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Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?

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Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?

#1

Post by jacquesm »

Hello Paul,

What is the deal with search on HN?

There isn't a week or some new HN member posts a question about how to search HN, most of the time they are either confused about why there is no search on the site, in other cases they are trying to find some article and can't locate it.

The various fixes (google using the site: prefix and pointers to searchyc.com) have been repeated so often that I suspect some users have programmed function keys to save on the typing :)

I see that news.ycombinator.com promotes 'webmynd' as a search facility, however when compared to either google or searchyc it comes up short.

I appreciate you sticking up for the companies that YC funds, and of course this is your site and you can do with it as you please but what confuses me is that there seems to be no net benefit to webmynd from being listed on YC, whereas there is a significant loss for those that use news.ycombinator and that don't have an easy way to search the site. It makes news.ycombinator look less professional and it confuses people with some regularity.

Why won't you add a box that submits a google site search or a search on searchyc to HN?

Either that or ask the webmynd guys to get their act together and create something that is on par with searchyc, they seem to be able to get it to work, and for free and 'unfunded' no less.

If anything you could throw them a bone and show some appreciation for the work they've done supplying a missing feature at essentially no cost to HN. Or is there bad blood between news.ycombinator and searchyc that I'm not aware of?

Fred has indicated many times that he spoke to you about this, but so far I can't really make soup out of your position, after all, I take it that you want HN to be the best possible site for your users.

Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?

#2

Post by pg »

The explanation is a lot less involved than your question: what makes users happy is not features, but the quality of the submissions and comments. So I focus on the latter instead of the former. The result is a spartan site with good content.

There's a YC funded startup that may solve the problem. If they do I'll use them. But frankly the issue is not at the top of my list. This is a classic example of how one should give users what they want, not what they say they want. Lots of people say they want search, but I would be suprised if there was a single user who'd left HN because it lacked search. Whereas if I let the frontpage get filled up with crap, or the comment threads filled up with mean or stupid comments, people would start leaving pretty quickly. So almost all the time I spend thinking about HN is spent thinking about how to avoid that.

Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?

#3

Post by jacquesm »

pg wrote: post #2

The explanation is a lot less involved than your question: what makes users happy is not features, but the quality of the submissions and comments. So I focus on the latter instead of the former. The result is a spartan site with good content. There's a YC funded startup that may solve the problem. If they do I'll use them. But frankly the issue is not at the top of my list. This is a classic example of how one shoul…

Shall we put it to a vote ?

Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?

#4

Post by pg »

jacquesm wrote: post #3
pg wrote: post #2

The explanation is a lot less involved than your question: what makes users happy is not features, but the quality of the submissions and comments. So I focus on the latter instead of the former. The result is a spartan site with good content. There's a YC funded startup that may solve the problem. If they do I'll use them. But frankly the issue is not at the top of my list. This is a classic example of how one shoul…

Shall we put it to a vote ?

Even if people said they'd prefer I focused on adding features like search rather than the quality of submissions and comments, which is unlikely, I still wouldn't.

Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?

#5

Post by jacquesm »

pg wrote: post #4
jacquesm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shall we put it to a vote ?

Even if people said they'd prefer I focused on adding features like search rather than the quality of submissions and comments, which is unlikely, I still wouldn't.

I find it hard to believe that a programmer of your caliber would make it seem as though an off-site submission is such a big deal that it would take away significant time from working on the quality of the submissions and comments.

I'm not 1% the programmer that you are and it wouldn't take me more than 15 minutes to put a search box (after all, it's just a piece of static text) in the HN footer.

See, all those 'quality submissions and comments' are pretty much useless if you can't find them, what's the use of having this amazing body of content if there is no easy way to peruse it?

The content goes by so quick now that if you look the other way for three days that you'll have missed tons of good stuff, an easy way to search would make all of HN accessible, not just what is current right now.

Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?

#6

Post by wwortiz »

pg wrote: post #2

The explanation is a lot less involved than your question: what makes users happy is not features, but the quality of the submissions and comments. So I focus on the latter instead of the former. The result is a spartan site with good content. There's a YC funded startup that may solve the problem. If they do I'll use them. But frankly the issue is not at the top of my list. This is a classic example of how one shoul…

I think the real thing is that many people would just like a more convenient way to search this site, I've become accustomed to using searchyc but no one really knows that exists until someone points it out.

Even if it is just a link that says Search that points to a custom google search it is far more convenient than the point that it is at now. To be honest a custom google search isn't really a complicated feature, but if you believe that this site does not need a search feature anywhere I'll respect that and continue to use searchyc just threads about how to search will continue to appear.

Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?

#8

Post by matt1 »

pg wrote: post #4
jacquesm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shall we put it to a vote ?

Even if people said they'd prefer I focused on adding features like search rather than the quality of submissions and comments, which is unlikely, I still wouldn't.

Make something people want, right?

If the majority of folks here want search, and given that it wouldn't take much time to add a link to SearchYC, why not do it?

Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?

#9

Post by johnrob »

pg wrote: post #2

The explanation is a lot less involved than your question: what makes users happy is not features, but the quality of the submissions and comments. So I focus on the latter instead of the former. The result is a spartan site with good content. There's a YC funded startup that may solve the problem. If they do I'll use them. But frankly the issue is not at the top of my list. This is a classic example of how one shoul…

How about adding this to the header or footer?

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aycombinator.com> Search

Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?

#10

Post by kevindication »

baddox wrote: post #7

In all honesty, I have never even noticed that HN didn't have search. Coming from reddit, I'm used to googling with "site:" and I've always done that with HN as well. My point is that HN does not need search.

I think you mostly want search when you decide to submit a link. Since you don't want to submit a duplicate article, you have to check searchyc first.
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