Please tell us what features you'd like in news.ycombinator • Hacker News Board

Re: Please tell us what features you'd like in news.ycombinator

#461

Post by gregwebs » Sun, Feb 21, 2010, 2:14 AM UTC

Make users more like people (to make discussions better).

Thought of this after watching a recent frontline: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/view/

One interesting thing that the creator of Second Life said: when discussions happen in a virtual work they are much more like real interactions. So if all HN discussions moved to 2nd life, that would help solve some of the issues with trolling, etc. This then begs the question: would other less drastic measures like avatars help?

Re: Please tell us what features you'd like in news.ycombinator

#462

Post by abc3 » Wed, Feb 24, 2010, 3:23 PM UTC

A visual cue that indicates when a follow-up comment on a post is from the post's author.

For example, when someone on Hacker News links to a post by Mark Pilgrim, I'd like to be able to scan the comments to see if Mark has contributed to the comment thread.

Re: Please tell us what features you'd like in news.ycombinator

#463

Post by presto10 » Sun, Mar 07, 2010, 6:35 PM UTC

Please consider making it possible to change your username.

Re: Please tell us what features you'd like in news.ycombinator

#464

Post by Confusion » Tue, Mar 09, 2010, 8:21 AM UTC

Perhaps not really a feature, but: yesterday I submitted http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1173147 It sank pretty quickly due to a lack of upvotes. However, despite its low position, it did accumulate 9 upvotes over the last day, which I guess are due to seperate submissions of the same story. From this, I propose the algorithm that decides what appears on the frontpage can use tweaking to weigh submissions heavier than upvotes (perhaps it does?). If this story was truly submitted 10 times, perhaps it deserves a higher position?

Re: Please tell us what features you'd like in news.ycombinator

#465

Post by soyelmango » Thu, Mar 11, 2010, 9:05 AM UTC

I'd like to log in with my registered email address and be able to change my username. And a long shot: Because I can't change my username, I've got a few accounts here under the same email address - I'd like to be able to merge those accounts to preserve my saved posts and points.

Re: Please tell us what features you'd like in news.ycombinator

#466

Post by idoh » Thu, Mar 11, 2010, 9:20 PM UTC

Hello PG, when you reply to a comment, can you put the focus onto the text box? that way you can start typing without having to click into the text box first? It would take about 2-3 lines of javascript to make this happen.

Re: Please tell us what features you'd like in news.ycombinator

#467

Post by stevederico » Sun, Mar 14, 2010, 9:42 PM UTC

Comment Ranking filter. Rank by most upvotes, date ascending or date descending.

Re: Please tell us what features you'd like in news.ycombinator

#468

Post by stevederico » Mon, Mar 15, 2010, 4:27 AM UTC

Podcast/Justin.tv covering top articles and ask HNs of the week, Showcases new developments or ideas from the community, interviews past/present YC founders.

Re: Please tell us what features you'd like in news.ycombinator

#469

Post by nitrogen » Thu, Mar 18, 2010, 4:08 AM UTC

Suggestion: make URLs in negative-voted posts light gray like the text (they are still black and can make a -4 post stand out visually).

Re: Please tell us what features you'd like in news.ycombinator

#470

Post by pixelcort » Fri, Mar 19, 2010, 4:21 PM UTC

http://news.ycombinator.com/openid_merge is coming back as Unknown. This is apparently the point where one would presumably link an OpenID to an existing HN username.