
A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors - adanhawth
https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/blob/master/README.md
======
shaunpersad
I don't believe this is an actual feature, but I've noticed a trend that I've
been calling "twos", where, at any given moment, a particular subject (present
as a word or phrase in the article's title) will show up twice on the front
page.

Funnily enough, currently the "twos" subject is "Hacker News", with this
article and "What I've Learned from Hacker News" both being present in the
front page at the same time.

~~~
jacques_chester
Very often this is readers following some link, seeing other links from that
page and submitting them.

~~~
spectre256
That's how I interpret it as well. I also think interesting articles on a
topic jog people's memory and cause them to re-submit interesting articles
from the past on that topic.

------
NeedMoreTea
Just one comment about vouch, which seems to have have changed behaviour
fairly recently.

Used to be that if a shadowbanned user posted a clearly substantive comment a
vouch would always (nearly always?) restore it. Now it never does - I guess
vouch is now just a vote that needs x votes.

Suspect that's going to unintentionally have even more people talking to
themselves, because they've not yet noticed the shadowban.

~~~
krapp
It is possible to lose vouching privileges if the mods feel the comments
you're vouching for are uncivil or do more harm than good.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
That's also possible. Don't think I have vouched for something that shouldn't,
but I would say that, wouldn't I? :)

So have others noticed a change, or did I accidentally flag my own account
somehow?

~~~
krapp
>or did I accidentally flag my own account somehow?

If you did, the mods won't necessarily tell you, you'll just have to email
them and find out.

------
cm2187
One feature I’d like to see is the split between upvotes and downvotes on a
comment. It’s a measure of controversiality which I would find more
interesting than the net score.

~~~
theli0nheart
Yes. I’d much rather read comments with a high number of votes and net zero
score than the two other extremes.

~~~
cm2187
Well you don't get to see other people's comment scores anyway. What I meant
is for your own comments, seeing a score of +1 doesn't carry the same
information than +15/-14.

~~~
theli0nheart
Yep, I know. I was just riffing on your idea; I think the ranking algorithm
should be tweaked a bit. Popularity contests don't lend to great debate or
conversation. They tend to shut down one side at the expense of the other.

------
Someone1234
Unfortunately the site still has no way of doing bullet lists. If you try this
is the result:

\- One \- Two \- Three \- Four

You can do this but it isn't clear that it is even a bulleted list
(particularly with real content):

\- One

\- Two

\- Three

\- Four

It does support code blocks but that has strange boxing behavior making them
hard to read even for actual code. For example:

    
    
          - Super long line that will box strangely for some reason... ! Long Line Long Line.    
          - One   
          - Two    
          - Three    
          - Four
    

As you move further down a reply thread the box around code blocks shrinks and
scrolling increases. If you access the comments with increased font size, a
mobile device, or a smaller browser window it also gets worse/happens sooner.

There's also now anti-hammering protection on the site
(posting/replying/voting too fast) but it is far too easy to trigger. Just
voting for a comment and hitting reply to that same comment can easily trigger
it.

~~~
2038AD
I think this should work

• one

• two

• three

• four

------
Deimorz
Lots of people posting random feature requests in here, but is HN even
developed any more? The last significant changes I remember were two and a
half years ago
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12073675](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12073675))
and I think even those were the first ones in a long time.

~~~
dang
It's interesting to see that question show up, because we work so hard on the
code. It makes sense that you'd ask it, though, because most of the changes
are either not visible (like anti-spam or anti-voting-ring features), or are
subtle. For example, you may have noticed more capitalized titles on the front
page in the last couple days—but this is an experiment we're going to roll
back.

One reason we don't do a lot of visible changes is that HN's minimalism is one
of its biggest assets. Another is that users don't like things to change, and
the internal pressures that cause companies to do arbitrary redesigns are
thankfully not in play here.

