Ask HN: What do you hate most about HN? - networkimprov
======
stephenr
Without a doubt, the way down voting works.

a) the voter isn't required to identify their reason for down voting b) it's
not just allowed but _encouraged_ to downvote things that you simply disagree
with

Those two things wouldn't mean much if it was just a number. But it isn't. The
site actively hides comments as they get down-voted, and people down vote
things they simply disagree with.

In case you hadn't realised, that's basically a recipe for an echo chamber.
I've lost track of how many times I've written/seen others comments that are
either factually true, or at least informative while subjective, down voted
into oblivion because they don't follow the standing ideals of a large
percentage of those who vote.

~~~
ifdefdebug
I disagree. I can't find any encouragement for downvoting things you simply
disagree with (I just reread the guidelines to make sure). It's also not my
perception this is happening: I do read downvoted comments (or parts of
those), and almost always there is a good reason other than disagreement. I
frequently see grayed articles coming up again after a while due to something
you might call "corrective upvotes" when the only reason for a downvote seems
to be a different opinion.

> I've lost track of how many times I've written/seen others comments ...

Interesting to see how far two subjective perceptions of the same thing -
yours and mine in this case - can be away from each other ...

~~~
stephenr
> I can't find any encouragement for downvoting things you simply disagree
> with

Paul Graham declared it "OK" 10 years ago
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171))
and despite realising that it caused problems 2 years later, the problem's
never really been fixed.

> Interesting to see how far two subjective perceptions of the same thing

I think this is directly related to the problem.

Bob posts a comment that is not offensive, but 'goes against the grain' for a
large part of HN readers, so his comment is downvoted quickly to the point
that it doesn't even appear for most people (either literally because they
have `showdead` turned off or figuratively because it's greyed out to be
almost unreadable, and at the bottom of sometimes long comment threads).

John reads the comment thread and never sees Bob's comment.

John doesn't see the problem because the problem is things not being seen.

------
rchaud
HN for me is still (touch wood) a relatively high quality discussion forum.
That said, I could certainly do without:

\- Persistence of myopic and uninformed views about MBAs in tech and finance.
No, MBAs do not get cushy jobs in top-tier firms because they know how to
build a pricing model in Excel and look nice in a suit. Tons of MBAs have
relevant industry experience, and they're there to work, not stifle innovation
by implementing stack ranking or whatever in a frenzied rush to cut costs.

\- Comments on stories where a company commits wrongdoing: "I don't know why
people are surprised, X has always behaved in this way. If you don't want [bad
thing], then do [thing that inconveniences you but does nothing to hold the
wrongdoer accountable]"

\- Elon Musk worship. I used to think it was just aspirational wealth worship,
but now I'm starting to think people see him as a sort of Tony Stark figure, a
misunderstood genius trying to save the world against all odds.

------
newscracker
Purely on usability, my pet peeves are these:

1\. The sizes of the voting buttons and the expand/collapse links are
terrible. They’re so tiny (and the voting buttons placed so close to each
other) that even a mouse cursor is not a proper tool to target them. On
touchscreens, it’s way worse. The “tap targets” are very tiny for fingers and
very difficult to use. Having to zoom in just to use one of those buttons is
painful.

2\. While looking at some child comment way down on a discussion, there’s no
easy and quick way to figure out which comment it’s a reply to. It’s
cumbersome and next to impossible. So I don’t even bother reading nested
comments after the first or second reply to a comment. There ought to be a way
to collapse all other comments above it and just leave the main one that it’s
a reply to.

3\. Very limited formatting options, with the default way of treating newlines
tripping up many people. This results in a long piece of text that’s not
easily readable. Just a day or two ago, I saw a YC recruitment ad post that
someone had just copy pasted from elsewhere but forgot to use additional
newlines to suit the HN formatting requirements. [1] It was a big wall of
unreadable text in many places. This is not the first time that something like
this has happened.

