

New HN users: do not overlook the "Lists" feature - gsivil
http://news.ycombinator.com/lists

======
solipsist
Special HN pages like this one have to be made more well known. They are
referenced throughout the site, but there is no central place to find all of
them. Most of the new users will have never seen them before. Even the older
users will have trouble finding them when the need to use them.

Here are some of these "special" pages for anyone who is curious:

 _New Polls_ (<http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll>)

 _Top Colors_ (<http://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors>)

 _Formatting Options_ (<http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc>)

 _Front Page with Threshold_ (<http://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=100>)

 _Classic Front Page_ [1] (<http://news.ycombinator.com/classic>)

[1] - The classic front page only counts votes from accounts that signed up in
the first year that HN was released.

~~~
richbradshaw
How does top colors work? Where can you set the colors?

~~~
solipsist
You need to reach a certain threshold before you can use Top Colors. I think
it maybe 500 karma points, but don't take my word for that.

When you do get the feature, you can go to settings and enter a hexadecimal
entry for _topcolor_. The banner on every page of HN (except in _Add Comment_
) will then change from the default orange to the color you specified.

~~~
pluies
The threshold is indeed a bit lower than that; I have topcolor with 296 karma.

~~~
solipsist
Ok, thanks for pointing this out. It may be a 250 karma threshold, although we
can't know for sure as it is always changing (due to inflation from new
users):
[http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ#cantdow...](http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ#cantdownvote)

------
RiderOfGiraffes
User jacquesm has an unofficial HN FAQ:
<http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ>

It was submitted and discussed here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1755533>

The official FAQ can be found here: <http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html>

~~~
Poiesis
Ok, two things that I've never found answers to:

1\. How do people do the really small font size? It's not in the formatting
document. 2\. Assuming you've been upvoted some, how can you tell you've been
downvoted? Do people keep such close tabs on their karma that they
just...know? I haven't seen a UI element for "you've been downvoted".

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
1\. I'm not sure what you mean by "the really small font size." Can you link
to an example?

2\. You can't.

~~~
Poiesis
Re: the font size, in this sub-thread:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2163862>

All the comments are normal sized except for keiferski's, which appears
smaller. I don't see any obvious reason in the stylesheet, and it seems to
only happen on the iPhone (and not in Safari 5 on the Mac), so perhaps it's a
Mobile Safari rendering oddity--maybe something to do with tables. It does
only seem to happen on rather short comments.

------
jaxn
I have been on HN for almost 3 years and never knew about that page.

------
swolchok
Title needs a colon or a comma after "New HN users." It looks like a story
about how new HN users do not overlook the "Lists" feature.

------
RiderOfGiraffes
I am constantly surprised by people who call themselves "hackers" not
exploring the entire site. I always had the idea that being a hacker was that
one didn't ask "What does this do?", but instead asks: "What can I make this
do?"

Exploration is at the heart of hacking. It's odd that people don't know about,
for example, the "lists" page. The link is there.

ADDED IN EDIT: I see that at least one person has down-voted this comment. Do
you disagree? Do you think hacking is something else? Or are you simply stung
by the apparent criticism, and feel the need to lash out?

Do you not have the instinct to explore? Is that not a critical part of being
a hacker?

(And in a further edit - clearly someone agrees and has up-voted again.
Interesting.)

~~~
nkurz
I do consider myself a hacker, but don't feel any urge to explore the nooks
and crannies of this site. I've downloaded and skimmed the Arc code for it,
but don't feel any urge to check out all the links. I do fix my car (and my
washing machine) but don't have an urge to modify them.

Partly it's a "time in the day" problem, and partly a lack of generalization.
I'm more interested in learning the structure of things than the specifics of
any particular implementation. I guess some people, including you, put equal
emphasis on both.

ps. It's odd that you ask if those who down-vote are "lashing out" but presume
that those who up-vote agree with you. I voted for this, not out of agreement,
but because it's a valid viewpoint, well-expressed, a starting point for
discussion, and the sort of post I want to encourage.

~~~
solipsist
I think that's it odd that _RiderOfGiraffes_ is even referring to particular
people upvoting/downvoting him in his comment. But maybe that's just me...

------
mlok
Search YC may not be a Hacker News page, it is still an important tool for me
: <http://searchyc.com/>

I wish I had bookmarked along the way all those little tools built around
HN... Which ones do you use?

------
jacquesm
There are a bunch of links at the bottom of every page, 'Lists' is one of
them.

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winfred
That's so funny... I noticed something was wrong when I received more karma
than expected for my first couple of posts, but I didn't know why. Some people
are probably using noobcomments to reward new posters with karma (I thought HN
used a secret internal multiplier for the first couple of posts, but this is a
much better explanation).

------
turar
Why not put links to these on the top nav bar? It's not like there's no room
up there.

~~~
patrickk
Or a link to a complete sitemap.

------
kylec
Not just new users - I had no idea the page existed and I've been here for a
while.

------
bmccormack
Maybe the reason these lists are not easily discovered is because they are
taxing the server pretty heavily. It took quite a while to return the
"leaders" list the first time I ran it, but it wasn't as bad the second time.

