

Ask HN: What was the last time a requested feature was implemented ? - jacquesm

With some regularity people are being sent to the 'feature request' page to post suggestions about things to add to HN.<p>It is one of the longest threads since HN was launched, and there are many good suggestions in there, some of them quite old that have not made the cut without any reason given.<p>This seems to result in two things, an increase in the number of feature requests in regular posts, and a feeling that the feature request page simply exists as a way to vent this stuff so that it can then be safely ignored.<p>To verify, is the feature request page still actively monitored ?<p>Has there been a documented case in recent history (say the last couple of months) where a request from the feature request page was picked up and actually implemented ?<p>And if those cases do not exist would it be an idea to reboot the feature request thread ?<p>And to tell people if their feature request is not going to be honored why that is ?<p>I'm appealing especially to those people that always feel the need to point people to the feature request page (assuming you don't do it for the easy karma boost) to prove that it is actually 'live', after all you are sending people there you must have some proof that it works.
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raquo
Hackers want features -> they are ignored -> they learn arc and submit patches
themselves -> ... -> arc becomes the dominant programming language. Definitely
an arc conspiracy.

Seriously, it's just a small non-commercial niche news site with basic
functionality. People running it have more interesting stuff to spend their
time on. I wonder if reasonable proposed _patches_ are accepted.

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10ren
It's a little ironic that HN is not particularly responsive to feature
requests from the community... in contrast to how YC recommends startups be
run.

There's that idea that appropriate profit motives are an important way to make
things happen. Therefore, one way to make HN more responsive to requests would
be to make it into a startup. Not that that should happen.

~~~
pg
We advocate that founders pay a lot of attention to users, not that they
literally do what users ask.

What keeps users here is not features but the quality of the links and the
comments. So that is what I spend the most time on. E.g. we have really good
software for catching spam, and also semi-spam promoted by voting rings. There
are also a number of subtle tweaks to prevent flame wars.

The last code I released (the day before yesterday) was to enable the system
to ignore the flags of people who flagged too indiscriminately. Which in turn
depended on code I wrote to study how big a problem bad flagging is. Like good
defense, this kind of work is generally invisible. Even
news.ycombinator.com/classic is something I wrote for myself to try to gauge
whether quality was declining.

~~~
10ren
I totally agree; it's just the incongruity.

The epic _feature request_ thread seems vestigial: you often responded there
800-900 days ago but haven't for 428 days, I'd guess because HN has outgrown
it.

~~~
pg
Yeah, is kind of cheesy to use an ordinary comment thread. But a new, purpose-
built feature request system is one of the many potential new features that,
while a good idea in principle, would take significant time and yet have
little effect on the quality of the site.

~~~
jacquesm
What about simply giving meta discussions (including features) a place of
their own ?

That way if there is an interesting one (and it does happen, even if rarely)
it has a spot and doesn't get killed because it takes up valuable space on the
'new' page.

~~~
pg
I've been thinking about that for a while, if only because if there was an
official place for meta-discussion, I could make people stop cluttering the
real threads with it. On the other hand, maybe this feature would make the
site more attractive to the kind of people who like meta-discussion, when I
want it to be less attractive to them.

~~~
jacquesm
Well, since some of it is useful, give that it's own spot and leave the flag
and kill options in place to control the meta discussion should it get out of
hand.

Just like in wikipedia there is the 'talk' page, it's out of band but it is
not out of control.

That seems to be a good middle ground.

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pg
One of the main points of the feature request page is to separate feature
requests from submmissions. You want to do this because most are either
duplicates or bad ideas, and yet (like all meta discussion, including this
post) tend to get a lot of upvotes. The feature request page serves that
purpose even if no one reads it.

I do check it occasionally. I know search is the main thing people want. But
explicit "features" are not my top priority now. The top priority is to
maintain (or if possible improve) the quality of links and comments. More
details here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=830485>

~~~
jacquesm
Ok, are you open to collaboration ?

That way other people could do the stuff that is not priority to you.

I'm more than willing to really dig in to arc if I know the effort is not in
vain. (other than learning arc, which is interesting in and of itself but that
would be 'academic' interest, nothing productive).