~~~
m_fayer
A well designed official API would go a long way toward letting a thousand
flowers bloom. I know there's web and mobile apps already out there, but IMO
the average quality is not great. Which is not surprising, given the
awkwardness of the existing firebase API, which probably keeps many developers
away and eats too much of the efforts of those devs that do try their hand.

~~~
lukehack
IMO, the higher barrier to entry is a benefit to this site. Features that
would lower friction increase content dilution. From what I understand, this
site is not trying to become Reddit.

~~~
krapp
There is no high barrier to entry here. You literally just have to fill out an
HTML form, which _everyone_ knows how to do. It's easier to join HN than it is
many other sites, which at least include a second auth factor through email to
verify an account. Some sites now require a social media account or validation
of a real identity. Lobste.rs won't even talk to you unless someone vouches
for you, and they read your existing posts on HN and elsewhere, and decide
you're worth letting in. Even 4chan has more friction than HN.

And an API, practically by definition, is not a benefit to membership or a
draw for whatever HN considers a typical user, much less the sort of "normie"
non-technical user HN wants to keep away. The quality of comments is not
maintained to a high standard by the API being more difficult to query than it
could be, nor would it be diluted by the API being easier to use.

And as far as Reddit goes, a _lot_ of content gets posted here from Reddit,
and a _lot_ of the userbase here are also Reddit users, making the cultural
contempt HN has for Reddit more than a bit hypocritical.

A lot of people here, pg included, seem to assume that the "low tech" nature
of the featureset here is keeping some flood of unwanted users away but I
submit that the title of the site being "Hacker News", it being on a subdomain
and the lack of evangelism on mainstream social media do a far better job of
gatekeeping than purposely adding "friction" to frustrate people.

~~~
dang
We are certainly not trying to keep non-technical users away. Where did you
get that idea?

HN is for the intellectually curious. Many of the posts here are technical but
there have always been plenty of non-technical discussions as well.

~~~
krapp
I was more referring to the community than the staff or its policies.

A lot of people here seem to believe the site is supposed to be for technical
users and technical content onlym even though that never was the case. The
negative impressions people seem to have about "turning into Reddit" or non-
technical content diminishing the sites' quality feed into that stereotype, as
does the belief that adding "features that reduce friction" would somehow
dilute content.

But... the guidelines do use the qualifier "anything that good hackers would
find interesting" for determining what's on topic, which does lead people to
fill in the blanks for what a "good hacker" should find interesting.

------
jonbaer
My only wish is that dupes weren't marked as dupes. It's not like you are
submitting with the intention of creating a duplicate link (normally), it
should just take you there instead of a [dupe] mark on your submission.

~~~
krapp
I'd like to see a "rolling thread" feature where dupe threads (and links) are
automatically merged into an existing thread, with older comments and
subthreads being deleted over time.

Hacker News doesn't do a good job of avoiding duplicates anyway, might as well
make that a feature.

~~~
saagarjha
> with older comments and subthreads being deleted over time

No, don't delete comments! Hide them if you must, but I always like being able
to enjoy and send people link to comments from years ago.

~~~
jplayer01
Agreed, even comments from 5 years ago are often just as relevant now, and are
often more substantive than more recent ones in the same article (in my
experience).

------
arnonejoe
Not sure if this applies but new functionality will show up in your profile if
you make it far enough in the YC application process. Our team landed an
interview for the S2014 batch. There is a whole part of the site that you
would only see during this process. I had questions in my profile during the
application process (which normally does not appear) and when we were invited
to interview there was scheduling tool where you could see the open slots over
the four days of interviews. In our batch, they interviewed four teams at a
time in 15-minute intervals and you could pick your time in this scheduling
grid.

[https://github.com/joseph-adam/YCombinator-
Application-S14](https://github.com/joseph-adam/YCombinator-Application-S14)

------
cpeterso
How can we report bugs in the Hacker News site?

My particular bug/request: the story submission form will trim page title
suffixes for some popular sites, but the form's "too long" JavaScript check
measures the original title length, not the auto-trimmed title length. So I
often submit a story and have to manually trim the title suffix that would
have been trimmed anyways for a story from the same site with a shorter title.

