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Tell HN: Clickable domains and other new features for story quality

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Tell HN: Clickable domains and other new features for story quality

#151

Post by brudgers »

dang wrote: post #149
brudgers wrote: post #140

I have the feeling that creating a new domain is going to be a way of growth hacking one's story toward the HN front page. Green is a big bump in a world of greys.

Fluff tends to get flagged off the front page pretty quickly, so it may not turn out to be a problem. But if that does start to happen, please let us know. We can turn it off, or maybe turn it off on the front page. I'm surprised that the green sites turned out to be controversial because I have found them helpful as a moderator and a reader, but in retrospect I can see why a visually noticeable change would be. We'r…

This morning, I just felt that the green was striking and drew my attention to those articles. Admittedly, a lot of it could be my habits and expectations. But I know I wouldn't ordinarily have focused on them based on other factors.

I'm not being controversial, though now that I think about it, there is a shift in the semantics of the color: it used to be reserved exclusively for people, now it is also being used for "things". That may account for some of the undercurrent for resistance to change.

I can see why it is helpful for moderation. I guess the real question is does the green spike the level of participation in moderation activities? As a reader, it doesn't really highlight the sort of information that I make my decisions on.

Re: Tell HN: Clickable domains and other new features for story quality

#152

Post by dang »

brudgers wrote: post #151
dang wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fluff tends to get flagged off the front page pretty quickly, so it may not turn out to be a problem. But if that does start to happen, please let us know. We can turn it off, or maybe turn it off on the front page. I'm surprised that the green sites turned out to be controversial because I have found them helpful as a moderator and a reader, but in retrospect I can see why a visually noticeable change would be. We'r…

This morning, I just felt that the green was striking and drew my attention to those articles. Admittedly, a lot of it could be my habits and expectations. But I know I wouldn't ordinarily have focused on them based on other factors. I'm not being controversial, though now that I think about it, there is a shift in the semantics of the color: it used to be reserved exclusively for people, now it is also being used fo…

We just turned it off. These were all experiments, the green sites generated more negative than positive feedback, and it's fine for an experiment to fail.

Also, the same information is available by clicking on the domain: if you see only that story in the list, it means there has only been the one submission from that site.

Re: Tell HN: Clickable domains and other new features for story quality

#153

Post by brudgers »

dang wrote: post #152
brudgers wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This morning, I just felt that the green was striking and drew my attention to those articles. Admittedly, a lot of it could be my habits and expectations. But I know I wouldn't ordinarily have focused on them based on other factors. I'm not being controversial, though now that I think about it, there is a shift in the semantics of the color: it used to be reserved exclusively for people, now it is also being used fo…

We just turned it off. These were all experiments, the green sites generated more negative than positive feedback, and it's fine for an experiment to fail. Also, the same information is available by clicking on the domain: if you see only that story in the list, it means there has only been the one submission from that site.

Was there any change in behavior...other than a new target for complaints? I'm curious about how much editorial activity users do, particularly since mine seems erratic at best.

Maybe it could be a profile option at 50 karma [aka badge]. Even at the risk of people saying HN is turning into StackOverflow, gamification for editorial engagement may be worth pursuing.

Re: Tell HN: Clickable domains and other new features for story quality

#154

Post by insin »

DanBC wrote: post #132
grecy wrote: post #30

Any chance we can have collapsible comments without a greasemonkey script, or bookmarklet?

One of the problems of collapsible threads is that it reduces the amount of people who are prepared to flag and downvote comments that shouldn't be here.

Having the ability to not just collapse threads, but to auto-collapse threads which don't contain any new comments would make it (user scripters: "and does make it") easier^H^H^H^H^H^Hpossible to find new comments on repeat visits, putting more eyes on them.

Re: Tell HN: Clickable domains and other new features for story quality

#156

Post by shortlived »

Any chance of changing the table background color from #f6f6ef to something that has sharper contrast with white page background? I look at comment distance with this border to find new top level comments, but it's hard when one is white and one is light grey.

Re: Tell HN: Clickable domains and other new features for story quality

#157

Post by krapp »

shortlived wrote: post #156

Any chance of changing the table background color from #f6f6ef to something that has sharper contrast with white page background? I look at comment distance with this border to find new top level comments, but it's hard when one is white and one is light grey.

It does seem odd, that the only thing people can change the color of is the top bar (and not even the text color with the top bar) and that this is somehow worth being a karma perk. Just being able to set a default text size would solve readability issues for a lot of people.

Re: Tell HN: Clickable domains and other new features for story quality

#158

Post by dang »

brudgers wrote: post #153
dang wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We just turned it off. These were all experiments, the green sites generated more negative than positive feedback, and it's fine for an experiment to fail. Also, the same information is available by clicking on the domain: if you see only that story in the list, it means there has only been the one submission from that site.

Was there any change in behavior...other than a new target for complaints? I'm curious about how much editorial activity users do, particularly since mine seems erratic at best. Maybe it could be a profile option at 50 karma [aka badge]. Even at the risk of people saying HN is turning into StackOverflow, gamification for editorial engagement may be worth pursuing.

It was too soon to have observed any change in behavior. But the feedback was more negative than positive, and it did visually disrupt the front page—not something we want to do without a strong reason.
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