

3 Ways I Would Improve Hacker News - jason_shah
http://blog.jasonshah.org/post/16910604141/3-ways-i-would-improve-hacker-news

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nate
The number one thing I would improve is add some kind of alert system when
someone replies to one of your comments or posts. Email me. Or put some kind
of alert icon somewhere on the orange bar that someone has replied to
something I'm involved with.

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chauzer
<http://notifo.com/hackernews>

~~~
ruckusing
Notifo is shutting down: <http://blog.notifo.com/notifo>

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masklinn
Here's what I would improve on HN: comments formatting.

Writing and reading long comment is absolutely painful and a sprinkle of
markdown/GFM (beyond the current trivial em and code block supports) would
make it significantly better.

Also comment preview/review, since the site is very often _bloody slow_ when
trying to edit a comment, and the writing area is 1. too small to review long
text and 2. not a good way to see if the comment's rendered layout is correct.

edit: and the current state is probably worse than nothing at all, as inline
asterisks are rendered as <em> when they're multiplication signs or links to
footnote, so you've got shitty formatting _and_ broken comments.

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andyking
I'd love it if there was a way to view or highlight new comments in a thread.
Quite often, I'll read an interesting thread that's got 120 comments, come
back a few hours later and see the same thread with 180 comments--but I have
no way of knowing which are new without trawling through the whole thing
again.

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CWIZO
If you are using Chrome then try this (made it a while ago):
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fpndmkcfggkffpablc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fpndmkcfggkffpablcooicmihgcgalil)

~~~
SatvikBeri
I'm finding it useful already, thank you.

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sktrdie
Sorry but I don't really care for all of these changes. They are just small UI
additions which can be totally subjective. Plus, let's not forget, you could
easily implement all the things you mentioned through browser add-ons,
personalizing your own experience.

I'm a little more worried about the comment-karma being removed, which makes
it harder for me to reach the best comments.

~~~
jason_shah
Thanks for the input. Agreed that these are small UI changes and building
browser add-ons could do the trick. The removal of comment-karma is probably a
bigger deal; this was my personal take on things I haven't necessarily heard
talked about as much.

In my view, it's the small UI things HN and other sites get right that often
make the difference though, and a bunch of browser add-ons just seems like a
fragmented approach to changes that may benefit a lot of people on HN who may
never discover or use the add-ons.

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program
Here is a bunch of cosmetic changes:

1) Include the second level domain on link preview next to title (e.g.
plus.google.com)

2) Include some sort of graphics that link a comment response to original
comment. It's very difficult to follow a conversation with a lot of comments.
The Slashdot vertical lines are an elegant example.

3) Use CSS media queries. I find HN very difficult to navigate using embedded
devices. The font, the vote arrow and the margins aree too small.

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eric-hu
To #1 I would add: build in comment collapsing.

I've read many threads where the first top-level comment is fantastic. Then
there's one or more screen-lengths of comments piggybacking off that comment.

My favorite feature of Reddit is being to sort comments by vote total, then
collapse a thread after reading the first comment. Auto-collapsed low point
threads would also be a good disincentive for inane posting.

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jeffool
On the first idea:

I have an idea on how to indicate the value of a discussion. After comments,
list a "buzz: " value that is the sum of all upvotes in the comments.

This works as an indication of how people feel about the contents of the
comments. The higher the buzz, the greater interest in the conversion.

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nodata
I'd like to be able to collapse a thread. Often the top comment is insightful,
but not directly relevant.

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stralep
Is there a way to see all comments I have upvoted? This is one thing I would
really like.

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DanielRibeiro
Nice suggestions. I'd like to point out that there are already many great apps
that improve hacker news: <http://www.hnsearch.com/apps> (many more on this
thread).

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jason_shah
Useful link. Very comprehensive. I wish there was a better way to connect
people who need these apps with this link and the pages for the apps since
personally I knew of HN Search but never navigated to the Cool Apps page. I
guess people just need to be aware of it. Maybe HN could promote it on the
site at some point.

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jmsduran
Those are some pretty solid ideas. I also agree that improvements can be made
to the comment system, possibly something for me to play around with in my
spare time.

~~~
jason_shah
Thanks! I think comment systems generally (not just HN's) can use a lot of
improvement. Better and better sorting algorithms based on recency, user
quality, responses to the comment, etc. seem incremental, honestly. It's
helpful, but if I were to redesign commenting systems from scratch I would
think about the current linear format, whether comments that relate to each
other could intelligently be grouped together, etc. I feel like if companies
like Disqus and Livefyre are going to compete with the added social value
Facebook brings, they're going to have to figure this out and really
revolutionize conversations on sites.

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fvryan
For #1 for now you can check out: <http://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments>

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chauzer
#1 thing I would want is speeding up the site. I've experienced a lot of
slowness and empty pages when trying to submit comments.

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jcfrei
concerning comments: I would again recommend to order comments not just by
their respective score, but to a degree by the score of the comments in reply.
otherwise a controversial comment might get buried below the fold.

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geuis
To the author, would you consider making the fonts on your site maybe 2-3x
bigger? 12px is _really_ hard to read against a solid white background. Plus
visually, I think it makes your site look better at a bigger size.

~~~
archangel_one
2-3x bigger seems fairly huge... You can increase the font size (in Chrome and
Firefox at least) via ctrl+mousewheel up which should fix it for you, at least
temporarily.

(I'm not the author, btw.)

~~~
geuis
Yup, I know. First thing I did. I didn't mean 2-3x pixel size, rather
percentage.

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vl
Or, at least, make it browse-able on iPhone and other smartphones.

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vacri
Fix the moderation system so it's not trivial. Trivial moderation is
worthless.

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spicyxtreme
my only suggestion which is super easy to implement is to open links in new
windows. :D

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mweibel
no thanks. That's breaking the usability.

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saurabh
How does that break usability? Reddit does it. Also HN is an aggregator, so it
makes sense to keep it open in a tab and open the links in new tabs.

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rmccue
It's actually a preference on reddit, and one that (IIRC) is off by default.

In terms of breaking usability, people expect links to open in the current
window/tab. Having them open a new window/tab is disorientating at best.

