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Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?
11–20 of 121 posts
Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?
#12The 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 ?
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Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?
#13In 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.
I think it very much depends on how you use HN, if you use it just for the consumption of 'news' then I can see why you would not need search as much, but HN is much more than that.
It's an awesome resource, there are plenty of comments that are literally gems when you're stuck on something or starting with some new tech and that's when search comes in really handy.
For instance, how to start with clojure: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1033503
tell me how you'd ever find that without a search?
Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?
#14Just on the general topic of site search, this is what I use on my site (names changed):
Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?
#15The 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
Ok, I'll try it for a while. It really doesn't seem like it's worth adding a link for something so trivial though.
Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?
#16I turned HN into a Fluid app. Problem solved here.
Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?
#17Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?
#18From another thread, here's an explanation of what WebMynd actually does:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1329398
There is a misconception that it is somehow competitive or equivalent to searchyc - it is not. And that the reason that searchyc is not linked to from HN is because WebMynd is - that is not the case.
Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shall we put it to a vote ?
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Now why would you do that?
If you agree with the need for a search then you could say why, maybe there is a use case that is good enough for Paul to cross that line and make it happen, this is not a popularity contest, it simply gets me that such a basic and much needed feature is missing and I feel that if Paul practices what he preaches that he should have implemented it long ago.
HN is not a democracy, the 'shall we put it to a vote' was an attempt at showing how many people really do want this, if Paul does not wish to know or if he would ignore the outcome anyway that's his right, but it would be nice to see some consistency in the reasoning about why there is no search.
Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
The reason I wouldn't add a link to SearchYC is the same that I don't add a link to one of the HN iPhone apps: I don't know the authors or the app well enough to anoint it as official. I don't mind if people want to build stuff on top of HN, but I have a much higher threshold for making something part of HN.