Most-favorited Hacker News posts • Hacker News Board

Re: Most-favorited Hacker News posts

#121

Post by AlchemistCamp » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 2:49 PM UTC

oefrha wrote: post #88

tlarkworthy wrote: post #50

The fact that favorites are a hidden feature and hard to use made me think the quality of the curation signal would be even better. Also the fact the HackerNews API, Angolia don't expose this feature made it even more interesting to aggregate. Hope you like it and as it was a pain gathering the data, I put it in an observable notebook so hopefully we don't need to gather that dataset again for a while. The learning r…

When I emailed mods to argue that the 'web' button should be restored[1], I was told by dang that he was actually considering removing 'hide' and 'favorite' too, because people rarely use those features. (I routinely use 'hide' but hardly ever use 'favorite'.) Btw, 'favorite' may be lesser-known but it's certainly not hard to use. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23762479

I've been missing "web" quite a bit and was just considering emailing him to ask if it was now okay to flag links to inaccessible content!

Re: Most-favorited Hacker News posts

#122

Post by ryandrake » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 2:49 PM UTC

debaserab2 wrote: post #114

krapp wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> was told by dang that he was actually considering removing 'hide' and 'favorite' too, because people rarely use those features. That's something you do with a corporate site where you're constantly A/B testing and aggressively removing features that don't generate revenue. Hacker News isn't (or shouldn't be) run that way. It's perfectly fine to have features only a few people use.

Removing features to decrease maintenance overhead is also a pretty legit reason, and you don't have to be a corporate site for that to apply to you (I would say it applies even more to a hobby site). That said, I really hope favorites isn't removed because even though I only discovered the feature a few years ago, I really cherish the comments I've favorited.

Also, “it’s not used frequently” is a really bad reason to remove a feature. Frequency of use is not a proxy for usefulness. I don’t use my backup software’s “restore” feature often but that doesn’t mean it should be removed.

Re: Most-favorited Hacker News posts

#123

Post by remram » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 2:50 PM UTC

asutekku wrote: post #2

Honestly, I’m kind of surprised more people do not use the favorite feature to bookmark interesting links / posts. 96 favorites on the most favorited seems really low.

Why would I use this instead of my browser's bookmarks, which have tags, folders, and search, and are less likely to be discontinued by the product storing them?

Re: Most-favorited Hacker News posts

#124

Post by AlchemistCamp » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 2:51 PM UTC

debaserab2 wrote: post #114

krapp wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> was told by dang that he was actually considering removing 'hide' and 'favorite' too, because people rarely use those features. That's something you do with a corporate site where you're constantly A/B testing and aggressively removing features that don't generate revenue. Hacker News isn't (or shouldn't be) run that way. It's perfectly fine to have features only a few people use.

Removing features to decrease maintenance overhead is also a pretty legit reason, and you don't have to be a corporate site for that to apply to you (I would say it applies even more to a hobby site). That said, I really hope favorites isn't removed because even though I only discovered the feature a few years ago, I really cherish the comments I've favorited.

What's the maintenance cost of the web, save and hide buttons now that they've been implemented and working for years?

Re: Most-favorited Hacker News posts

#125

Post by stephenitis » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 2:51 PM UTC

asutekku wrote: post #2

Honestly, I’m kind of surprised more people do not use the favorite feature to bookmark interesting links / posts. 96 favorites on the most favorited seems really low.

Yeah I never noticed it

Re: Most-favorited Hacker News posts

#126

Post by remram » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 2:53 PM UTC

grugagag wrote: post #83

bad_user wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments have links that can be bookmarked too, under that timestamp, here's yours: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24352253

I didn't know that comments can be bookmarked, that's a very unusual and neat feature

Unusual? Reddit and Twitter have it, GitHub/GitLab have anchors too, which platform lacks comment links?

Re: Most-favorited Hacker News posts

#127

Post by geerlingguy » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 2:53 PM UTC

I... never knew “favorite” was a feature on hacker news until I read this post.

Now I see the “favorite” link right above this comment form. I guess I never even noticed the links on the post page are different than when browsing stories on the front page. Now I’m noticing there’s also a “hide” link!

Re: Most-favorited Hacker News posts

#128

Post by krapp » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 2:54 PM UTC

debaserab2 wrote: post #114

krapp wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> was told by dang that he was actually considering removing 'hide' and 'favorite' too, because people rarely use those features. That's something you do with a corporate site where you're constantly A/B testing and aggressively removing features that don't generate revenue. Hacker News isn't (or shouldn't be) run that way. It's perfectly fine to have features only a few people use.

Removing features to decrease maintenance overhead is also a pretty legit reason, and you don't have to be a corporate site for that to apply to you (I would say it applies even more to a hobby site). That said, I really hope favorites isn't removed because even though I only discovered the feature a few years ago, I really cherish the comments I've favorited.

"decreasing maintenance overhead" could apply equally to every feature on the site, though. How often do people use polls?

Re: Most-favorited Hacker News posts

#129

Post by snowwrestler » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 2:57 PM UTC

This is cool. I think it would be helpful if the list showed the date of each post as well. That’s an important signal for me when deciding which links to explore in a curated list.

Re: Most-favorited Hacker News posts

#130

Post by TheRealPomax » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 2:58 PM UTC

tlarkworthy wrote: post #50

The fact that favorites are a hidden feature and hard to use made me think the quality of the curation signal would be even better. Also the fact the HackerNews API, Angolia don't expose this feature made it even more interesting to aggregate. Hope you like it and as it was a pain gathering the data, I put it in an observable notebook so hopefully we don't need to gather that dataset again for a while. The learning r…

it's nice that HN at least acknowledges that whether you like something or not is something that only matters for you, and no one else, rather than pretending there is value in centering a surfacing algorithm around it.