~~~
pg
I don't think it would necessarily be a net win. The kind of code that really
matters (e.g. techniques for suppressing fluff posts, trolls, and flamewars) I
deliberately don't talk about or release publicly. And if some random person
wrote, say, a feature-request feature for HN, I'd probably have to spend more
time cleaning it up than it would have taken to write from scratch. Plus I'd
have to turn into a project manager. Life is too short.

I am happy to incorporate specific fixes, though. I greatly appreciated
dfranke's warning about the security hole he found. And if someone wanted to
try profiling HN in order to make it faster, I'd be interested to hear what
they discovered.

~~~
jacquesm
> Life is too short.

Possibly. But if you really want this to go I'm sure if there is one spot
where you'd have no shortage of people willing to help out it would be HN.

Also, where would Linux be if Linus had decided that he'd have to make each
and every change himself ?

I understand that you wish to keep the 'secret sauce' secret, that makes good
sense. No need to make it easier on the spammers to figure out how to bypass
the various features that keep the junk in check. Otherwise HN would turn into
a useless linkdump in a heart beat.

But stuff like article tagging would be tremendously useful, especially in
combination with a filtering function.

The feature request thread has lots of good ideas, if you want I can spend
some time to make a digest.

I realize you have lots on your plate but that is precisely the reason why
'life is too short', if the end result of that is that HN feels stagnant (and
in some ways it does, even though I can see there is some subtle tuning going
on behind the scenes and by the number of restarts) then that seems like a
lost opportunity to me.

HN - and arc - are clearly your babies and you get to make the calls, but I'm
sure there are enough people of caliber here to help out, and if you tell them
'not good enough' when they present a patch I'm sure they'll try harder, that
way you could simply do the quality control end of that.

It'd still be work, but a lot less work than building all those features
yourself.

Another thing that came to mind the other day is maybe you do not want to risk
eclipsing digg by building a HN that is too good, is that a factor here or
rather not ?

~~~
pg
I'm sure I could find better hackers here than just about anywhere else, but I
don't want to be Linus.

~~~
jacquesm
I think the chances of you becoming Linus are remote :)

But still, HN feels like it is purposefully limited. That's fine if that is
the stated policy, but then you might as well shut down the 'feature request'
thread and state that the policy is to keep HN in the form that it is today
besides tuning things to accomodate growth.

On another note, I realize that HN being written the way it is must be quite
hard to split across multiple machines, should the need come for that do you
have plans in that direction ?

And while we're talking about the feature request thread:

I put a fairly simple one in that would make flagging nonsense a lot easier
for the people keeping an eye on the new page as well as less load on the
server because of the extra pageview to get the 'discuss' page for spam links.
Simply add a 'flag' option to any articles appearing on the new page that are
also on 'noobstories', or alternatively add 'flag' links to the 'noobstories'
page.

The main reason for this is that HN can be very slow and if you do not have to
leave the page it will save a lot of time while flagging.

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adrianwaj
I'm happy to not get down-modded below 10 points anymore if I say something
critical about the US president.

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tvon
So far as I can tell, HN wasn't built to be a home for a community as much as
it was built as an experiment in Arc.

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jodrellblank
_after all you are sending people there you must have some proof that it
works._

that doesn't follow. The feature request thread os the communally accepted
place for feature requests, whether it works or not is a separate thing.

Also, your implication that it needs restarting if it doesn't work doesn't
make sense - it's still an accurate record.

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jrockway
news.arc is open-source, right? So if you want a feature, just add it.

~~~
jacquesm
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=830156>

~~~
adrianwaj
It could be kept bare to keep away the digg, TC crowd etc.

~~~
jacquesm
> It could be kept bare to keep away the digg, TC crowd etc.

Possible, but then let's just have that as a statement out in the open, then
we can be done with it.

Instead of pointing people to the 'feature request' thread we could then give
that as an answer. Right now it almost feels like giving someone a pacifier or
a placebo.

In another thread someone literally used the words 'so he stops bothering us'.

~~~
adrianwaj
There can be a conflict of interest between YC (ie PG) and HN users,
particularly long-term ones. That's how I've come to terms with it. This forum
is first and foremost a hook for entrepreneurs into YC and a way for PG to
assess potential investees by their participation and statements. Everyone
else is going along on their ride, at the core.