~~~
peterwwillis
E-mail the mods, hn@ycombinator.com

------
dooglius
>If a user has 251 Karma, they can set the color of the top bar in their
profile settings

Why on earth is there a karma requirement for this, let alone such a high one?

~~~
mereel
I have exactly 251 karma, this is so exciting

~~~
saagarjha
user: mereel

created: July 21, 2017

karma: 250

You guys don't have to be mean…

~~~
mereel
Hahaha now I'm at 271

~~~
saagarjha
Nice! Consider this your rare opportunity to talk about your karma without
repercussion. Don't make it a habit, though; I'm sure you have better things
to talk about anyways ;)

------
hannasanarion
I was hoping to learn about why sometimes comments can't be replied to,
especially if they're deep in a thread. Can somebody fill me in?

~~~
mamon
Some kind of anti-flamewar feature. if there are multiple responses added in a
very short time HN will temporarily hide "Reply" link.

------
peterwwillis
Here's some features I wish we had:

\- Overhauled voting system. Comment votes are effectively "like/dislike"
buttons, and _some_ people use them to help promote/discourage comments
central to the discussion. If you get downvoted or upvoted you do not know
why, and that helps no one. Slashdot implemented a useful feature for this
over 20 years ago.

\- Tags on submissions, which would enable very simple filtering by topics.

\- New hidden sections to let us dig into dead or controversial stories (maybe
/dead and /deadnew?). If you watch /newest, you'll sometimes notice
information that is interesting or meaningful, but it's auto-killed. There's
no way to only show dead info except to page back through /newest. It would
also be neat if we could actually vote on these, even if they remain dead. I
don't even need comments to work on them, I'd just like to occasionally look
at content that either a bot or overzealous human deems 'inappropriate'.

On the last one, here's an example: I just found this dead article in /newest
([https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Renewable-
Energy/The...](https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Renewable-Energy/The-
Worlds-Largest-Battery-To-Power-The-Permian.html)) talking about the world's
largest battery being built in Texas. It was submitted by _protomyth_ , number
55 on the HN leaderboard. Of their past 30 submissions, 5 are dead, 1 has >100
votes, and 1 has >200 votes.

You can't easily find articles like this, because you have to keep paging back
and paging back to find 30 or more dead articles. And you can't see the
highest voted dead articles, so ones that might be interesting but were killed
for some reason are also hard to find.

------
snazz
Small correction: the “web” link under a story now takes you to DuckDuckGo
instead of Google.

~~~
minimaxir
Wait, what? When did this change?

Added it to the doc!

~~~
jedberg
Very recently. Not a great change in my opinion. The google search always had
the article in position one. The ddg so far has failed me every time. :(

~~~
dang
I've had the same experience, unfortunately, so I think we're going to change
it back.

------
Aardwolf
> If the comment desaturation makes Hacker News difficult to read, you can
> click on the comment's timestamp to go to its page where the comment will no
> longer be faded, or you can install the CSS extension discussed here.

Or, you can select its text to see it in (typically) black on blue.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
This doesn't work for me in Safari on a Mac. The text remains gray and is
still quite hard to read against the blue background.

------
sotojuan
Pretty cool report. Personally all I want is to be able to change my username,
even if it means emailing and waiting a few days.

~~~
mises
Agreed, this would be nice to add. However, it would have been easier if
everyone's primary identifier was a number, and a name was just an associated
field. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that it was set up this way. Someone
correct me if I'm wrong.

Anybody known if emailing the mods will let this happen?

~~~
PavlovsCat
Maybe add a displayname "on top" that gets displayed in discussions, while
still showing the username in the profile so people don't impersonate each
other, add a button to "flag displayname" on the profile so that can be reset
if abused or even the privilege to set it revoked -- done?

