

Show HN: Flattehn: A Chrome extension to hide points / users until you've voted - Groxx
https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/hahhhdmfdgfiehpgljfiichmokfpkbpg

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moeffju
Two ideas:

1\. put it on github, so people can continue developing it easily, under a
free license, during your finals :)

2\. Especially in back-and-forth comment threads, it would be useful to know
who is replying to whom, or to be more exact: whether the same people are in a
conversion or whether someone new joins in. I would suggest running a hash
over the username + story_id and putting a colored box or shapes in place of
the username. That way, a username is reasonably recognizable within a story,
but not across stories, and you can identify participants in a discussion at a
glance.

~~~
Groxx
I wish there were a way for submitters to pin info to links... my repo comment
will be buried soon.

Anyway: <https://github.com/Groxx/Flattehn>

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davi
Why do we each have a name? On a website, it is so readers can associate what
a commenter is saying to what that person has said before. Any community where
people are going to encounter each other more than once has a use for names.

Here, look, patio11 just said the following: "Trust me on this: no. I used to
have ABingo [yadda yadda]" [1]. Because it's patio11, I _do_ trust him more,
at least on this topic. And when he mentions ABingo, yeah, that's right, he
has an A/B testing package he made for himself, that he opened sourced to
people.

When someone I know is a maker talks about the domain in which they make
things, they have more credibility to me. This is not celebrity worship (I
have my own gig, thanks), it's just paying more attention to the people I find
interesting.

Hiding names and points with a Chrome extension is a cool hack, but there's no
way I'd ever want to use it myself.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1996587>

------
Groxx
Reason for its existence: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1991973>

I hope you like it! Let me know here / on its page if you have any requests.
Work on it is likely to stall for a week or two while finals roll through, but
I fully intend to make it more flexible in the future.

Want a FF / Safari extension? Let me know, I'll consider it, though it'll have
to wait for a bit. I haven't made extensions for either.

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scrrr
In my opinion the only interesting advice comes from people that "been there,
done that". I don't need to read any self-help crap from people that tell you
how something is done without actually having done it. Sometimes they are
right and their tips are valuable, but more often than not they are just
writing about trivial things or nonsense.

I don't like people that worship say "pg" and take his words as holy truths.
But when pg says something I'm more likely to listen to him than to an unknown
person, because he has a track record.

A nick-name (and the authentication behind it) is the only credibility
indicator for me. Therefore I'm certainly not installing this extension.

Sometimes something will sound like good information, but that doesn't mean it
is good information. At least a high-karma nickname means the person posting
it is putting his hn-reputation on the table. Now that may not be much, but
it's as good as it gets.

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alanh
Hmm, I don’t know, I think I see people tend to vote if they think a comment’s
score should be higher or lower than it is. For example, unoffensive but
unhelpful or off-topic comments never seem to make it to -10 — most people
seem to make sure the comment ends up at 0 or -1. This isn’t because slightly
less than 50% of those who read it disagree, it’s because everyone thought it
needed to be at 0 or -1.

Right?

~~~
jules
They never end up at -10 because HN is implemented that way. If the score is
lower than -4 it _displays_ -4, but the real score could be lower.

~~~
Kliment
I believe the point is that people tend to leave those comments at zero/-1
rather than downvoting them further. That has nothing to do with the -4 limit.

~~~
jules
I see a lot more comments at -4 than at 0/-1. YMMV.

~~~
Kliment
Certainly. I was just trying to clear up a possible misreading.

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petercooper
Good idea, but I suspect the sort of person who'd install this is the
conscientious type who wouldn't vote prejudicially anyway. I hope I'm wrong
but it feels like selling handcuffs to criminals.

~~~
Groxx
heh, interesting analogy.

My top-level comment here has the line of discussion which led me to make
this, which does make some sense. If pg were to comment here, regardless of
what he said, would you be more likely to vote him up over someone else who
said the same thing? Names / numbers have pretty strong subconscious effects
on our behavior - the purpose here is to eliminate that effect, so non-
prejudicial voting by those details isn't just _attempted_ , it's _achieved_.

