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To Paul Graham

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: To Paul Graham

#31

Post by seanalltogether »

edw519 wrote: post #16

I imagine hn owes a lot of success to its simplicity. I was always confused by slashdot's filters and the threads in almost every other forum, with Post #18 replying to Post #7 and Post #27 replying to Post #3, but only 10 posts visible per page. Busy people don't have the time to wade through stuff like that, so all you're left with are the trolls. hn's nested threads built with are so simple that they're brilliant.…

hn owes a lot of it's success to it's small audience. simply put, this site would go down in flames fast if it attracted a larger crowd. all of the complex facilities of a site like digg or slashdot come from trying bubble up relevant content to a wide audience

Re: To Paul Graham

#32

Post by gte910h »

alanh wrote: post #20
jokermatt999 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see why they are permanent; it makes your votes feel like they mean something. But please, can we at least get an allotted number of "vote revokes" per week or something? I agree, it's too easy to misclick on an arrow on a touchscreen, and there's nothing that can be done.

Better & simpler solution: Bigger buttons on touchscreen devices, preventing mis-clicks in the first place

Or just use links instead of arrows:

4 points by alanh 18 minutes ago | link | parent | flag | upvote | downvote

Re: To Paul Graham

#33

Post by Ixiaus »

manish wrote: post #22

One thing that is different here is that this site does not need to generate (ad/any) revenue, so many of the irritating things that will be common in other forums will be absent here.

What's interesting, is that Hacker News does generate revenue in a very indirect way. By cultivating a hacker community around his early stage investment company he is ensuring there will always be top-notch thinkers and doers participating in the niche he has created. Whether this was intentional or not, I don't know, but it works well for both parties: he has a thriving community of leading edge people, and the people have a leading edge outlet. It's a well balanced form of co-creation.

Re: To Paul Graham

#34

Post by stcredzero »

thenduks wrote: post #17
gte910h wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but they need to make votes non permanent. It's a crapshoot if you'll hit the up or down arrow on a mobile device or iPad when you try to rate stuff.

Agreed. I'd be ok with, after voting, a new link appended to the status line (1 point by so-and-so...) that just undoes your vote. Even if that is permanent (eg, can't vote again).

Call it "abstain."

Re: To Paul Graham

#35

Post by ErrantX »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #28
drlisp wrote: post #19

This level of ass kissing makes me want to puke.

I have to agree, actually. More to the point, this submission violates both the written and unspoken rules of submissions here: "Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something", and the unspoken rule that content-less submissions are generally frowned upon. This is something that could have been equally effective as a brief email to pg. As the current top-ranked post here, it's kind of ... masturbatory.

Agreed as well; HN has a "fourth wall" in a sense - meta posts are discouraged where possible.

This is the very definition of a meta post (and from a personal perspective I dislike the fawning tone too)

Re: To Paul Graham

#36

Post by gte910h »

lionhearted wrote: post #23
gte910h wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but they need to make votes non permanent. It's a crapshoot if you'll hit the up or down arrow on a mobile device or iPad when you try to rate stuff.

I like the permanence, because sometimes I upvote an insightful comment, then read an insightful reply and upvote it too. I think if votes were impermanent, I might be more tempted to null or downvote the original point if the second one is better - not because of evil, just because of the natural human desire to be very consistent. So I like the permanence thing... ...but I understand the misclicks. Maybe an "undo"…

" I might be more tempted to null or downvote the original point if the second one is better"

Can't both comments be good?

Re: To Paul Graham

#37

Post by tezza »

alanh wrote: post #20
jokermatt999 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see why they are permanent; it makes your votes feel like they mean something. But please, can we at least get an allotted number of "vote revokes" per week or something? I agree, it's too easy to misclick on an arrow on a touchscreen, and there's nothing that can be done.

Better & simpler solution: Bigger buttons on touchscreen devices, preventing mis-clicks in the first place

I've often thought the same.

This should be easy as a greasemonkey script to save other people having to make changes to support it.

---------------

EDIT: Out of curiosity I made up a javascript bookmarklet that seems to do the trick... upsize all the page's upvotes to 30x30

  javascript:{im=document.images;iml=im.length;for(i=0;i
Cut and paste that into your browser URL bar, or bookmark etc. It's easy to validate by eye, for the worried

Re: To Paul Graham

#38

Post by petercooper »

edw519 wrote: post #16

I imagine hn owes a lot of success to its simplicity. I was always confused by slashdot's filters and the threads in almost every other forum, with Post #18 replying to Post #7 and Post #27 replying to Post #3, but only 10 posts visible per page. Busy people don't have the time to wade through stuff like that, so all you're left with are the trolls. hn's nested threads built with are so simple that they're brilliant.…

hn's nested threads built with are so simple that they're brilliant. No horizontal scrolling, no flipping between pages, just click "reply" and you're good to go.

I don't think s should get undue praise. With s, the code would be easier to read mechanically (for manipulation with Greasemonkey, say) and even though there'd be a little more CSS, the page weight might be reduced a little (I'd have to make a mockup to be sure ;-))

Re: To Paul Graham

#39

Post by jacquesm »

If HN ever got as large as digg it would suffer from much of the problems that digg has, and you will not be able to remedy those by 'staying simple'.

Digg is complex because it is that large, and I think that if HN ever got that large it would start to suffer in much the same ways. HN is not so much a reflection of the person that built it (though that definitely does help) as it is a reflection of the people that participate here.

If and when HN gets to the size of digg and it retains its character it will have broken the pattern that any social news site has so far exhibited, until then the jury is out.

Re: To Paul Graham

#40

Post by omouse »

petercooper wrote: post #38
edw519 wrote: post #16

I imagine hn owes a lot of success to its simplicity. I was always confused by slashdot's filters and the threads in almost every other forum, with Post #18 replying to Post #7 and Post #27 replying to Post #3, but only 10 posts visible per page. Busy people don't have the time to wade through stuff like that, so all you're left with are the trolls. hn's nested threads built with are so simple that they're brilliant.…

hn's nested threads built with are so simple that they're brilliant. No horizontal scrolling, no flipping between pages, just click "reply" and you're good to go. I don't think s should get undue praise. With s, the code would be easier to read mechanically (for manipulation with Greasemonkey, say) and even though there'd be a little more CSS, the page weight might be reduced a little (I'd have to make a mockup to be…

^^ THIS. I love it when sites use DIVs because it makes much much easier to chop them up and display them the way I want to by using Stylish or GreaseMonkey. The browser is a customizable viewer...your stylesheet is just a suggestion.
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