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18169707](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18169707)

~~~
AndrewOMartin
For #2 you can click a comment's posting time, and from there repeatedly click
"parent" to see the conversation history.

You may have already alluded to this as it's not exactly "easy and quick";
though as it's arguably both, I'm commenting in case others haven't discovered
it.

------
archagon
I hate how politically ambivalent and "both sides are the same" people here
are, despite it being shown again and again that this is simply not the case.

I hate how free speech is unduly prioritized over everything else, even when
it marginalizes people and whittles away at our separation of powers.

I hate how often social issues are eye-rolled or actively decried. I hate how
rarely policies such as WeWork's meat ban or California's mandate to put women
on corporate boards are discussed in good faith. I don't always agree with
these kinds of drastic actions, but I enjoy talking them over with my social
science friends. You simply can't find this kind of discussion here.

I hate how engineers often don't see themselves as rich. I make FANG salary
and feel absurdly wealthy. My grad school friends are squeaking by on $30k a
year. I hate how "get as rich as humanly possible" seems to be the unstated
goal of so many tech founders, and how any discussion of CEO salary caps or
wealth redistribution is quickly shut down.

It bothers me that such an intelligent community is often seemingly devoid of
deeply-held values. People here aren't _nearly_ angry enough about the
political clusterfuck going on in the US. People here want to make nice and
are unwilling to burn bridges to stand up for what's right.

And finally, I hate how people have the gall to say that they'd rather shut
their ears and avoid politics altogether, even when it's affecting everyone
around them in drastic ways.

A furious and motivated Silicon Valley could change so much in the world.
Instead, we'd rather just shrug and collect our paychecks.

~~~
07d046
I've seen a lot of comments on HN saying how good the level discussion is
here. It's true if it's talking about JS engines or term sheets, but when it
starts moving towards social issues or politics, I see better discussions on
Facebook.

------
rimunroe
The community. There’s a whole lot of sexism. Overall it feels like all the
part of the tech industry that make me feel skeeved out to work in it. When
people try to speak up about it they get downvoted, flagged, and/or chided for
off-topic discussions about it get shut down as off topic or not following the
rules.

It’s hard to escape the feeling that it’s a community of almost all
wealthy/privileged cis men.

~~~
cimmanom
This. As a woman it sometimes makes me want to ragequit not just HN but the
industry as a whole.

And then people wonder why women don’t want to go into tech and make even more
assumptions about our not being interested. Nope, it’s just that a whole lot
of us quite understandably would rather work in a field where we’re not
constantly made to feel unwelcome.

------
aequitas

      Long text quotes in fixed width format (indented by 2 spaces). 
    

When viewing on mobile this forces to scroll that text horizontally, for every
line in the paragraph. If people would just stick to using this for code only
and use ""'s or > for quoting text that would be great.

------
lewisflude
There's a lot of casual elitism in many threads. However, I've not found
anywhere else on the internet with such a high quality level of discourse so
it doesn't bother me too much.

~~~
gieksosz
Casual elitism is indeed what irks me here a bit as well.

------
LinuxBender
I don't really hate anything about HN.

In terms of the community, I would like to see more people recognize fake
leading questions that are answered by alt accounts promoting some product.
Those don't get flagged fast enough.

I am also not a fan of news site reporters challenging anything that doesn't
have several references to back it up. It takes away from discussions and
becomes an academic research article. In my experience, links do not equate to
facts. They are just more opinions on some other site.

~~~
wil421
Leading questions and/or alt accounts are my biggest gripes right now. I
called out an account for being a Facebook employee or something the other
day. They were literally copy pasting the same response over and over. It was
a paragraph from some Facebook documentation.

Another alt account suggested I should be banned for calling out the other
user.

~~~
LinuxBender
Probably best to just flag it or send an email to HN. It's easy to spot people
doing it, but we should have proof if we are calling someone out by name.

------
coretx
In hyperbolic terms i'd say that HN will become a consumer electronics &
politics platform read by "metoo" developers who call them selves founders in
exchange for giving up their pension and their rights as a employee. More will
be driven to do the same because they read a story on HN covertly plugged by
the only client of the previously mentioned metoo guy. Tongue in cheek, this
is a exaggerated version of the trend i see and that's what i hate most about
HN.

