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MIT License 2.3k stars 87 forks Star Notifications * Code * Issues 16 * Pull requests 5 * Actions * Projects 0 * Security * Insights More * Code * Issues * Pull requests * Actions * Projects * Security * Insights master Switch branches/tags [ ] Branches Tags Nothing to show {{ refName }} default View all branches Nothing to show {{ refName }} default View all tags 1 branch 0 tags Go to file Code Clone HTTPS GitHub CLI [https://github.com/m] Use Git or checkout with SVN using the web URL. [gh repo clone minima] Work fast with our official CLI. Learn more. * Open with GitHub Desktop * Download ZIP Launching GitHub Desktop If nothing happens, download GitHub Desktop and try again. Go back Launching GitHub Desktop If nothing happens, download GitHub Desktop and try again. Go back Launching Xcode If nothing happens, download Xcode and try again. Go back Launching Visual Studio If nothing happens, download the GitHub extension for Visual Studio and try again. Go back Latest commit @minimaxir minimaxir Update sctb status ... f368309 Apr 19, 2021 Update sctb status https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25055115 f368309 Git stats * 64 commits Files Permalink Failed to load latest commit information. Type Name Latest commit message Commit time images First draft completed Feb 22, 2018 LICENSE Update LICENSE Jan 3, 2020 README.md Update sctb status Apr 19, 2021 View code A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors Undocumented Features Moderators Downvoting Comments Flagging/ Vouching Setting Top Color Anti-Voting Manipulation Flame-War Detector Second-Chance Pool Edit/Delete Time Limits Comment Collapsing Shadowbanning Green Usernames Thin Black Bar Behaviors Implicit Downranking of Politics Implicit Downranking of Topics Around Diversity and Inclusion Implicit Downranking of Posts Without URLs Paywalls Perceived Favoritism Toward YC Companies Downranking of Tutorials Bonus Features Hacker News Classic Hacker News Wayback Hacker News on BigQuery Hacker News Lists All public URLS with user-generated content Official RSS feeds Hacker News Search Filter Out Posts Below X Points To-Do Maintainer README.md A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors Hacker News, a simple link aggregator owned and operated by Silicon Valley startup incubator Y Combinator, has had many positive effects on SV startups and engineers as a whole. On Hacker News, users receive Karma whenever another user upvotes a submission or comment they made, which incentives positive contributions to the community. However, in maintaining its simplicity, many new features and behaviors added over the years on Hacker News are not fully documented other than the occasional comments from staff. This list details some of the hidden norms about Hacker News not otherwise covered in the Guidelines and the FAQ, along with a few bonus features outside of typical HN usage. If there is anything missing/ incorrect from this list, feel free to file a GitHub issue/PR. This list has no affiliation with Hacker News, Y Combinator, or any YC-backed company. Table of Contents * A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors + Undocumented Features o Moderators o Downvoting Comments o Flagging/Vouching o Setting Top Color o Anti-Voting Manipulation o Flame-War Detector o Second-Chance Pool o Edit/Delete Time Limits o Comment Collapsing o Shadowbanning o Green Usernames o Thin Black Bar + Behaviors o Implicit Downranking of Politics o Implicit Downranking of Topics Around Diversity and Inclusion * Implicit Downranking of Posts Without URLs + Paywalls + Perceived Favoritism Toward YC Companies + Downranking of Tutorials + Bonus Features o Hacker News Classic o Hacker News Wayback o Hacker News on BigQuery o Hacker News Lists o All public URLS with user-generated content o Official RSS feeds o Hacker News Search o Filter Out Posts Below X Points + To-Do + Maintainer Undocumented Features Moderators Hacker News currently has one full time moderator: Dan Gackle (dang), and formerly Scott Bell (sctb). Their comment replies provide a pseudo-log of Hacker News moderation. Dan is very responsive when contacted at hn@ycombinator.com, and is the best option for resolving any issues on Hacker News. Downvoting Comments All comments start with a score of 1 point (but in order to prevent bandwagoning, the comment score is not visible to users other than the author). After users reach 501 Karma, they gain the ability to downvote another comment. Downvoted comments (i.e. with a score < 1) reduce their placement on the comment thread and will appear desaturated to other users deemphasize them. There is no upper limit on the score of a comment, but the minimum score is -4 points. You cannot downvote comments which are direct replies to your own comment, and you cannot downvote 24 hours after the original comment was made. [hn_downvot] Complaining about being downvoted is discouraged and usually results in even more downvotes. If the comment desaturation makes Hacker News difficult to read, you can click on the comment's timestamp to go to its page where the comment will no longer be faded, or you can install the CSS extension discussed here. Flagging/Vouching If a user has 31 Karma, they can flag submissions. Although submissions cannot be downvoted, flags act as a "super" downvote