case, the cities and ambition thread got me thinking about what it would take to make an online community more like an offline one.  I think the bulk of it comes down to conversation, of which there are two parts: content and mechanics.  The content side seems OK here (for what I’m looking for at least).  The mechanics side falls way behind the offline world, however.<p>Offline we have 3-d conversations using most of our sensory perceptions. Online, a lot of that obviously goes away.  Of course there are benefits of being online too, e.g. asynchronous threads, archiving, etc.  But the lack of the senses drastically takes away the emotional feel of the offline community.<p>Pictures next to usernames I believe would be at least a start in the other direction.  We would get more of a visual sense for a person.  For me at least, I think I would start associating usernames more with their set of comments.  And I think that would greatly increase the sense of community gained from the site.  I’m sure there are other (low-impact) things one could do as well, but I just haven’t thought of them.<p>I get it pg, you don’t want to spend your time working on this site (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=201122), but maybe someone playing around with Arc could make the change and then it could be ported back.
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edw519
You asked for it...

    
    
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mynameishere
I can't believe you still sport a late 1980s-style spiky hair cut.

......

Robert Frost suggested that he could write poem/plays in which all of the
characters went unnamed, and that the reader would identify the characters
based entirely on tone. This idiosyncratic idea has come true to a degree on
the internet: There is an accidental feature in some blogs (I think blogspot
[1]) where almost everybody winds up posting as "anonymous". Despite this, you
can usually tell in a rough way who is who.

At any rate, I don't think pictures ever add anything.

[1] Because it's a pain, depending on the blogger's settings, to log in.

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Hates_
Personally, the lack of images is a plus for me. It's one of the things I love
about HN. That lack of emotional feel towards posters is what keeps postings
focused. Take Digg for instance, I think that it's that sense of community
that leads to 99% of the comments being of no real benefit at all, because
everyone is trying to crack a joke.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Digg comments aren't bad because they have pictures. They are bad because they
are from that set of commenters.

If you supposed the set of Hacker News commenters didn't change, I think
pictures would clearly be a win. What you seem to be suggesting is that by
adding pictures, we would attract bad commenters. I just don't think that is
true.

~~~
Alex3917
"Digg comments aren't bad because they have pictures. They are bad because
they are from that set of commenters."

I think it's as much the social norms as the user base. For example, we have
kind of an unspoken humor armistice here. Normally humor is used to
demonstrate intelligence. However, it's mutually understood that everyone here
is intelligent enough to make the appropriate joke, but that we should refrain
because it doesn't really add anything to the conversation or make anyone else
any better off.

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ArcticCelt
I agree, I constantly refrain from cracking jokes because I don't want to see
this turn into what Reddit has become lately.

I think it should be told somewhere what are the goals of the community and
explain that we aim for efficiency, knowledge and insightful conversations
more than entertainment. Not because we don't like entertainment but because
that's not why we are here.

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pg
I think it's better if people make their own portraits with their ideas.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
That's exactly the problem I am describing. They are making their own
portraits, but they aren't _sticking_ to their usernames, at least for me. A
visual icon would help. It could be small, 25x25 as someone suggested.

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andreyf
25x25 is pretty big. I think it would be clever to make it 15x15 or 10x10...

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jgrahamc
How about just 1x1? Using the standard RGB color space there are 16,777,216. I
doubt HN will have that many users so everyone gets their own color :-)

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boredguy8
Your design is not future-proof.

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mrtron
Sure it is, just add another pixel :)

"Look at that 3 pixel noob..."

You could use the user's top bar preferences!

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apgwoz
only the elite have the privilege of changing the topbar color.

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eru
Only the elite deserves their very own pixel.

(I recently joined the elite - that's why I'm smug.)

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deathbyzen
The current layout of HN doesn't lend itself to avatars at all, IMHO. They
would break up the page in awkward ways. If avatars where implemented they
should only be 25x25 or something similarly tiny.

~~~
thorax
If we added them, I'd say make them 16x16. People could use favicons for their
sites (if they so desired).

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skmurphy
My suggestion is a little different: I would like to see more history kept
than the last 20 or so comments (although search.yc helps a lot here) so that
when I come across a new poster I can read their other submissions and
comments and get a better feel for how they think based on what else they have
written.

