
Quiet Hacker News - joelclaudio
http://quiethn.com/
======
cyberferret
Nice idea, but I must admit though, that I often look at the comments first to
ascertain the quality of the article posted. If I see civil, structured
discussion, then I am more likely to visit the link afterwards.

However, if I see off topic rants and arguments, then I tend to dismiss the
article as an opinion or puff piece.

Generally like that the comments on here tend to stay on topic and thoughtful,
although I am disappointed that some of my posts on here lately, which have
merely been questions about aspects of the article, have been downvoted. Hope
HN doesn't turn into another StackOverflow imitating over-moderated "that
doesn't belong here" type site.

~~~
anitil
This is exactly my behaviour. I end up with a bunch of tabs and ctrl-w/ctrl-
tab through them with a small set of simple heuristics, the primary being
quality of the first few comments.

------
DarkTree
Yeah I can understand the motivation for creating this. When I first started
browsing HN, I couldn't believe how supplemental, civil and noiseless the
comments were. However, after several years, I've started to jump straight to
the comments, especially when I have a vague clue about what the article is
about. That's when I don't feel the incentive to actually read and create my
own opinions. I've also started to view HN as more entertainment than
education because of the way I consume it, instead of the how I used to
believe speeding over comments was informative. I've since accepted that it is
entertainment veiled as education. I still learn more here than any other news
source I follow.

~~~
ue_
I would love to agree that comments on HN can be substantive and civil, but
the downvote power afforeded to 'elite' users is horrible, leaving a comment
which is perhaps a little challenging to a charged view or commonly held
belief is often simply downvoted without explanation, usually once but
sometimes up to thrice. Downvoting on HN serves the ingenious function of
signalling to others "This comment isn't worth reading", by making is appear
gray, similar to the site's background. It is only one step above Reddit in
which comments are hidden completely (though that appears to happen here too
sometimes).

Edit: Good to know the system works?

~~~
weberc2
Reminds me of Churchill's quip on democracy: "It has been said that democracy
is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

HN users will definitely downvote challenges to their deeply-held convictions,
but so will any other community, and almost always more vigorously. I say this
as the proud recipient of many such downvotes. :)

~~~
ue_
Some forums don't have downvotes at all, and I find that controversial
discussion flourishes there. The moderators also are much more laid back than
in HN; they enforce rules like spam and illegal content rather than the task
the HN mods have tasked themselves with: _preventing_ flamewar, even when good
discussion and education results from it, i.e they see themselves as parents,
acting in a preventative measure, we are the children. To further the analogy,
there is literally an account flag that the HN mods can put onto your
account[0] which puts you into a 'timeout', like sitting in the corner wearing
the dunce hat.

This was done to me, such that if I post too quickly, I am banned from posting
except for twice every two hours for a while. This, I believe, will stick with
my account for as long as I have it - because I apparently post too fast,
engage with too many people etc.

One gets the message: "You are posting too fast. Please slow down." Mother and
father dang and sctb have told me off. I must therefore go to bed early.

I think it's also a fabulous bit of trickery pulled here - there aren't
"rules" for HN, there are "guidelines"; this leads you to believe it is laid
back, and being guidelines, they are not enforced. How wrongly one is misled!
They are rules in evey sense of the word, as rules are differed from
guidelines only in their enforcement. I know many places which say they have
rules and enforce them _less_ than HN enforces its "guidelines".

Slavoj Zizek made a point here I think is relevant - when the father tells his
son "Visit your grandmother, for if you don't then I will punish you", the son
is much more likely to rebel, to complain - he reacts against authority. But
another father may say "Please see your grandmother, she is very sick and old,
she misses you" \-- the circumstance is the same, but the mode of _violence_
used is different, and agruably _much more powerful_. Few sons can resist this
kind of force.