------
ptruesdell
It's interesting that you need at least 501 karma to be able to downvote
comments and posts, but only 31 to flag submissions. Kind of surprising
considering that they say a flag is essentially a "super" downvote.

~~~
cm2187
Out of curiosity, how do _comments_ get flagged?

~~~
DanBC
You click the timestamp of the comment, which takes you to a page with more
menu options. One of those is [flag]. I don't know how many flags it takes to
convert a comment from normal to [flagged], or to dead.

------
computerphage
This is a great list. It took me years to learn most of this stuff and I still
learned a few things.

------
FPGAhacker
I always thought newbie names were red. Color deficiency sucks.

------
rob
I think I was one of the first to join HN when I was only a teenager. I think
18. I miss the simple days! Went by so fast.

------
russellbeattie
Interesting... this post caused me to finally look up what "delay" in the user
settings does. As you might assume, it delays visibility of your comment for
that number of minutes. I wrote this 2 minutes ago, see you in the future!

------
slg
The ranking algorithm also isn't some simple votes/time metric. The flame war
detector for posts is an example that is mentioned, but there are also some
undocumented complexities on the comment side too.

An obvious one is brand new comments get a huge boost in the rankings compared
to older comments. It is pretty common to see a few minute old comment at the
top of a lot of comment threads. It also seems user reputation is a factor in
this. A user with a good average karma score (a metric that used to be
displayed publicly but is now hidden) seems to have their comments stay near
the top longer than other users.

~~~
inopinatus
Re. comments lingering high based on account karma, I've suggested the same
but dang says not.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16441687](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16441687)

Perhaps such remarks are retaining position by their own merit. An experienced
or high quality commentator may simply produce remarks that are better
received.

~~~
slg
I don't know what to say other than there is something going on behinds the
scenes that can be seen in play in this thread. My comment is 1 minute newer
than another comment in this thread. My comment currently hasn't been upvoted
yet is several spots higher in the thread. I tried upvoting the other comment
and mine was still higher. My account has almost twice the karma and is older
than the author of the other comment. It might not be 100% or even 1% karma
related, but there seems to be some sort of user reputation effect.

~~~
inopinatus
I upvoted your remark and it immediately dropped down the page. Evidently I am
typhoid mary for unfavourable comment ranking...

Joking aside, dang specifically denies there is a comment ranking adjustment
due to account karma, but not other factors (such as account age, an unseen
reputation field, your IP address/choice of web browser/#{1/user.name.size}).

We are the blind to Hacker News's elephant in this.

~~~
slg
Haha, you are right. I think there is clear proof that it is more complicated
than a simple ranking involving points and time. Anything beyond that is mere
speculation without clarification from the mods.

------
davidw
That's pretty well done and thorough. The wayback feature was one I hadn't
noticed before, and it caused me to look at the account creation date - 12
years and 1 day ago! Wow...

------
mariojv
Interesting post, I didn't know about some things like "/noobstories" or the
karma needed for downvoting.

One feature I've been wanting lately is the ability to see only new comments
since my last visit to the thread. I've thought about writing some sort of
reader application for this or perhaps a browser plugin.

Even nicer would be something that takes into account comments I've actually
read by using what my viewport has had open, but that may be less useful.

~~~
greglindahl
The inability to see new comments since your last visit is a feature. :-)

------
Beskz
I just turned 24, I’ve been a software developer since I was 18-19,and it’s so
interesting to go back in time and see what was going on in the HN universe on
specific days in the past, way before I even got interested in tech (I was in
6th or 7th grade when HN started). I really wish I would’ve discovered my
passion for tech earlier.

------
inopinatus
Remark ordering also appears to incorporate freshness (new remarks get a
moment at/near the top), and I may possibly have also observed a penalty box:
hidden downweighting, or reduction in effective comment score, imposed by
moderators upon troublesome users that weren't egregious enough to
ban/shadowban.

------
ggm
This isn't the best place to do feature requests and I also strongly believe
the more features HN gets the worserer it will become. But. anyway, my current
top fave is this:

 _implement some kind of keystroke scheme to to basic page steerage in emacs
/vi mode respecting ways, and ? to show what the keystrokes are_

~~~
dang
That may actually happen someday, because I wrote an HN client to help with
moderation and it has all kinds of keyboard shortcuts for navigation. It's on
my list to publish the navigation parts.

~~~
ggm
This would make me very happy.