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m0nty
"On the Internet, nobody know if you're a dog. So we fixed that problem."

Seriously, if I included a pic, it would be of someone else. It's better for
everyone like that, trust me.

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geuis
no avatars please. For me, HN works well. We dont need the beginnings of yet
another wannabe social network.

I would argue for incremental improvements to the interface: iPhone friendly
version no more odd page parameters that timeout without a page refresh

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rewind
Personally, the whole site works better for me without images. I, like most
people, make a conscious effort to ignore things like gender and age when I'm
reading someone's opinion (here or on any other site). But the fact that I
sometimes have to make a CONSCIOUS effort means that there is at least a bit
of a pre-existing bias or stereotype based on different demographics. Things
like "young people don't have enough experience" or "you can't teach an old
dog new tricks" can creep into your interpretation of someone else's opinion
without even realizing it. I'd rather know as little as possible about the
person behind the comment and just focus on the comment itself.

Think of some of the more memorable opinions from the past. Would your opinion
of those comments be different if you knew before reading them that the poster
was a 15-year-old girl, a 23-year-old transgender, a 55-year-old male? For a
very small few of us, the answer is no. For the large majority of us -- myself
included -- the answer is yes. The less information I have about the person,
the more I can stick to what is being said.

I can certainly appreciate the arguments for having the image. I just don't
think they outweigh the reasons against. I'm not listing all the reasons here,
either. I'm just bringing up the main point for me specifically.

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TrevorJ
I agree that as an option, pictures hold more value than is intuitively
understood by most people. I view hacker news as a small community that
desires the ability to maintain it's tight focus and not expand too much or
too fast (all the "Please block this from showing up on hacker news" posts
area good example of the sentiment)

On the web, focus is a HUGE commodity and we are right to desire it. I would
argue that a sense of community and a sense of focus go hand in hand, and
given that I think optional images could help maintain a sense of community
even as our numbers grow larger.

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khafra
I'm not certain of that. In every focused forum I've frequented, when a sense
of community grows, the focus turns inward instead of staying on the stated
subject. I think, for instance, that the chans' insistence on anonymous
posting and ephemeral content helps keep most of their boards full of posts
focused on the board's topic, rather than the poster's reputation.

~~~
TrevorJ
Good point, however we already have a karma system so we've bought into the
reputation argument already.

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delano
I prefer text.

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petercooper
MetaFilter ( <http://www.metafilter.com/> ) is an amazing demonstration of a
cohesive online community that doesn't use images to represent users.
MetaFilter users tend to be very familiar with each other (more so than other
large online communities I've been in). While I agree images can be good, they
certainly don't seem to be essential.

IRC is another example. People build up personalities and tie nicknames to
them pretty easily without graphics.. and IRC can get very emotional at times.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
I can see real time playing a part in IRC. What do you think metafilter does
differently (than here) in order to get its cohesiveness?

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petercooper
Good point and good question. I'm not entirely sure, but perhaps it's a
combination of one feature and one trait.

Single threading (as used by MetaFilter) forces / encourages people to take
note of nicknames in order to target specific responses, so nicknames become a
lot more relevant.

Secondly, discussions tend to roll on and on on MetaFilter, whereas it's
uncommon for two people to respond back and forth more than once on HN
stories.

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prakash
You are not alone, Gabriel. Visual association beats textual and this makes
sense.

One thing though, the images would increase the bandwidth to the site, and
maybe even hamper performance.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
On the user side, you could presumably turn them off. As for server
performance, Y Combinator should be able it.

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huhtenberg
I assume you meant "turn them _on_ ".

Adding a visually intrusive feature and enabling it by default is not the best
thing to do, especially when the understated appearance is _the_ feature of
the website.

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neenster
Really interesting!! yep images are super important. it's the best way to
associate people to comments.

there's this site I just discovered this week: dipity.com it looks like the
best way to share lots of information on the web right now. surely, wiht sites
like this one, the internet could become a very intense social place, for
dating and even work, teaming up with peers. when you see time lines that
people made themselves, I think you can see their personnality, interests, but
also culture and ideology very fast.

Maybe the web will provide us with even better social interfaces than what
nature gave us: talking, body langage, clothes and fashion, and talking about
your musical preferences etc. all this and much more could take place on the
web I think! let's make it happen :DD well for now dipity.com looks pretty
exciting add me there I'm "smoothboom" and I just made a time line about
memetics.

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schtog
"For me at least, I think I would start associating usernames more with their
set of comments. And I think that would greatly increase the sense of
community gained from the site. I’m sure there are other (low-impact) things
one could do as well, but I just haven’t thought of them."

if that si true its obv great but: "Think of some of the more memorable
opinions from the past. Would your opinion of those comments be different if
you knew before reading them that the poster was a 15-year-old girl, a
23-year-old transgender, a 55-year-old male? For a very small few of us, the
answer is no. For the large majority of us -- myself included -- the answer is
yes. The less information I have about the person, the more I can stick to
what is being said."

is a very good point made by rewind.

i personally dont feel a need for it, i like the simplicity of hacker news.

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Alex3917
I'm the same way, I'm usually not able to associate a username with a set of
posts unless I've either met them in person or seen a picture of them online.
That said, I think we'd be losing more than we'd be gaining by adding
pictures.

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epi0Bauqu
What would we be losing?

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Alex3917
Oxytocin-free judgment.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
I don't see it. By that token, why display usernames at all?