[0]
[https://github.com/wting/hackernews/blob/master/news.arc#L15...](https://github.com/wting/hackernews/blob/master/news.arc#L1523)

~~~
mdekkers
Indeed. I see this incomprehensible "You are posting too fast" \- mostly when
I try to submit a link, which I now no longer do. I also limit my visits to
the comments section to once or twice a week because fuck random downvotes. I
don't give a shit about imaginary internet points, but I give a shit about the
feeling of hanging out with a crowd of smug, self-satisfied know-it-all
hipster webdevs that are offended by different points of view that cannot be
bothered to engage in meaningful discussion and the hyper-focus afforded to
them by their adderal doesn't allow for more consideration besides clicking
that fucking "down" button. (I apologise if I omitted to offend your specific
stereotype, leave a comment and I will be sure to include it next time)

I know that the majority of HN visitors actually are not like that, but if you
spend some time considering your point of view, write it down in coherent and
mostly grammatically correct English, just for some lazy fucker to come along
and click "down" it is they who contribute to the low signal to noise ratio
and devalue the HN experience, not you, and that is the feeling you are left
with - the visible results to your efforts.

I like how some other sites do this - no downvotes, only a "spam" flag, or a
significant cost to downvotes (several karma points or something).

I have been here long enough to know that this will be grey before the
database is backed up, and nothing will really change, so I fully applaud
"Quiet Hackernews". I personally use an RSS feed. Just came here to check the
submission would be flagged (it was - you are sure predictable, if nothing
else, HN)

~~~
DanBC
> Indeed. I see this incomprehensible "You are posting too fast"

Email the mods and ask them to turn it off.

I don't know how they make that decision. I guess if they've had to give
someone many warnings about flamewar behaviour they may not want to turn it
off. But I'm not a mod and I don't know how it works.

~~~
weberc2
I don't know either, but I started seeing it after making a bunch of polite
comments that challenged a popular political belief. They got a lot of
downvotes, but they got a lot of upvotes too. I hope it was an algorithmic
error (assuming that the goal of the algorithm isn't too punish polite but
controversial conversation) and not petty moderation.

------
justboxing
I would likely never use this. I'm almost always here for the comments on the
Show HN & Ask HNs as well as the Stories.

The comments on the Ask HN, Show HN are usually very informative, and have
helped me a lot in my own side projects and entrepreneurial pursuits.

The comments on stories (for me) act as a curation tool, and based on what I
read, I actually decide to either read the posted story, or pass on it.

W.r.t. stories posted, 9 /10 times, the comments are more insightful and offer
unbiased commentary that the original stories -- many of which (on the
internets, not HN) are click-baity / shock'n'awe type posts -- often lack.

~~~
simple1
You might be interested in a site I created, Day Old Hacker News
([http://dayoldhackernews.com](http://dayoldhackernews.com)). This shows
Hacker News as it was exactly one day ago, so the comments are always full.

------
gus_massa
Don't forget to read the about page: [http://tomspeak.co.uk/posts/quiet-
hacker-news](http://tomspeak.co.uk/posts/quiet-hacker-news)

I somewhat agree. For example I try to avoid discussion with more than 100
comments. Usually the small discussions are more technical and have a better
signal to noise ratio.

~~~
jessriedel
Agreed, but I wish HN would experiment more with new technical tools to
improve civility. For all its flaws, HN is still home to some of the very best
discussion, and there's no reason to throw up one's hands. For instance,
removing public vote counts seems to have been a net positive (although I
mistakenly opposed it at the time). Even a small nudge to get people to vote
based on constructiveness rather than agree/disagree could have a large
impact.

~~~
krapp
I'm not certain there is a technical solution to incivility, or at least, I
suspect that technical solutions can only go so far.

Incivility is a social problem, and that requires community involvement and
reinforcement of accepted norms, not attempts at operant conditioning through
the UI.

~~~
jessriedel
Lots of incivility problems have been ameliorated by technical solutions in
the past (up/down votes, flags, bans, etc.). I don't know why one would
downplay attacking the remaining issue this way, especially since technical
solutions are vastly more replicable and scalable. Indeed, internet incivility
is a problem _caused_ by technical difference from real-life interactions.

~~~
krapp
Lots of incivility problems have been ameliorated by technical solutions in
the past (up/down votes, flags, bans, etc.).

But the fact that flags and bans are necessary means the incivility still
exists, so those problems haven't really been solved. And votes create as many
problems as they solve, because with them you get people posting for votes,
complaints about vote fairness, etc.

> I don't know why one would downplay attacking the remaining issue this way,
> especially since technical solutions are vastly more replicable and
> scalable.

