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Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

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Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#1

Post by pnt12 »

I follow posts from Hacker News using RSS, specifically https://hnrss.github.io/. It's great to consume posts at my own pace, but often a discussion is already dead when I participate.

It's an acceptable trade-off to me. But I wonder if others would also be interested in longer term discussions, and if there could be a way to have them. I thought about old forums, where old threads get bumped even if they were created years ago, and wondered if an hybrid model could be of interest to HN users.

Just a thought, I'm glad to have this site as is. Enjoy your Sunday everyone!

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#2

Post by indigodaddy »

Yes, I’ve often thought about this and wished there were some way to comment or revive an older discussion (although even the ability to comment on an >30 day discussion would hold little value inside HN— so it would need to be on some other site/forum).

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#3

Post by mromanuk »

indigodaddy wrote: post #2

Yes, I’ve often thought about this and wished there were some way to comment or revive an older discussion (although even the ability to comment on an >30 day discussion would hold little value inside HN— so it would need to be on some other site/forum).

Once I “designed” (on paper) a site to hold the meta discussion that happens on HN (and the internet) Many times there is a post about some piece of tech that reaches the top, followed up by tools, counter-ideas and new ideas building on the OP. Would be cool to trace those arcs across time and sites. As a user you could subscribe to the topic and make your comment

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#4

Post by LunarAurora »

IMO The best way to encourage this is through better (default) notifications. Or, this solution, for a platform with (tens) of thousands of users like HN, seems to automatically bring the specter of flame war (and intrusion and what else ?)

Is there a middle ground? I don't know. Edit : Daily/Weeky email (=slower) updates ?

As for old threads getting bumped, I think this is here equivalent to reposting the link (or re-asking). The old thread is almost "dead", but this is how it works "in real life discussions". So maybe that is not so bad. This is (as a call it) a (fast) stream model, where there is no (direct) accumulation : it is more twitter than Stack Overflow, more blogs than Wikis.

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#6

Post by O__________O »

To me, feels like more pressing issue would be to increase the ease of tagging, grouping, filtering, ranking, etc. Specifically, if you see existing coverage of a topic, it’s easy enough to revive it if you’re aware of how HN handles duplicate detection, but there’s no way to enforce users having to vote on comments with fresh eyes, hide comments that don’t have significant new sub-comments, discover significant new sub-comments, etc. Not to mention need for comment notifications and user responsiveness indicators. (Insert yet feature to support various user sub-use cases.)

All and all, reliving prior content and/or having a complex multifunctional interface would take away from the centrality and freshness of the home page experience.

I have wondered if dang would be open to allowing community to contribute to various approved feature additions; for example, better search, night mode, duplicate detection, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#8

Post by tyingq »

indigodaddy wrote: post #2

Yes, I’ve often thought about this and wished there were some way to comment or revive an older discussion (although even the ability to comment on an >30 day discussion would hold little value inside HN— so it would need to be on some other site/forum).

Managing spam would probably be challenging with every discussion open for comments.

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#9

Post by BlueTemplar »

LunarAurora wrote: post #4

IMO The best way to encourage this is through better (default) notifications. Or, this solution, for a platform with (tens) of thousands of users like HN, seems to automatically bring the specter of flame war (and intrusion and what else ?) Is there a middle ground? I don't know. Edit : Daily/Weeky email (=slower) updates ? As for old threads getting bumped, I think this is here equivalent to reposting the link (or r…

More chat than forum, with the exception that the comments stay on the Web instead of being hidden in the logs.

Forums and chats do have a solution to too big size : they can just split into others (or subforums) once the linear discussion becomes unmanageable.

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