~~~
dang
You'd be welcome to bug us about it periodically at hn@ycombinator.com. The
reason it's not done yet is that we have limited resources for working on
software and there are always much higher-priority things to get done. But I
really would like to get it out someday. Also, it's written in Arc using an
Arc-to-JS implementation, which is fun.

~~~
ggm
I think I last bugged you about it, 2ish years ago. So, I'm happy you've got
it on the backlog.

I think using front languages which "compile" to JS is a fine foonly thing to
do. ghc-js and elm come to mind.

------
Tomte
> but the minimum score is -4 points.

Is that true? I may misremember, but I thought I had comments in the minus a
dozen or so.

------
bharrison
I'm as surprised to see this posted by a green username as I am glad to know
what a green username means after having read your submission.

------
adamrezich
Looks like /topcolors is getting hugged to death

------
kyleblarson
You left out orange usernames

------
pelario
Flame-war detector remind me of the following short story by Scott Alexander

[https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-
controversial/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/)

------
gjs278
go into your profile and mark the ability to see [dead] comments. a lot of
them are useful.

------
Zecar
How do I turn off echo chamber mode where well-written posts that go against
the mob thinking turn grey?

~~~
UweSchmidt
Got any examples for well-written grey posts? Most downvoted posts are not
that amazing.

~~~
Noumenon72
I have almost a conditioned reflex for upvoting grey posts at this point. The
people who downvote are a weird crew that don't seem to judge by Reddit's
"contributes to the discussion" standard.

~~~
dang
HN doesn't have that standard. Not being Reddit doesn't make you weird.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314)

~~~
krapp
Reddit's standard seems to contribute more directly to quality discussion than
the haphazard result of pg's opinion, authoritative though it may be.

When voting is applied with no real guidelines or standards, it ceases to be
an effective filter for anything but the immediate emotional zeitgeist, and
this goes against HN's stated purpose of bias towards quality.

~~~
dang
Pretty much all of HN is the "haphazard result of pg's opinion", no? That is
an interesting way to describe creating something. I see no reason to mess
with how HN has always worked, at least not where there's no obvious problem.

I know people have strong feelings about downvotes, but those feelings are
rooted in something other than discussion quality. Everything I think I know
about how to keep HN from deteriorating too badly tells me that the downvotes
here serve a critical purpose—even though they're a crude weapon with a lot of
downside.

~~~
krapp
>I know people have strong feelings about downvoting, but those feelings are
rooted in something other than discussion quality.

How do you know? People have different opinions about what constitutes and
contributes to quality. From what I've seen, a lot of people assume Reddit's
standard should apply here, and they seem surprised to learn that it doesn't.
Those people do seem to be concerned about discussion quality.

>Everything I think I know about how to keep HN from deteriorating too badly
tells me that the downvotes here serve a critical purpose—even though they're
a crude and imprecise weapon, with a lot of downside.

Fine... but why is it wrong to have a standard for downvotes?

The argument being made here is that arbitrary and excessive downvotes _are_ a
symptom of deterioration.

~~~
dang
I appreciate your passion on topics HN-related!

Taking the last point first: HN downvotes aren't arbitrary and excessive. In
most cases, not 99% but maybe 90 and certainly 80, it's easy to see why a
comment has been downvoted—except when you agree with it on a topic that
pushes your buttons, in which case you will always think the downvote was
unfair, but then your opinion can't be trusted. (That applies to all us; we
just have different buttons and agree with different things.)

