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Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance

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Re: Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance

#91

Post by derefr »

ineedasername wrote: post #4

I’d encourage a change of labels away from “friend/foe”. It may seem minor but the subtle loaded nature of those paired terms encourages an adversarial stance rather than one of productive discourse. It’s not catchy so there’s probably better than this but, just as an example— “engage/ignore” could better signal to the user a neutral “do I want to bother with this person?”

That would imply a slightly different semantics than what the extension currently provides, though.

If you truly want certain users to be "ignored", then you probably want any of their comments (and the subtree of descendant comments) to be hidden/collapsed/made less legible, so that you don't accidentally read them, and thereby don't accidentally get rage-baited by them into wasting your day arguing with them. Same as e.g. kill files on Usenet.

Given that this comment collapsing/hiding/visibility-decreasing is something already built into HN (for comments/subtrees with strongly-negative score), it'd be really easy for the extension to hijack this functionality for its own purposes... if it actually wanted the red button to mean "ignore".

That the extension doesn't do that, implies to me that the extensions intended semantics for "foes" isn't "I don't want to engage with this person" but rather "I want to notice this person more." Perhaps "so that I can take the opportunity to actively antagonize them / argue with everything they say."

(I'm not saying that this is a good thing; just that insofar as "the purpose of a system is what it does", this is the purpose of a plain "foe" signal!)

Re: Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance

#92

Post by conesus »

Reubachi wrote: post #36

A question, per your final comment on being available to answer questions: What do you feel is the benefit to the community for this that isn't offered by native blocking/existing extensions? I ask not out of malice, I ask because 2 reasons: 1. I imagine spending time on this/it's working well required you to see the value/benefit to it. 2. We must assume all hacker news commenting follows the rules, IE; good faith c…

The reason I have this extension is because I don't want to hide those comments. I want to be able to read them when I quickly scroll a thread. Oftentimes, I'm reading so many Hacker News threads that I want to be able to pull out the commenters that I like. I even like reading the comments from commenters that I dislike in the hopes that I see if I still disagree with them.

I'm not hiding anybody. I'm just making it more apparent when they're commenting

Re: Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance

#93

Post by conesus »

austinjp wrote: post #58
waltbosz wrote: post #33

https://github.com/samuelclay/hackersmacker/blob/main/web/im... How old is that icon set? I swear I used that same peppers icon for a Windows app that I published around 2002.

At least 15 years, if the git history is to be believed.

That's absolutely correct. I started programming at eight in 1993, so I have a soft spot for those types of icons.

Re: Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance

#94

Post by conesus »

eleventen wrote: post #26
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #9

this seems like it would increase tribalism and polarization

Indeed. Why engage with ideas on the merits when you can color (literally) your own opinion of them before even reading. I guess if you just prefer wearing horse blinders?

There's nothing about this that's horse blinders. It's literally a way to highlight riders that you both agree and disagree with. It actually makes it more likely that you're going to engage with the ones you disagree with, because now they have a red orb.

Re: Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance

#95

Post by conesus »

Thanks to the HN moderators for re-posting this after I posted this a few days ago. I only notice now that it's on the front page.

Happy to answer any questions. Let me tell you, I've really enjoyed having those writers that I like highlighted on this comment thread because it makes it very easy to scan it.

I think it's important to remember that this is not about hiding writers you disagree with. It's simply about making it so that you can read more Hacker News threads and quickly scanning the comments, teasing out those writers that you agree with. It's also fun to read the writers you disagree with, if anything, to reinforce your opinion of them.

Re: Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance

#96

Post by conesus »

WorldMaker wrote: post #40
ineedasername wrote: post #4

I’d encourage a change of labels away from “friend/foe”. It may seem minor but the subtle loaded nature of those paired terms encourages an adversarial stance rather than one of productive discourse. It’s not catchy so there’s probably better than this but, just as an example— “engage/ignore” could better signal to the user a neutral “do I want to bother with this person?”

Follow/Distance?

Ahh, I have you green orbed, and I recognize your username from NB. The system works!

Re: Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance

#98

Post by conesus »

Retr0id wrote: post #97

I've been testing it out for a bit, unfortunately the layout shift when all the icons load in is very distracting.

The layout doesn't shift down. It only moves the meta information to the right of the user name over a little bit.

Re: Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance

#99

Post by tomhow »

netsharc wrote: post #85
tomhow wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are some trolls in here that seemingly evade getting banned despite their moronic comments... As moderators we can only judge comments according to the guidelines, and can only ban accounts if they repeatedly breach them. You're always welcome to email us (hn@ycombinator.com) about an account that has been continually breaching the guidelines.

I don't have the name(s) off the top of my head, but can't you do a query of users whose account age are greater than (some threshold) but whose median comment score /amount of flagged to death comments is past some other threshold.

Mathematical quality scoring doesn’t work well for moderation of human behaviour in a community. Context matters a lot. Feelings influence people’s conduct and perception of others’ conduct a great deal. A user may get huge numbers of upvotes for comments they make about a technology or their profession, but then attract many downvotes and flags when they're commenting about politics. This is particularly true when political topics involve war or other life/death matters (which is a major reason why those kinds of topics are difficult on HN – they can bring out the worst in otherwise very positive contributors).
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