I don't believe the effect of these solutions scale with them. If they were,
Twitter would be a bastion of civil discourse, because there's little that HN
does in that regard that Reddit doesn't also do at a much greater scale.

~~~
jessriedel
Huh? If you just define the problem as only "really solved" when you aren't
fixing the symptoms with technical tools, then, yes, technical tools can't
work by definition.

~~~
krapp
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the problem hasn't been solved because
the incivility still exists. I don't believe these tools _do_ fix the
symptoms, only hide them.

------
reificator
> Why did you use Go to write this? You know Go does not have generics, right?

This is going straight to my quote archive.

------
elorant
This contradicts the very essence of HN. Personally I come here mostly for the
comments. Regardless of how good (or bad) a story is, the comments are what
give it value because you get to read educated opinions that make remarks even
the original article doesn't. HN is the only place in the web where you can
see such quality in comments. Remove them and then everything becomes blunt.

------
faizshah
Why does it seem easier to scan the links on the front page of reddit than on
HN?

Often when I'm looking to upvote a link I just clicked on HN I will scan
through all the links but miss the one I'm looking for. Is it the contrast and
boldness of the titles that makes reddit better in this regard?

~~~
aldoushuxley001
I think it's the background-colour.

Every other link on reddit has a slightly darker background, which helps
separate the links. HN doesn't have this, preferring to simply number the
links as its way of differentiating

~~~
kilceem
If one was so inclined one could make a custom css for HN. everyone has there
quarks and can not make everyone happy.

~~~
jasonm23
You are triggering my OCD. It's my problem though.

Everyone has their strangeness and charm. Not sure they have quarks but I'm
quirky like that.

------
sillysaurus3
Only four articles are visible at a time on mobile, vs 6 on HN.

------
samat
document.querySelectorAll("td.subtext").forEach( function(currentValue,
currentIndex, listObj) { currentValue.hidden = true; } );

~~~
polote
you can't use forEach with a NodeList ;)

~~~
AgentME
Easiest solution is to wrap the NodeList with Array.from(...) first. Just
wanted to point out how handy that function is.

Also if we're going to make a snazzy one-liner, let's cut out the unused
arguments:

    
    
      Array.from(document.querySelectorAll("td.subtext")).forEach(currentValue => { currentValue.hidden = true; });

------
kup0
Can't you just use the regular HN site and avoid clicking the comments link?
How hard is that? I do it daily and comment rarely. The only time I ever see
HN comments is when I choose to see them.

Also if you want to avoid comments in general on the internet or on a per-site
basis, install something like the ShutUp extension (which I use to remove
comments on some areas of the web, such as YouTube)

------
boyaka
I care about the comments. I use [http://hckrnews.com/](http://hckrnews.com/)

------
etelej
Nice. Sorry for plugging this but I also wrote a similar one
[https://hn.etelej.com](https://hn.etelej.com) as a PWA that just focuses on
the top 60 posts every 5mins and allows searching through the; links to
comments though

------
faitswulff
I wish there was a link to the comments. Oftentimes they're the first (and
last) place I go.

~~~
unkown-unknowns
Wait, are you being facetious or did you not catch on to the fact that the
comments not being included is what makes it "quiet HN"?

~~~
jack9
Even after your comment, I do not make that connection. If that was the
intent, it fails...e.g, Why not duplicate the site faithfully and just
eliminate the comment links?

It succeeds in being 'quiet' (less noisy) in design.

~~~
craftyguy
I think it literally does exactly what you just said, content (posts) is
duplicated, comment links are eliminated.

~~~
jack9
I'm not sure you know what "literally" and "exactly" means, after that
comment. Stop using those words just because you disagree vehemently. Here's
the "literal" version you haven't imagined:

[https://imgur.com/a/hJTC2](https://imgur.com/a/hJTC2)

------
m3kw9
And I thought this was pretty quiet in terms of UI and simplicity

------
bdz
I prefer [http://n-gate.com/](http://n-gate.com/)

~~~
craftyguy
That's literally unreadable:
[https://lut.im/5GmTj5QDSY/c6fxtEXxgvZlzfvr.png](https://lut.im/5GmTj5QDSY/c6fxtEXxgvZlzfvr.png)

------
apple4ever
What's the point? The comments are the best part of HN.

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smnplk
I visit mostly for the comments.

------
mezod
The FAQ should answer why all the questions are number 1!! :P