------
corobo
Honestly nothing at all. It's a decent site that does what it says on the tin.
In my ideal world we'd have more hacker and less news but I can always visit
/show if I'm in a particularly tech mood.

I guess I would like to be able to add a reason to a flag. Always feel a bit
weird just hitting flag and hoping there's someone on the other end that can
interpret what I'm flagging

------
patagonia
\- hellbanning

\- downvotes without discourse

\- no differentiation between a vote for agree/disagree vs bump/vote-down

~~~
kazinator
There is not much of a need to distinguish disagreement downvoting versus bad
quality here. In a technical forum, these two are very closely aligned: you
disagree with something because it gets the facts wrong.

If you disagree with something which is mere opinion, it is in fact legitimate
to downvote it on grounds that it is just someone venting their opinion.

If you disagree with something technically, and you have all the facts
straight, it is legitimate to downvote it based on inaccurate content.

So basically, from all angles, disagree-downvoting works fine around here.

~~~
patagonia
If only.

As has been demonstrated in the news recently, not all technical issues are
purely technical. Bias in Amazon’s AI hiring tool. Election results being
impacted by Facebook’s algorithms.

If someone downvotes on grounds that it is someone just venting (a fairly
charged term in my opinion) their opinion...

\- downvoting without discourse

I see no reason a downvote shouldn’t require accompanying rationale. If
provided it would indeed make a agree / bump distinction superfluous. Looks
like my points 2 & 3 should have had an “or” involved.

------
karmakaze
1\. The thing I _now_ dislike about HN are the posts that get upvoted. Yes,
eternal September and all, but this has persisted through the slower summer
months and I don't see it ever returning to the high S/N ratio of the recent
past. I find myself more often finding gems on pages 3+ with top posts just
being a general feed.

2\. Discussions are now becoming rare. So many posts sit on the front page
with many upvotes and zero comments.

3\. Downvote misuse as mentioned is irksome but not fatal. My problem with
them is the UI for them. Upvote if you agree, so downvote symmetrically (and
incorrectly) implies disagree. Downvote should really be represented as 'flag'
with a type such as factually incorrect, disruptive, adding nothing to the
discussion, or other poor conduct (as mentioned in other replies regarding the
guidelines).

~~~
Melchizedek
_So many posts sit on the front page with many upvotes and zero comments._

There's a weird mechanism that punishes posts with comments, because they are
deemed "controversial".

Regarding downvoting - just disable it. What makes the echo chamber even worse
is that only users with a certain amount of points are able to downvote. So
people who have _already_ avoided being downvoted by others get to effectively
police who else amasses the required number of points to be able to downvote.
It's a vicious cycle where only a group of like minded people will be able to
downvote.

~~~
karmakaze
This exactly illustrates the problem with downvote as the UI. Think of the
same in terms of flagging unacceptable behavior. Then it makes sense and is
positive. Only those who learn what is acceptable get to moderate.

~~~
karmakaze
Two downvotes, no comment as to why, either folks think it funny or just won't
get it.

------
yasp
That a small minority of people with exceptionally high karma can kill posts
and threads that they dislike for ideological reasons.

~~~
dang
The only ability users have to kill posts comes from flagging, which is
something everyone over a low (> 30) karma threshold can do. It also requires
quite a few flags to kill a post.

~~~
yasp
In my experience, when certain users with sufficiently high karma flag a post
or comment thread it is tantamount to "killing" it. Perhaps I'm mistaken in my
perception of how flags work here. This is one of the more opaque aspects of
how the site works.

~~~
dang
That can't be your experience, because it doesn't happen; there's literally
nothing in the software that works that way.

How it does work isn't much more complicated than what I just said.

------
kisstheblade
Comments beginning with "This".

The comments when all comments seem to be concentrated in a couple of threads
rehashing the same issues.

