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A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors

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Re: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re. comments lingering high based on account karma, I've suggested the same but dang says not. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16441687 Perhaps such remarks are retaining position by their own merit. An experienced or high quality commentator may simply produce remarks that are better received.

Experienced or high quality commentators are significantly more likely to create comments that other Hacker News users are willing to upvote–I'm not sure that this translates to higher quality material, though.

Yes I chose my words carefully. Notwithstanding which, this forum does enjoy a higher SNR than many others and the crowdsourced quality measure certainly plays a part.

Re: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors

#92
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is possible to lose vouching privileges if the mods feel the comments you're vouching for are uncivil or do more harm than good.

That's also possible. Don't think I have vouched for something that shouldn't, but I would say that, wouldn't I? :) So have others noticed a change, or did I accidentally flag my own account somehow?

>or did I accidentally flag my own account somehow?

If you did, the mods won't necessarily tell you, you'll just have to email them and find out.

Re: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors

#93

>Likewise, topics around diversity and inclusion in tech have gained lots of visibility over the past few years. However, despite these discussions not being off-topic, they tend to be flagged to death by users regardless. Time to see see if mentioning this very clear behavior gets this link flagged/killed. Privileged people usually don't like having their privilege challenged.

It's less about privilege being challenged, more about "inclusion" being used to justify just about anything and often going too far. Here's a comment in an official nodejs repository that got edited by a contributor to correct a pronoun on somebody else's post: https://github.com/nodejs/package-maintenance/issues/77#issu... (click the "edited" dropdown) That you yourself come right out the gate guns blazing about "p…

This reminds me of the whole "master/slave" nonsense. Past HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17954823

Re: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors

#94
This isn't the best place to do feature requests and I also strongly believe the more features HN gets the worserer it will become. But. anyway, my current top fave is this:

implement some kind of keystroke scheme to to basic page steerage in emacs/vi mode respecting ways, and ? to show what the keystrokes are

Re: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors

#97
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what to say other than there is something going on behinds the scenes that can be seen in play in this thread. My comment is 1 minute newer than another comment in this thread. My comment currently hasn't been upvoted yet is several spots higher in the thread. I tried upvoting the other comment and mine was still higher. My account has almost twice the karma and is older than the author of the other comm…

I upvoted your remark and it immediately dropped down the page. Evidently I am typhoid mary for unfavourable comment ranking... Joking aside, dang specifically denies there is a comment ranking adjustment due to account karma, but not other factors (such as account age, an unseen reputation field, your IP address/choice of web browser/#{1/user.name.size}). We are the blind to Hacker News's elephant in this.

Haha, you are right. I think there is clear proof that it is more complicated than a simple ranking involving points and time. Anything beyond that is mere speculation without clarification from the mods.

Re: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors

#98
post #94

This isn't the best place to do feature requests and I also strongly believe the more features HN gets the worserer it will become. But. anyway, my current top fave is this: implement some kind of keystroke scheme to to basic page steerage in emacs/vi mode respecting ways, and ? to show what the keystrokes are

I really like cVim[0] for this. Think there's a couple of extensions for Firefox that accomplish the same thing.

[0] https://github.com/1995eaton/chromium-vim

Re: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors

#99
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this has less to do with respect and more to do with detracting from the original discussion e.g. source code integrity having nothing to do with human genitalia.

Gender is also not about genitalia, fwiw. I see that the author of the edited comment got defensive about it and went on an irrelevant rant about singular they. Wish people like that would grow up a bit.

Eh, having others edit comments attributed to us is weird, regardless of the context, I can see why people would get defensive. At least SO shows the editing user pretty clearly, on Github it's almost invisible.

Re: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors

#100

I don't believe this is an actual feature, but I've noticed a trend that I've been calling "twos", where, at any given moment, a particular subject (present as a word or phrase in the article's title) will show up twice on the front page. Funnily enough, currently the "twos" subject is "Hacker News", with this article and "What I've Learned from Hacker News" both being present in the front page at the same time.

Very often this is readers following some link, seeing other links from that page and submitting them.

Also often links that get mentioned in the comments of the original one.
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