~~~
Alex3917
Because they're useful, but without being particularly salient in any given
interaction.

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tarkin2
If we start to link personalities to comments then we add bias to this site.
If we try to refrain from introducing personalities the users must then focus
on ideas, far better for the development of them.

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rtf
There are two extremes, neither one better than the other:

The proposed extreme is to encourage community via personalization. I
personally disagree with this: web sites are typically too big to be
communities in a natural sense. What you will get is increased visibility for
a small elite of spam-heavy commentators.

The other extreme is 2ch-style anonymity. This is open to mob abuse, but it
also discourages powergaming.

The core issue is how to continue scaling the system to match interests when
they reach hundreds or thousands for every front-page story. news.yc is
getting there already....

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DanielBMarkham
Have you seen some of these guys?

Hey -- count your blessings.

(Just kidding!)

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Understood. They could be icons. It doesn't really matter if they are actual
pictures of faces. It matters that they are unique and visual.

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pkaler
There is one reason I can think of for adding profile pictures: reducing
anonymity.

People say a lot of things online that they wouldn't say face-to-face because
of anonymity. I'm not sure if profile pictures would be a step towards
anonymity, but I think it would be a good experiment.

For example, comments written on a wall on Facebook are much less hostile than
comments at YouTube or MySpace. I don't recall seeing the words gay or faggot
used at all on Facebook, ever.

Even adding more text info may be a good idea. Eg: pkaler. Vancouver, BC.
Smartful Studios Inc.

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maxklein
In my opinion, after the ycombinator rejection letters go out there will be a
bunch of people that look very much like goatse commenting on this site.

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jasoncartwright
Yup - should use Gravatar

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metatronscube
yeah no pictures...Im real ugly I have been told

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mrtron
By a man named Ash?

"Honey you got reaaaaaal ugly."

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DanHulton
A big change would even just be to make the username stand out more. I can
identify several popular posters on metafilter simply because the name is
right there, in a bright colour / bold font directly underneath their posts.

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SwellJoe
No. Please, no.

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tumpak
i disagree on a pure simplicity view.

I like the fact i can concentrate on the article than on the author or picture
or his/her CV (logical trend when you start adding a lot of info about users)

but frankly its the simplicity equation.

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alaskamiller
Eventually this will just turn back into a message board software.

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xtat
SURELY WE HAVE SOMETHING BETTER TO CHAT ABOUT THX!

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Tichy
How about a Twitter group that actually follows back? It would be nice to see
what HN readers are up to at a glance, and Twitter has pics.

If nobody else wants to do it, and there is interest, I could set it up. I
have no autofollow script yet, but I would ask Twitter support to enable it.

Edit: I already follow @newsycombinator, so if that would add autofollow it
would be great ;-)