All stories concerning the housing problem in SF. Nobody cares, move on, it's
just a city. Yes I know there must be a disproportional amount of SF residents
in this forum, but nobody still cares about your housing problems :)

------
krapp
While not repeating existing complaints I have that others have made...

1) This community takes itself far too seriously.

2) The kerning is too damn small, and so are the vote arrows. Why is a
_forum,_ whose purpose is to be _read,_ so difficult to read at length?

3) I, an idiot who has contributed nothing of value either to society or to
this community, have more karma than Alan Kay[0], proving that karma doesn't
measure anything worthwhile and should be done away with.

[0][https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=alankay1](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=alankay1)

~~~
kazinator
> _The kerning is too damn small, and so are the vote arrows. Why is a forum,
> whose purpose is to be read, so difficult to read at length?_

Suppose HN had this simple feature: an editable field associated with your
account where you could drop in a piece of CSS. When you're logged in, HN
spits out that piece of CSS into the web page, just for you.

~~~
krapp
Custom styles would be nice... I've always wondered why the only editable part
of an account is the color of the topbar.

But they don't even have to go that far to improve readability, just apply
some basic typography rules and eliminate the unnecessary grey on grey text.
On text submissions, the latter is done purposely to make them difficult to
read, which is not only malicious, but counterproductive for a forum.

Look at the way Medium articles are formatted - designed for readability, not
designed to discourage it. Hacker News should look like that, IMHO.

------
jdeisenberg
Not a hate, but a minor gripe: the light gray text fails WCAG accessibility
guidelines.

------
anonnyj
The only gripe I have with HN is wrongthink, so I won't voice it here. Other
than that, I love the site and its community.

~~~
LinuxBender
Do you mean unpopular opinions or thoughtcrime? I post unpopular opinions all
the time. Sometimes I get a few downvotes, then in other timezones it swings
back the other way, usually. I am not even sure why.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I suspect that it's not timezones. I think some people, when they see posts
that they feel are unjustly downvoted, vote them up just to cancel a downvote,
even if they wouldn't have upvoted the post otherwise.

------
acconrad
Front page quality seems to have deteriorated. I brought this up in an Ask HN
and I think I came off as self-righteous and that was my fault.

But I think the crux of the issue is I just don't get how certain low-quality
stuff makes the front-page and a lot of high-quality stuff from new gets
missed.

I've actually created an RSS feed that grabs anything in New that has gotten
at least 1 upvote. It's a lot of content but at least it is going beyond what
is displayed on the front page.

~~~
masonic

      low-quality stuff makes the front-page and a lot of high-quality stuff from new gets missed
    

... which is a byproduct of how many dupes get submitted. Many submissions get
pushed off the Newest page so quickly because so many dupe and crap
submissions push them off.

People who don't look beyond the front pages (news _or_ newest) are missing a
lot.

------
BenoitP
The bland, low diversity of the frontpage.

If HN were to release the votes dataset to trustworthy AI/ML partners, wonders
could be extracted from that. I'm sure I'd be way less interested in what the
mob wants to hear about, compared to what is upvoted by antirez, pron,
chrisseaton, BrendanEich, just to name a few.

PageRank could be run on that to identify articles that are low noise but key
to people at the edge; as well as ALS for a personalized selection.

------
prairiedock
My main dislike is a technical feature: that every response to a comment does
not link back to the parent comment. This often makes discussions difficult to
follow. (Indentation helps very little when reponse threads grow over multiple
pages.)

~~~
masonic

      that every response to a comment does not link back to the parent comment
    

But it does, unless I misunderstand. Clicking on the time-ago link gets you to
both the Parent (of that comment) and on: (top of comment thread for the
submission overall) links.

------
criddell
There's nothing I hate, but there are changes I would like to see. The biggest
is that I wish it was easier to see when somebody has replied to me.

~~~
stephenr
[http://www.hnreplies.com](http://www.hnreplies.com) works reasonably well for
email notifications.

~~~
_RPM
That stopped working for me years ago. You sure?

