Ohh... I thought 'flag' was like a bookmark, for something that I wanted to read but isn't my 'favorite', but because I couldn't find the flagged articles I stopped using it...
An undocumented behavior not on the list of undocumented behaviors is that vouching and presumably flagging as well can be shadowbanned. If you vouch for things which then get flagged again, the vouch link won't disappear, it just won't do anything anymore. So you should be careful if vouching or flagging something is "worth it".
That's a handy feature. I have in the past favourite a thread more so for a the comments (book recommendations are a common one) than the actual article.
https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments is interesting as well. I have a recent comment with 74 points and it's only on the fifth page. I guess people are getting a lot of upvotes on their comments!
I think 'bestcomments' is for a certain timeframe because most that are at the top are about Google and Google Stadia, which was relevant not long ago.
I think the fact that posts like these turn up often and that a lot of users comment 'omg, I didn't know that' points to the need for Dan and the other mods to either update the sites FAQ or provide a new one. All joking aside, it should only take a day or two to do it and is obviously much needed as their userbase expands.
The source code for the software that runs Hacker News was available at one time. Are the undocumented features, voting ring detectors, and spam detectors not in the released source code? It would make sense that they weren't.
>Are the undocumented features, voting ring detectors, and spam detectors not in the released source code?
Some are, but things like voting ring detection and spam detection aren't. YCombinator doesn't often share the code of changes they make to HN, unfortunately.
I've wondered about creating an extension for HN and Reddit to get around what I see as a problem in the voting system.
Nominally, downvotes aren't for disagreeing, they're for posts that don't add to the discussion. Upvotes aren't a perfect reflection: a comment with a high score or prominence implies consensus.
Sometimes I'll see comments where I think it has been unfairly downvoted - maybe greyed out for posting an unpopular opinion - but I don't think the comment deserves my co-signing or approval. I can upvote it, but then the negative votes may later turn out to be an anomaly and be cancelled-out by upvotes or by having the negative votes de-fuzzed. Then the comment is visible again but has my +1 and might be obscuring a reply that I thought did deserve an upvote.
My extension would be a third button on greyed-out comments. Maybe 'resurrect'. It will work as an upvote until the comment is allowed to be part of the discussion again, then it removes it.
With Reddit I'd just add it to the firehose but HN's lower traffic and greater risk of astroturfing means I'd seek dang approval first.
This problem will never be solved if it hasn't by now. Downvoting as disagreement, or to punish unpopular ideas, is rampant. And downvoting is not just a way of EXPRESSING disagreement, it's a way to suppress those you disagree with by hiding their comments. And, as pointed out here and elsewhere in this submission, the vouching mechanism that WAS meant to solve it will be silently disabled for your account if you use it to offset too many posts which are TOO unpopular or disagreed-with.
That is incompatible with the practice of making it hard, or even impossible, to see comments which have been downvoted too much. I am guessing it also was not taking into account the type and volume of use/abuse that it sees today.
Mine is to either improve the markup sufficiently that it’s worth using, or remove it entirely.
Currently it sits at an awkward position where it’s not complete enough that it’s any good, but it’s too obtrusive to use “raw” text formatting à la plain text emails.
I had this limitation on my account for a while too. It was because I was upvoting flame-bait comments that had been grayed out. My personal reasoning at the time was "but the other poster started it" (these were deeply nested angry comment chains). After a couple of months I emailed dang to request if I could get real voting back and he took the penalty off my account, after explaining why it had been put there in the first place.
If you see an ugly exchange of comments,
DO downvote (or ignore) provocations.
DON'T upvote provocative retorts, even if you think that the reaction was justified.
And if you get your account penalized, you can have the penalties lifted with an email to hn@ycombinator.com.
> If a user has 251 Karma, they can set the color of the top bar in their profile settings. The default is #ff6600. Here's the complete set of colors users have set: https://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors
Seems this is sorted by popularity? I'd have never expected the color I set (#ffcc00) to make it so high on the list. But then most people probably don't bother changing the default setting, so it can just be due to the low base effect. Would be great to know what it's like in absolute terms.
I set #0099FF, the opposite of the default, in order to quickly see if I'm logged in. I'd expect that being related to the default, it's a common choice. But it doesn't seem to be.
“We also know there are known unknowns — that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.”
> What I like about HN is that the comments VERY RARELY descend into the inevitable political sniping that seems to happen almost everywhere else on the internet, even when discussing controversial topics like Trump, and even the percentage of snarky and dismissive comments is kept pretty low.
This is something, I thought, has gotten way worse since covid. I always explained it (mostly to myself) from the sudden influx of people that arrived faster than cultural assimilation could happen. Back then, it was only cryptocurrency topics where I preferred not reading the comments.
Nowadays, it’s so many topics where I quickly nope out of the comments again. It’s still better than most places, but that’s because it started from a far superior position.
Would it be an option to embrace that development? Instead of assimilating everybody the Borg way, it would also be possible to tag snarky people and allow each user to choose if their comments should be included.
The front page could be an example of good behavior, but people don't have to adapt instantly. They can be snarky, are flagged, and get the signal that the expectations are higher. With some resources for personal development, depending on the flagged transgressions, there could be a form of assimilation that scales.
I mean, what you are describing is still assimilation [0]. The way to get there can be multifold, but concepts like not being toxic (which seems harder to accept) and providing value instead of making joke-comments (which seems to be accepted somewhat readily) still need to be adopted by new people.
This is exactly how it should be, but it’s also a way that, at least IMO, does not scale and stopped working properly.
[0]: the process of assimilating new ideas into an existing cognitive structure
I can't speak for your submissions, but peeking at your comments you seem to be downvoted in the past for being prickly and constantly complaining about how you've been shadowbanned, so perhaps not doing that may improve your chances?
Their censorship function is broken because you can just make a new account in 30 seconds from a new ip which is automatic now with safari relay. This is like my 50th account. And there’s no real benefit to amassing points except for the mods and users to threaten taking them away to keep you singing the woke village tune and not criticize YC startups. But you know that’s a loss to HN, because there’s a great deal of value in dissenting opinion. Don’t you want to know if you have a delusional bad idea? Of course that’s valuable feedback. The self censorship flagging is also a nasty feature allowing crypto zealots to control the narrative.
Take for example that ridiculous eyeball scanning crypto scam. Any criticism was censored, and then twitter found out and shot it down in glorious style. Well and Edward Snowden. Would’ve benefited the creators to actually listen to the criticism, which was super valid, over censoring it on a backwater forum to give the false impression of endorsement by the bay.