and enough flags will strongly reduce the rank of the submission, or kill it entirely (flagging is supposed to be used for submissions which break the site guidelines, but that isn't always the case in practice). A submission that's flagged to death will have a [flagged] tag. Comments behave similarly. A [dead] submission (that does not also show [flagged]) is killed by a moderator or by the software. They will only be shown to users who have showdead enabled in their profile. A submission can simultaneously be [flagged] and [dead]. If a user has 31 Karma, they can also vouch for a [dead] submission/ comment. A vouched submission/comment has its rank restored (and potentially improved as the vouch can counteract the effects of flags), but it can be [dead] again at which point it can't be re-vouched. Setting Top Color If a user has 251 Karma, they can set the color of the top bar in their profile settings. The default is #ff6600. Here's the complete set of colors users have set. Anti-Voting Manipulation The FAQ states "users should vote for a story because they personally find it intellectually interesting, not because someone has content to promote." Indeed, Hacker News utilizes a voting ring detector which will prevent caught submissions from hitting the front page. Due to sites like Product Hunt normalizing the asking for upvotes or other engagement via social media, the implicit asking of upvotes is also done for Hacker News, usually due to ignorance of the Hacker News rule against it. There are very few good reasons to draw attention to a Hacker News submission immediately after it has been submitted. One popular "trick" for obfuscating voting manipulation on Hacker News is to link to the Hacker News's /newest page of new submissions (instead of a direct link which would otherwise make voting manipulation obvious), and asking friends to upvote the submission from that page. This trick doesn't actually work. Flame-War Detector The FAQ notes that submission rank is impacted by "software which downweights overheated discussions." A good rule of thumb for this effect is when the number of comments on a submission exceeds its score. Moderators can overrule the downranking for appropriate, not-actually-a-flame-war discussions. Second-Chance Pool Moderators will sometimes rescue a post which didn't receive a lot of upvotes and reset the submission time on the post. (This is also one of the reasons why the FAQ discourages deleting submissions). Relatedly, moderators can also invite users via email to resubmit a post which didn't get much traction. Edit/Delete Time Limits After a post or comment is made, it can be edited by the author within 2 hours. A post/comment can be deleted by the author within those two hours, but only if it has no replies, in order to prevent discussion from being lost. In that case, the post/comment cannot be deleted (This can result in a fake [deleted] edit if a person wants to remove their comment in the limit but can't). Moderators can change the title of a submission at any time. If you need something deleted but you can't, you'll have to message hn@ycombinator.com. Comment Collapsing Comments can be collapsed by clicking the [+] icon to improve readability.[flagged] comments are sometimes collapsed by default, and moderators can set a comment to automatically be collapsed if necessary (e.g. meta-discussion). When a comment thread is collapsed, the [+x] number on the right indicates the total number of hidden children comments. Shadowbanning Both users and domains can be shadowbanned, where all posts/comments by that user / submissions to that domain will be instantly [dead] and cannot receive votes/comments (but can still be vouched). For accounts with a substantial history on Hacker News, moderators will give warnings before a ban. A good way to tell if a user/domain is banned is to either have another user with showdead enabled check for a series of [dead] content from that source, or view those submissions in Private Browsing/Incognito mode to see if they appear. [shadowban] Users/domains are usually shadowbanned for breaking HN rules/spam. If you feel you are unfairly shadowbanned, contact hn@ycombinator.com. Green Usernames Accounts which are less than 2 weeks old will appear with a green username. Thin Black Bar Occasionally, there will be a thin black bar at the top of the top bar, in memoriam of a significant figure in the tech/science community dying. A Hacker News submission about the death will usually be at the top of the front page at that time. Behaviors Implicit Downranking of Politics The Guidelines state that most political discussion is probably off-topic. However, the line between technology and politics is blurred, especially as of recently. Most tech related submissions with a hint of political partisanship will quickly be flagged to death by users (or die a slow death due to the inevitable flame war). Implicit Downranking of Topics Around Diversity and Inclusion Likewise, topics around diversity and inclusion in tech have gained lots of visibility over the past few years. However, despite these discussions not being off-topic, they tend to be flagged to death by users regardless. Unfortunately. (Moderators occasionally unkill such threads if they see it in time, although it rarely sticks). Implicit Downranking of Posts Without URLs Posts