~~~
stephenr
It definitely still works at least some of the time, but there's also delays
in some (I haven't received a notification about your reply yet, and it's been
several minutes)

------
amazon_not
Aggressively throttling comments. I think it's about five comments and then HN
cuts you off from commenting. Not really conducive to discussions.

------
vixen99
Downvote fading. It hints at the current practice in some quarters of
reversing Voltaire's maxim to the effect “I may not agree with what you say,
but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” which becomes I don't
like what you say so I'll make it difficult for others (especially those with
poor eye sight) to read it.

------
pq0ak2nnd
Me, and people like me who bring flamebait to HN and risk turning it into
/.,reddit or worse, 4ch __. Sometimes I just forget and get all troll-y and
flame-y, and I hate that shit.

------
ifdefdebug
Not that I hate something, but it would be interesting to know why this "Ask
HN" is now listed # 27 in the "ask" list, with 22 points, 41 comments and 1
hour of age, right after # 26 with 15 points, 12 comments and 1 day of age ...

------
moneytide1
Nothing. Everyone's input is a Rorschach test. All data, even down votes, is
valuable.

"Hate" is rooted in fear.

------
cimmanom
The way some people approach the status quo as normative or inevitable.

------
sosense
The downvotes when you even bring up a possible alternative to "the
narrative."

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Personally, _I_ hate the number of people pushing borderline-paranoid
conspiracy theory drivel here.

------
aerique
The fact that the Microsoft astroturfing brigade discovered this place a few
year ago.

~~~
WalterGR
My pet peeve is “us vs. them” mentality. The persistent need for an “enemy”
that we good guys are opposed to. the flavor-of-the-month/year/decade tech
company tribalism.

That is, people who speak positively of <for-profit corporation we currently
like> are wholesome and motivated only by spreading truth. People who speak
positively of <for-profit corporation we don’t currently like> are
astroturfers and shills.

Definitely not unique to HN.

------
networkimprov
I hate how quickly new stories disappear from the main "new" page.

~~~
xemoka
I've found that [http://hckrnews.com/](http://hckrnews.com/) is a better
"front page" for HN; it bills itself as "a chronologic list of items that have
made it onto the Hacker News homepage".

~~~
elektor
Thanks for sharing. This is how I interact with HN. I typically sort by top 20
of the day.

------
AnimalMuppet
I hate the "Then you must believe/support X" pattern (as a response to someone
stating some position that is only faintly related to X). It puts words in the
previous poster's mouth. It also hijacks the conversation, because X wasn't
the topic, nor even near the topic.

I hate the number of people who want to argue but not listen.

------
webwanderings
1\. Failure of not being able to evolve with time, and improve. 2\.
Degradation of value out of commenting system. 3\. The bias quotient and
compartmentalized thinking process towards stories being selected for front
page. 4\. The influx of Redditors.

------
kgwxd
Not being able to delete accounts.

~~~
m-p-3
GDPR to the rescue!

~~~
kazinator
HN isn't an e-commerce site. Nowhere are you required to put in your real
name, credit card info, date of birth, shipping address or anything of the
sort.

Your account consists of an alias name, and two profile fields "about:" and
"email:" that are optional, and can be reverted to blank at any time. HN
doesn't even perform e-mail validation.

You can't delete your posts once they are older than a few hours. Not
yourself, anyway; if you ask the site operators, maybe something can be
arranged.

Ideas: don't post stuff you want later to delete, and if you do, be sure to
change your mind within an hour. Use the "delay:" profile field to delay the
appearance of your comments, which gives you a chance to edit or delete them
before anyone sees them.

If you see a posting or comment that reveals someone's personal info, flag it.
If it persists, contact the site.

------
gpetukhov
The fact that a more recent link with more upvotes can already be on the
second page, while a link with a few upvotes and few comments is on the main
page for more than a day. Apparently some links are artificially "buffed".

------
kazinator
I dislike the poor handling of asterisks in comments. How can I type the
following identifier in-line in a regular paragraph (not code indent):

    
    
      *eval-hook*
    

And this is written in a Lisp dialect, too!