However minor of a gain that may be. To each their own :)

~~~
petercooper
pg is a bad example for me as I don't know and have never spoken to him so he
doesn't get undue upvotes from me ;-) But I get your point, as I'm more likely
to vote up someone I perceive as a friend because I actively want to read what
they say - but I'm also "cool" with that. I'm more bothered about people
_down_ voting people they don't like, but I don't do that and the people who
do, I'm not sure they're mature enough to use your extension.

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ars
I didn't see an obvious way of looking at the source code for those not using
chrome, so maybe you have this already, but you should not hide points for
negative comments.

I hate seeing negative non-spam comments that simply don't match common
opinions, and I always mod those back up. That's one time where you do want to
know how many points before deciding if to vote.

~~~
Groxx
I'll add that to my todo-options list. I watch out for comments like that too.

Currently, you can click the icon in the address bar to reveal everything
(v0.9. If you've got an earlier one, force an extension update:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1996581>). And for negative-voted
comments in particular, there's always the grey-ness of the text - that
matches how far below 1 they are.

edit: can't figure out how to get source from .crx either... if you want, I
could email you the raw zip, or gist it, or something. Only jquery is
minified, and the rest is small & simple.

~~~
ars
Don't email it to me - post a link in the description of the extension.

~~~
volida
When you download .crx rename it to .zip and open it.

~~~
ars
If you're not on chrome it doesn't give you any sort of download link, so you
can't even look at it.

~~~
Groxx
save-as the install link. (edit: whups, you're right. annoying...)

I'll also be putting it up on GitHub soon.

edit: it's up: <https://github.com/Groxx/Flattehn>

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jsmcgd
I really like this. I'm already reading the content of posts more (as that's
all there is) as opposed to involuntarily being swayed by extreme points and
high profile user names. I'm not sure I'll use it all the time but it has
already had a beneficial affect on how I interact with HN.

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lwhi
I think it would useful to have this implemented as a actual feature on the
site.

If we can't make a decision without knowing how other people feel, I think
that's a disadvantage.

At its worst, the karma system helps fuel a popularity contest. At best, it
helps interesting comments rise to the top. This system stands to discourage
the first, and encourage the second.

------
Groxx
For anyone interested, the github repo: <https://github.com/Groxx/Flattehn>

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zbanks
Cool!

It would be good if there were a way to reveal the author without upvoting.
Maybe in doing so, the arrows would hide?

~~~
andrewjshults
Agreed - I think the biggest problem I see with the user name being hidden
unless you click on the link is that it makes the comments a bit harder to
follow in big threads (especially where people end up being referenced by
name).

~~~
Groxx
I've got to add a page-specific button, to turn it on and off. Poking at it
now, as I hadn't thought of that purpose :) I _think_ that requires "tabs"
permissions though, which warns everyone it has access to "your entire
browsing history".

edit: yep, it will. I'll get on it, though.

edit2: think I should have the switch _just_ show names? Or the points as
well?

edit3: Another idea: double-click on text, and if it matches a name, it'll
reveal and highlight. How's that sound?

~~~
zbanks
You could embed a link into the page and/or add a keyboard shortcut.

Another idea: don't censor the author & the user's own posts.

~~~
Groxx
Your own should be left alone (are they hidden?). Author I think I'll leave
for a future version, where I'll have loads of options (what to hide, when,
etc), and I'll add that to the list.

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resdirector
Good work for making this. I see a few hypotheses here on how behaviour will
be changed...I'd like to see another post in a about a week or so on peoples'
experiences using this extension.

One request: I'd like to hide my own karma.

~~~
Groxx
I'll add it when I get options running, which unfortunately needs a pretty big
change to make this more flexible. The source is up, you can see it's pretty
simple.

Did you want your _comments_ ' points to be hidden, or your points at the top
of the page (or both)? I sort of liked when it showed your ratio instead of
points, I could get that going as well.

<https://github.com/Groxx/Flattehn>

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btw0
What good are points if people can't see them?

~~~
dschobel
They affect where the comment shows/ranks on the page.

