

Ask HN: Why HN doesn't allow markdown? - 666_howitzer


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noblethrasher
Among other things, HN was a test case for programming in Arc, and mostly by
one programmer: pg.

So the likely reason that HN does not allow Markdown is because there is/was
no Arc implementation of Markdown.

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mqsiuser
It is not that there is no markdown / formatting allowed. It just is, that it
is so very very limited:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc](https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc)

Esp. the "no links in the text-field, but in the comments"

It is successful :-)

pg knows

It would be easy to implement some more primitives (and make them translate
into HTML)

It MUST be intensional

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noblethrasher
That logic doesn't quite work in this case. As of 131 day ago, pg was the main
programmer on HN. So, while implementing Markdown is easy, it is also the case
that:

(1) He had very little time

(2) Markdown was just one potentially easy feature among many other
potentially easy feature.

(3) As he stated many times, his focus was on reducing the amount of harmful
comments.

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ColinWright
What extra formatting would you want? And why? To some extent, fancy
formatting only detracts from carefully reasoned arguments. Why clutter the
page with more layout?

What would you use, and why?

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markcrazyhorse
I'm not certain but I think its because HN wishes to promote positive up
voting not down vote trolling like reddit etc... If its good It will get up
voted, if not then just don't upvote it.

~~~
ColinWright
I think the question is about "Markdown," the formatting language.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown)

[http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/)

~~~
markcrazyhorse
ah, sorry I read that wrong. I lose internet points dont I? :/

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frou_dh
The point of markdown is that it's supposed to be perfectly readable in
"unrendered" form, so in a sense you can already use markdown in any plaintext
context.

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Spoom
If I had to guess, I'd say it's because they want people to focus on the
content of comments, and not their formatting.

