

Ask HN: Feedback about HN itself. What do you think? - JoelMarsh

I like the content of this site, but I also have a few suggestions, based on a few months as a regular visitor:<p>1) Make internal links smarter. If I read a page for 10 minutes and then click "next" I often get an error. Not an error page. Just the error text. I actually got this error when trying to submit this post.<p>2) Please implement a "collapse" button on all 1st-level comments. In big conversations I want to skip to the next comment when I am not interested. I don't want to scroll slowly down the page to find it.<p>3) Please add a "Show" tab to the main navigation, similar to "Ask". If anybody needs a little extra exposure, it's the people who are releasing new stuff.<p>4) Make the voting buttons bigger, and allow "undo". I think you'll agree that "tiny disappearing buttons" doesn't have that "awesome UX" ring to it. Especially when they are the primary user action that fuels the function of the site.<p>5) I see that "saved stories" is a possibility in my profile, but I have yet to find the button/link that allows me to save stories. Does it exist?<p>6) You're gonna hate this one, but I really wish there was a way to see when someone has replied to my comments. i.e. — Notifications. I would gladly sacrifice the "threads" and "comments" pages for a tab that has something similar but only relevant to me.<p>7) Does karma have any effect on anything, or is it just gamification? I can't see the scores of comments or people in context, therefore they are useless to me. My own karma points have more use as a notification (if it goes up, something happened) than anything else. If karma creates influence... a little info somewhere would be awesome (in my "dashboard" maybe?).<p>Thank you.
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xauronx
People generally get shat on when they give suggestions for improving the
site. At this point everyone has accepted that it is what it is and made up
reasons why it's a good thing. "It filters out the people we wouldn't want
here", which is weird because we all love good design and will argue about
proper implementations.

Anyhow, I haven't been around for long but it seems like there is one guy
running the show that has no interest in updating this website. It's a silly
side project for him. Personally, I think it's time he lets his baby fly and
get a couple trusted contributors and make some changes. (Which is hard for me
to say because I just wrote scrapers for the site...)

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onlyup
"It filters out the people we wouldn't want here", I got downvoted for calling
this reason dumb. Maybe not the best thing to say but I really think that is a
bad excuse.

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xauronx
Agreed. Really bad excuse, and since there's been like 5 posts like yours in
the last month (not to mention a couple dozen apps, CSS alterations, and
alternate sites for viewing it) the people who aren't content aren't just
leaving. We're here because we love the articles, content and people but the
website itself is kind of a disaster.

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caw
1) This is due to the page structure and how it's cached. Many people complain
about it.

2) That might be nice. Does anyone have this as a browser extension? I know
there's a few to make HN a bit more readable (I don't use any)

3) "Ask" I believe is simply submitting a story without a link. By convention
we prefix with "Show HN" or "Ask HN"

4) Indeed, tiny voting buttons. See greasemonkey/browser extensions/whatever
to customize site.

5) Upvoting a story puts it in "Saved Stories"

6) I think there's a 3rd party site for comment replies.

7) At ~500 karma, you get downvote privileges. I think Karma also affects your
placement on the page. We used to be able to see karma points next to names
for posts other than your own, but PG turned that off and I believe overall
it's improved discussions (there's some data for this).

See the "Feature Request" link at the bottom:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4982388>

~~~
JoelMarsh
If an upvote is a save, that's a good idea (it's a good feedback loop) but
that definitely should be communicated somewhere when you register. If nobody
knows that it sort of kills the thought behind it.

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gregcohn
<http://hnnotify.com/> for notifications re replies, via email. been testing
it a few weeks; works great.

~~~
onlyup
Notifications via email. That would just annoy me. It's the first thing I
switch off (if I can) on sites that do it.

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unimpressive
1\. Structural issue, something to do with HN running off flat files on one
machine.

2\. _shrug_

3\. No comment.

4\. PG has said that he wants to add undo, but doesn't think it's a big enough
deal to patch it.

5\. All upvoted stories are saved automatically.

6\. That would be nice.

7\. Supposedly it skews the ranking algorithm in your favor. At 500 you get
the downvote.

