Ask HN: What is your most wanted HN feature?

Bookmarking, as opposed to the existing "favorite submissions" feature?

I don't learn as much about commenters over time as I'd like to. I'd like to know comments on the page are from people I have consistently good or consistently bad experiences with. (Diving in some, this is explicitly less about total votes for a person (which is biased by who posts the most) and is more about specific moments where I see something really brilliant and striking or something really bitter and crass.)

I'd also like forgiveness. I get rate limited for some perceived incivility & that's it, years down the road I'm still rate limited. Only the bad things weigh against us. I got told on a previous account there were warnings against me (mainly for defending the web against some really nasty mean people, trying to keep some spark akindle, imo), but 2 out of 3 had been 4+ years ago. And I still felt wronged by the warnings in the first place, that I was fighting monstrous cruel negativity, trying to allow some good in. It feels absurd that the bad is allowed to keep adding up forever but the good counts for nothing; we need some forces beyond just the fall to move us.

A /bestcomments variation with curating features like following and muting.

HN seriously needs more "social" engagement.

There should be an always on, all user "chat" beside every page. This will allow the finer co-ordination of reactions to WrongThink and deviancy. When "VR" comes around again, the chat can be made into a 3d avatar environment.

There needs to be cryptocurrency integration. Make "karma" a coin. People will fear down votes more when the cost is real. Could help fund the site too: sell the opportunity to repeatedly down vote thing you don't like.

The lack of "AI" is shocking: there should be a pre-trained model for every user already. Engagement will go up if we remove the friction of the intimidating blank "reply" box; by having it already filled in with the model's suggestions for your comment on a article.

Maybe a strict "real names" policy, too. anonymity encourages independence, playful hypothetical arguments, and Nikki Halley doesn't like it. If we wanna keep the blind nature we could replace usernames with social security numbers. Opaque enough to ignore if you want, but still encouraging Responsible Commenting.

After all of these changes, HN should be ready to become the only possible destination for discussion on the net; dominating all other media. At that point, it will be possible to fire dang, and begin the "monetization" phase of the plan.

(edit: screaming sarcasm throughout)

Account/Comment deletion