without URLs get penalized. If you post with a link and then add the text as a first comment you have more visibility. Paywalls Many news websites have started implementing a paywall for their content, which has caused conflict with Hacker News's "original source" rule. The web button next to submissions (that does a Google search for the given title) was partially intended to serve as a paywall workaround; however, recent changes to the paywall implementations have closed that loophole. As a result, submissions which link to paywalled sites tend to get many comments complaining about paywalls, which are off-topic. Perceived Favoritism Toward YC Companies YC Companies get two notable benefits on Hacker News; they can post jobs ads to the front page (which start off at Rank #6, cannot be voted/commented on, and have a fixed decay rate), and the ability to do a Launch HN when their startup launches out of a YC batch. Currently, there is no evidence that non-job submissions about a YC startup receive preferential treatment on the front page, or kill submissions critical of a YC startup. In fact, the moderators have stated that they explicitly avoid killing controversial YC posts when possible. Additionally, founders of YC companies see each other's usernames show up in orange, which -- although not an explicit benefit -- does allow fellow YC founders to immediately identify one another in discussions. Downranking of Tutorials HN submissions which are tutorials are downranked by moderators, as they gratify intellectual curiosity less. Bonus Features Hacker News Classic Hacker News allows people to use the old front page ranking algorithm , which only counts votes from early users. Early users are defined as being created before Feb 13, 2008. Hacker News Wayback Hacker News allows users to see what the front page looks like at any point in time. You can also do a wayback view for any user at their registration date by clicking their registration date in their profile. Hacker News on BigQuery If you want to gather large amount of Hacker News data for data analysis/machine learning, you should use the Hacker News dataset on BigQuery, which is updated daily and is much more pragmatic to use than manually scraping data from the Hacker News API. Hacker News Lists Hacker News maintains a list of useful links that allow for primitive filtering by certain types of content. These currently include: * /leaders -- View a list of users with the most karma * /front -- Filter front page submissions for a given day (e.g. 2016-06-20), ordered by time spent there * /best -- View the highest-voted recent links * /active -- View the links with the most active current discussions * /bestcomments -- List the highest-voted recent comments * /noobstories -- Show submissions from new accounts * /noobcomments -- List comments from new accounts The list on HN is currently missing these additional links: * /shownew -- View new Show HN links * /invited -- List of stories deemed interesting whose author was invited to repost in order to give them a second chance because they didn't catch interest at the first submit. More information here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20508960 * /launches -- View Launch HN posts from YC companies All public URLS with user-generated content * https://news.ycombinator.com/active * https://news.ycombinator.com/ask * https://news.ycombinator.com/best * https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments * https://news.ycombinator.com/classic * https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=[name] * https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=[name]&comment=t * https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=[day] * https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=[domain] * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=[id] * https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders * https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments * https://news.ycombinator.com/newest * https://news.ycombinator.com/noobcomments * https://news.ycombinator.com/noobstories * https://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=[score] * https://news.ycombinator.com/show * https://news.ycombinator.com/shownew * https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=[name] * https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=[name] * https://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors * https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=[name] Official RSS feeds * https://news.ycombinator.com/rss maps the frontpage. * https://news.ycombinator.com/showrss maps the Show HN page. Hacker News Search HN Search provides real-time full-text search for Hacker News. The web app is open source and powered by Algolia Search. Filter Out Posts Below X Points Want to catch-up on the best submissions over the last few days? Filter out all posts below a certain threshold with the over?points= 100 URL parameter. Examples: * over 100 points * over 200 points To-Do * Add more images/citations Maintainer Max Woolf (@minimaxir, minimaxir on Hacker News since 2012) Max has no affiliation with Hacker News, Y Combinator, or any YC-backed company. About Some of the hidden norms about Hacker News not otherwise covered in the Guidelines and the FAQ. 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