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Refined Hacker News

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Re: Refined Hacker News

#31

Post by nkurz »

dang wrote: post #17
weinzierl wrote: post #2

If I had one wish for a feature of this extension to be made available on HN then it would be: "Easily favorite items and comments" I really like the favourites feature and use it a lot but the original UI makes it really hard.

What would make it better? Making the links work the same way as vote and flag? I'm a bit disappointed in that feature. The intention was for users to browse others' favorites to find interesting things to read, but I've not seen any indication that it worked out that way.

I agree: it should be a great addition, but it hasn't really been used to advantage. I think the main thing is that it needs some publicity: many people have never even noticed it. I've tried to use it for comments, but it's hard to be diligent if no use of it is ever made.

Another easy thing to do would be to add "Most Favorited" to the "Lists" page. Maybe it would be possible to show the number of favorites that a post or comment, with a reverse link to who has favorited it? Maybe add a notification to the creator of a comment that is favorited?

Possibly instead of just having a link on people's profile page, you could have a rolling list of the their most recent favorites? Or maybe for "person" discovery, you could automatically show who else has else favorited something after you do?

It seems like a good feature to start publicly experimenting with. Announce something, try it out for a week, then post a thread asking people what they think and how it can be improved.

Re: Refined Hacker News

#32

Post by memexy »

nkurz wrote: post #31
dang wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would make it better? Making the links work the same way as vote and flag? I'm a bit disappointed in that feature. The intention was for users to browse others' favorites to find interesting things to read, but I've not seen any indication that it worked out that way.

I agree: it should be a great addition, but it hasn't really been used to advantage. I think the main thing is that it needs some publicity: many people have never even noticed it. I've tried to use it for comments, but it's hard to be diligent if no use of it is ever made. Another easy thing to do would be to add "Most Favorited" to the "Lists" page. Maybe it would be possible to show the number of favorites that a…

I think adding "Most Favorited" would create a popularity contest and people would start looking for ways to game the system. I don't think favorites should have metrics associated with them because as soon as metrics are introduced people will try to optimize them.

Now that I know comments can be favorited I plan to bookmark comments that include useful reference information on topics I find interesting. Adding counters for how many times the comment was favorited wouldn't really help me with that use case because I doubt anyone else cares about collecting useful references so my favorites would never make it to the "most favorited" list. I personally don't care if I make it to the list or not but I'm certain some people would care and they would go around and start playing a popularity contest instead of looking for ways to favorite information that would be useful to them.

Re: Refined Hacker News

#33

Post by verylittlemeat »

thinkloop wrote: post #8

I've always wondered whether HN's "off-putting", "serious" interface (it is when you first see it) is an important factor in it not devolving into reddit.

Part of what has kept 4chan relatively unreddit (aside from less aggressive moderation) is knowing that you need something like 4chanx to make it usable.

Re: Refined Hacker News

#35

Post by mercer »

plibither8 wrote: post #18

Hi all, developer of Refined Hacker News here! Happy to see that it has been posted about again. I had initially posted it last year as a Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20173974 and my philosphy behind the extension (as mentioned in the my comment) is: > There are many extensions out there that add quite a few features to Hacker News, but they also always do one thing, which I have realised, is a slipp…

Pretty cool! I currently use Hacker News Enhancement Suite, made some tweaks via the Tampermonkey extension, and made a little "unread comments" and "tag user" feature. Looks like your extension might be able to replace some of that /and/ provide some cool new stuff!

Re: Refined Hacker News

#36

Post by mercer »

thinkloop wrote: post #8

I've always wondered whether HN's "off-putting", "serious" interface (it is when you first see it) is an important factor in it not devolving into reddit.

I've heard the same said about Reddit back when people were starting to migrate away from Digg.

Re: Refined Hacker News

#37

Post by weinzierl »

dang wrote: post #17
weinzierl wrote: post #2

If I had one wish for a feature of this extension to be made available on HN then it would be: "Easily favorite items and comments" I really like the favourites feature and use it a lot but the original UI makes it really hard.

What would make it better? Making the links work the same way as vote and flag? I'm a bit disappointed in that feature. The intention was for users to browse others' favorites to find interesting things to read, but I've not seen any indication that it worked out that way.

> "What would make it better?"

I'd like if it could be made possible to favorite directly in the thread, very much like the Refined Hacker News extension from the OP does. They have an animated screenshot that shows it very well[1].

Currently you first have to go to the comment (or story) itself (by clicking on the "xx minutes ago" or "xx hours ago" link) then click on "favorite" and finally go back to the thread to continue reading. For comments this adds friction and throws one out of context reading the thread. It is not too bad for stories - adding a story to favorites without having read some comments might not be something to be encouraged anyway.

> "Making the links work the same way as vote and flag?"

For me vote and flag work differently but flag and favorite work the same way. I can vote from a thread but cannot flag and favorite from a thread. I believe making favorite work like vote, in the sense that it can be done from the thread, would be a good thing with little downsides.

A minor improvement would be to not have "flag" and "favorite" links next to each other. On mobile it sometimes happens to me that I accidentally flag when I want to favorite. Given that flagging can be easily undone, this is not a big problem. In my opinion having something harmless like "parent" next to favorite would be better still.

> "The intention was for users to browse others' favorites to find interesting things to read [..]"

I do that and I find it valuable but I have to admit that it is not without problems. When I go through favorite lists I don't know why someone found an item interesting enough to add it. In reality there can be a whole bouquet of reasons, just as an example: For me as an English as a second language speaker, I sometimes add an item just because I find the phrasing interesting or I found a new to me and interesting use of a word. A reader of my list will probably not be aware of that and might draw the wrong conclusions about why I added the item to the list.

[1] https://raw.githubusercontent.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-...

Re: Refined Hacker News

#39

Post by captn3m0 »

memexy wrote: post #32
nkurz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree: it should be a great addition, but it hasn't really been used to advantage. I think the main thing is that it needs some publicity: many people have never even noticed it. I've tried to use it for comments, but it's hard to be diligent if no use of it is ever made. Another easy thing to do would be to add "Most Favorited" to the "Lists" page. Maybe it would be possible to show the number of favorites that a…

I think adding "Most Favorited" would create a popularity contest and people would start looking for ways to game the system. I don't think favorites should have metrics associated with them because as soon as metrics are introduced people will try to optimize them. Now that I know comments can be favorited I plan to bookmark comments that include useful reference information on topics I find interesting. Adding coun…

The [op] tags are really helpful.

Re: Refined Hacker News

#40

Post by captn3m0 »

koheripbal wrote: post #28
walterbell wrote: post #12

Feature request: color coding of usernames by reader-defined groups. User could specify group name/color via a CSS style with a common prefix. The extension would need to maintain a local database of usernames in each group. Enables visual highlighting of user comments and stories based on previous experience.

If there's an extension, maybe we could have a collaborative tagging system so we can see what other people have labelled the author as?

I have a related web extension idea that might be relevant: https://github.com/captn3m0/ideas/#-communities-browser-exte...
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