~~~
krapp
But that would require rewriting the markdown function, which would make it
more complex, which would make it _less elegant_ and _more... bad..._

------
keiferski
I’ve been here for awhile (just about eight years), and the single biggest
change I’ve noticed is the increasing presence of what I’ll call a “bourgeois
tech monoculture.”

This place used to be weirder, with more obscure links and discussions filled
with academics and hackers. If you search the older archives, there are some
really incredible conversations. Now it mostly seems to be nytimes articles
commented on by upper-middle class engineers.

~~~
yasp
Are there any other communities that have a feel similar to the old HN, in
your opinion?

~~~
keiferski
Unfortunately no, I think this sort of trend has essentially eaten most major
communication channels. Even reddit is 10x more tame, “middle class average”
and predictably corporate than the forum culture the internet had ~1995-2010,
before winner-take-all social media sites ate everything.

~~~
extremum134
Agreed, reddit is now full of corporate fanboys.

~~~
barrow-rider
Once a site/forum hits enough critical mass it's guaranteed to become
corporate.

Social media exists to 1) push ads, or 2) shape consensus.

The end state of both is $$$.

~~~
zzzcpan
I consider HN being too corporate already. But I think there is an easy
solution, where voting power just needs to be adjusted for at least those
corporate domains and maybe in general to give more weight to diverse domains.

------
BrandoElFollito
You have to constantly look at articles, they become stale within literally a
few hours.

Not stale because of the content, but of the activity in comments. A few hours
go by and they stop.

------
FrozenVoid
Lack of content filtering and/or segregation by topic.

------
kamaal
Pagination.

There could be an option to opt in for single page rendering.

------
Markoff
besides the things already mentioned (comments throttling after 5 comments,
elitist downvoting only for likeminded who gain karma and fading downvoted
comments, site almost useless on touch devices) comments not collapsed by
default irritates me a lot, sometimes i am not interested in lengthy
discussion under parent but curious about completely different comment

------
marojejian
That discussions have a short life, and flame out. I read these on rss. by the
time I get here... everyone is gone. so sad.

------
dano
I use feedly to review HN and it would be so much better if the top two or
three comments were included in the RSS feed.

------
networkimprov
That this valuable feedback-to-the-site post has been pushed off the first
Ask-HN page >:-(

------
webmaven
I miss Michael O. Church.

Not that I always agreed with him, but he was really _interesting_ , and his
comments consistently made me think about my own biases and opinions in ways
few others ever have.

------
jesuslop
I disliked the lack of understanding of Terry Davis circumstance.

------
anothergoogler
The low-quality tech-related articles/blog posts that drown the front page
from sources like Economist, Vice Motherboard, NY Times, and so on.

~~~
bigtimber
especially paywalled links to sources such as WSJ

~~~
m-p-3
I wish there was a small logo beside a link indicating the presence of a
paywall.

------
m-p-3
The lack of a native dark theme.

~~~
elektor
I use Dark Reader for Chrome. The dark mode on HN makes the comments easy to
read.

Link: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dark-
reader/eimadp...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dark-
reader/eimadpbcbfnmbkopoojfekhnkhdbieeh)

------
paulcole
Lack of GDPR compliance.

------
Apreche
All the news that isn't hacker news. News about startups, venture capitalists,
and other silicon valley douchebaggery isn't hacker news. That's business
news. Get it out of my face.

~~~
sdinsn
You do realize this is run by YC? Of course there is going to be news about
startups.

~~~
rimunroe
I’m sure everyone is very aware of that. Awareness of it doesn’t make it any
less obnoxious.

~~~
sdinsn
If you stick your head into a bee's nest, don't be surprised when you get
stung.

~~~
rimunroe
It’s hard not to read your response as implying that no one should ever
complain about anything unless it catches them off guard, or that no one
should ever challenge the status quo.

------
lenrose
I hate the insipid social justice warriors here.

