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

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

#41

Post by daeken »

matt1 wrote: post #27
pg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If it was trivial, there wouldn't be so many questions about how to search the site :) But thanks. Edit: Or maybe if you're the type of person who can't figure it out, you're not the type of person who should be posting on HackerNews in the first place?

Anyone that has content that's interesting to hackers is "the type of person who should be posting on HackerNews". I love this community (and hacking in general) in large part because it's not filled with that sort of elitism; anyone who's able to contribute in a positive way is welcome.

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

#42

Post by brlewis »

pg wrote: post #25
jacquesm wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 'qua…

What you don't get is that attention is a zero sum game. There are an infinite number of minor things that would be pretty good to do that would "just take a minute." The only way to do good work is to ruthlessly blow them off and to focus only on the few things that matter most. Ironically, this thread, though a complete bike-shed waste of time in itself, is not entirely bad, because it's also causing me to spend ti…

I think the points helped you gain a more accurate idea of whether responding was worthwhile. The more people support an idea, the more response it calls for.

Furthermore, an upvote or downvote is equivalent to a very concise comment.

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

#43

Post by trominos »

pg wrote: post #25
jacquesm wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 'qua…

What you don't get is that attention is a zero sum game. There are an infinite number of minor things that would be pretty good to do that would "just take a minute." The only way to do good work is to ruthlessly blow them off and to focus only on the few things that matter most. Ironically, this thread, though a complete bike-shed waste of time in itself, is not entirely bad, because it's also causing me to spend ti…

I'd be careful about messing with points on comments (and with karma more generally).

You might enjoy imagining a forum where smart people anonymously engage in civilized discussion without need for the kind of lowbrow pleasure-center-stimulation that the current karma system provides, but I doubt such a thing could exist; if it did, it would probably be much less exciting than HN. Smart people who enjoy good discussion are still people, and most of what people do is seek out easy rewards.

You've built something almost impossible here: a place where it's very rewarding to say interesting things and very unrewarding, generally, to say uninteresting things. Don't look this gift horse too directly in the mouth. If you kill the point display on comments I think you'll kill a lot of the content on this site.

Not to mention that, though it's easy to make fun of people who get too sucked in to internet arguments, there's frankly nothing wrong with people going out of their way to correct other people and that kind of behavior is pretty fundamental to crowd conversations like HN. It's probably annoying that jacquesm's popular approval forced you to respond to him, but I (and others) enjoyed reading your comment; I think you'd be hard-pressed to show that you writing it was a net loss activity.

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

#44

Post by blasdel »

amirnathoo wrote: post #18

From 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.

And here's my snarkier version: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1194542

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

#45

Post by chengmi »

jacquesm wrote: post #38
chengmi wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN handles considerably more traffic than SearchYC.

Well, that's a difficult one: Either PG is right and nobody needs search, then we'll find it doesn't matter, or I'm right and we do need search and then the searchyc guys will need to beef up their system. But then at least we do know for sure we need that search.

As it stands, SearchYC doesn't get enough daily uniques to justify beefing up the system. Frankly, SearchYC was an experiment in how quickly I could learn a new technology (RoR) and build a system. I was completely expecting someone to come along a few months later to make SearchYC obsolete. It's been 2.5 years, and I don't think that's happened yet.

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

#46

Post by carbocation »

jacquesm wrote: post #35
kimfuh wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like not having a search option. It keeps me learning things at random. It keeps the site simple and constantly fresh.

Do you use the web the same way ?

When on the web, I pretend to be a Markov chain that has some nonzero chance of stopping at each step.

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

#47

Post by blasdel »

pg wrote: post #20
matt1 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bravo: this is the first time I've seen you publicly acknowledge that they exist. Baby steps!

You know them well enough to invite them to a private party at your office. Do you know the CO2stats people better, given that you're including a cross-site web-bug javascript from them that frequently blocks the site's page rendering?

It's a few hundred bytes of , you could remove it later if they flamed out with the same ridiculous ease with which you could add it.

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

#48

Post by jacquesm »

blasdel wrote: post #44
amirnathoo wrote: post #18

From 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.

And here's my snarkier version: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1194542

> It's less useless than the 5 IE toolbars your annoying relatives live with, but just as obnoxious.

Ouch.

That's a funny bit of writing, but really, when you think about it the searchyc guys deserve a round of applause for what they've built and that they did it without being funded or any kind of profit motive makes it even more impressive.

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

#49

Post by aaronbrethorst »

credo wrote: post #30
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 would be suprised if there was a single user who'd left HN because it lacked search. While I agree with you, I think you're looking at it the wrong way. No user will leave HN because of search-issues, but a lot of users will be very happy if the site had good search. imo it makes sense to do a trivial thing and make a lot of users happy. So while you're correct in saying that "quality of the submissions and comm…

painkillers and vitamins.

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

#50

Post by jacquesm »

chengmi wrote: post #45
jacquesm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's a difficult one: Either PG is right and nobody needs search, then we'll find it doesn't matter, or I'm right and we do need search and then the searchyc guys will need to beef up their system. But then at least we do know for sure we need that search.

As it stands, SearchYC doesn't get enough daily uniques to justify beefing up the system. Frankly, SearchYC was an experiment in how quickly I could learn a new technology (RoR) and build a system. I was completely expecting someone to come along a few months later to make SearchYC obsolete. It's been 2.5 years, and I don't think that's happened yet.

If you got a lot more traffic because YC would anoint you the 'official' YC search engine would you be able to handle it?

Would you commit to beefing up the system to whatever it took?

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