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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

#121

Post by segfaultbuserr »

dang wrote: post #119
segfaultbuserr wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of it like a video game, which often gives people surprises by unlocking the hidden feature based on unclear conditions. I was really impressed was I discovered it for the first time. This feature is more of a Easter egg than a practical option. If you really NEED to change the color, you can simply load a custom CSS in your web browser.

Maybe we should add another. Any ideas?

We really should have more Easter eggs.

I was disappointed that nothing unusual happened to my "past-life account" with 1000+ karma.

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

#122

Post by dang »

ggm wrote: 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

That may actually happen someday, because I wrote an HN client to help with moderation and it has all kinds of keyboard shortcuts for navigation. It's on my list to publish the navigation parts.

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

#123

Post by [deleted] »

slg wrote: post #59

The ranking algorithm also isn't some simple votes/time metric. The flame war detector for posts is an example that is mentioned, but there are also some undocumented complexities on the comment side too. An obvious one is brand new comments get a huge boost in the rankings compared to older comments. It is pretty common to see a few minute old comment at the top of a lot of comment threads. It also seems user reputa…

[deleted]

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

#124

Post by dang »

Noumenon72 wrote: post #79
UweSchmidt wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got any examples for well-written grey posts? Most downvoted posts are not that amazing.

I have almost a conditioned reflex for upvoting grey posts at this point. The people who downvote are a weird crew that don't seem to judge by Reddit's "contributes to the discussion" standard.

HN doesn't have that standard. Not being Reddit doesn't make you weird.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314

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

#125

Post by ggm »

dang wrote: post #122
ggm wrote: 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

That may actually happen someday, because I wrote an HN client to help with moderation and it has all kinds of keyboard shortcuts for navigation. It's on my list to publish the navigation parts.

This would make me very happy.

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

#126

Post by ggm »

nyx_ wrote: post #98
ggm wrote: 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

Thank you. TIL. Given about 5-10 web pages I badly miss the google default steerage choices for gmail/photos &c, this may well fill a hole in my life.

So .. thank you kind HN reader.

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

#127

Post by dang »

ggm wrote: post #125
dang wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may actually happen someday, because I wrote an HN client to help with moderation and it has all kinds of keyboard shortcuts for navigation. It's on my list to publish the navigation parts.

This would make me very happy.

You'd be welcome to bug us about it periodically at hn@ycombinator.com. The reason it's not done yet is that we have limited resources for working on software and there are always much higher-priority things to get done. But I really would like to get it out someday. Also, it's written in Arc using an Arc-to-JS implementation, which is fun.

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

#128

Post by krapp »

dang wrote: post #124
Noumenon72 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have almost a conditioned reflex for upvoting grey posts at this point. The people who downvote are a weird crew that don't seem to judge by Reddit's "contributes to the discussion" standard.

HN doesn't have that standard. Not being Reddit doesn't make you weird. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314

Reddit's standard seems to contribute more directly to quality discussion than the haphazard result of pg's opinion, authoritative though it may be.

When voting is applied with no real guidelines or standards, it ceases to be an effective filter for anything but the immediate emotional zeitgeist, and this goes against HN's stated purpose of bias towards quality.

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

#129

Post by ggm »

dang wrote: post #127
ggm wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would make me very happy.

You'd be welcome to bug us about it periodically at hn@ycombinator.com. The reason it's not done yet is that we have limited resources for working on software and there are always much higher-priority things to get done. But I really would like to get it out someday. Also, it's written in Arc using an Arc-to-JS implementation, which is fun.

I think I last bugged you about it, 2ish years ago. So, I'm happy you've got it on the backlog.

I think using front languages which "compile" to JS is a fine foonly thing to do. ghc-js and elm come to mind.

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

#130

Post by dang »

krapp wrote: post #128
dang wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN doesn't have that standard. Not being Reddit doesn't make you weird. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314

Reddit's standard seems to contribute more directly to quality discussion than the haphazard result of pg's opinion, authoritative though it may be. When voting is applied with no real guidelines or standards, it ceases to be an effective filter for anything but the immediate emotional zeitgeist, and this goes against HN's stated purpose of bias towards quality.

Pretty much all of HN is the "haphazard result of pg's opinion", no? That is an interesting way to describe creating something. I see no reason to mess with how HN has always worked, at least not where there's no obvious problem.

I know people have strong feelings about downvotes, but those feelings are rooted in something other than discussion quality. Everything I think I know about how to keep HN from deteriorating too badly tells me that the downvotes here serve a critical purpose—even though they're a crude weapon with a lot of downside.

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