That does leave a margin where the statistical vote cloud converges on a
negative score unfairly. But how often does that really happen—maybe 10%? Once
you account for the many factors of randomness, e.g. in who happens to see a
comment, there's not much room left to make outcomes more precise. Certainly a
feeble "rule change" wouldn't do it; if you think it would, try running an
internet forum and telling users how to behave. You will quickly know how King
Canute must have felt. We'd be better off hiring someone fair-minded to go
through all the comments, find those 10%, and upvote them. But what a fate to
subject a human being to.

> a symptom of deterioration

HN downvote behavior has been stable for a long time, so whatever's going on,
I don't think it's deterioration. But if it is, then I go with what Voltaire
said about coffee being a slow poison: it must be very slow.

> a lot of people assume Reddit's standard should apply here,

People assume Reddit's standards apply on HN because Reddit is 100x as big as
HN, and therefore much better known even among HN users. This is a simple
consequence of size. It has nothing to do with what Reddit's standards
specifically are or how high its quality is. I respect Reddit—Reddit is an
amazing achievement—but it is not where HN should be taking lessons in
discussion quality.

> How do you know? People have different opinions about what constitutes and
> contributes to quality.

I don't know, but I'll tell you why I say it. The emotional dynamic in
downvoting is very strong. It stings to get downvoted—it feels like _you_ 've
been downvoted. It sucks for me as much as anybody. From observing this
reaction in myself, and how people's statements about downvotes are connected
to their feelings in thousands of cases, I believe that this emotional dynamic
accounts for most of what people say on the topic. That's not a criticism;
it's just how we are. But given that, it's easy to see how the common belief
about downvotes arises: it's not that there was anything bad about my comment
(impossible!)—it must rather be that some schmuck disagreed. Therefore, to
make the world a better place, people shouldn't be allowed to downvote for
disagreement. This is wishful thinking.

I can tell you for sure that, whatever beliefs we have about it, people
overwhelmingly downvote based on how they feel about a comment, probably in
the first 5 seconds. They're not following any "guidelines". Most don't even
know what the guidelines are. It's just lizard-brain like/dislike. Suppose we
changed the rules to ask users only to downvote under more refined conditions.
Whose behavior would that modify? Not most people's—only that of the very most
conscientious users. But those are precisely the users whose instincts should
be trusted in the first place.

That is why I don't think we should set up such a rule: first, it's wishful
thinking; second, no clear upside. And third, HN's origins are in a kind of
counterintuitive minimalism that I think is worth something, and that it takes
a certain stubbornness to preserve. Everyone disagrees with the specific acts
of stubborn preservation, but somehow people end up liking, or like/hating,
the sum it all adds up to.

~~~
pvg
_The emotional dynamic in downvoting is very strong._ c

Have you lot thought much about ways of reducing that, without changing the
effect votes have on ordering? I subscribe to the 'emotional dynamic' theory
of this and it seems like it's empirically testable without fiddling with the
way the site much.

~~~
dang
How would you reduce it?

~~~
tptacek
You've already done some things to reduce it; for instance, by not greying out
your own comments when you've been downvoted. Since comment scores have lots
of jitter, you could also smooth out the displayed score, or delay updates.
There's almost no time-value to comment scores, but I'd bet most of the pain
in a downvote is confined to ~15 minutes from the posting of the comment.

------
jedberg
A new account posting a very old and famous post... almost looks like karma
farming...

~~~
recursive
I've never seen it before, and I've been reading HN for years. A new user
might naturally be interested in undocumented features and stumble upon.

I can't help but notice that it's still missing `noprocrast` and related
settings.

~~~
keithnz
I maintain a list of resources here
[https://github.com/keithn/HackerNewsCommunity](https://github.com/keithn/HackerNewsCommunity)
I'd actually added this list a year ago, but forgot about it, then just added
it again, and had to remove it again as I realized it was dupe :)

