[HN Gopher] Show HN: Ten seconds to ponder if a thread is worth it
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Show HN: Ten seconds to ponder if a thread is worth it
Author : eat_veggies
Score : 73 points
Date : 2021-03-01 18:46 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gist.github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gist.github.com)
| bentcorner wrote:
| I opened this expecting some heuristics to use to help decide if
| it was worth doing some work on a different thread.
| ahub wrote:
| I think the author wants to prevent his/her compulsive clicking
| of links. I can relate to that, as I tend to open a lot of
| content without second-guessing.
|
| I accidentaly discover a different method to the same effect. To
| circumvent censorship in my country, I began regularly using a
| tor proxy. (Not the tor browser, just my regular browser setup).
| Of course everything became slow, reminding me of the good old
| 56k days. At first I was annoyed, it's not only slow, it's also
| full of CAPTCHAs. Most websites using cloudflare ask me to "prove
| I'm human". Annoying as it might seem, it's my ultimate "anti-
| compulsive-click" tool.
|
| If I don't bother filling a captcha and/or waiting a few (~10-20)
| seconds to read something online, is it worth it ?
|
| Most likelly not.
| arafa wrote:
| Another accidental method I found was leaving Javascript off by
| default. It's a bit more granular since websites experience
| different levels of breakage (if any) without JS. But it makes
| me similarly thoughtful. I can't count the amount of times I've
| clicked back on personal blogs (via HN) that don't load because
| of JS. And IEEE. It seems to be a good filter so far.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _To circumvent censorship in my country, I began regularly
| using a tor proxy._
|
| Depending on your ISP's firewall implementation, you may not
| need to use a Tor proxy or a VPN. https://getintra.org (and its
| forks) should be more than enough [0].
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24612486
| ve55 wrote:
| I've done this as well, and it's often made me happier and
| saved me time.
|
| It made me realize most links that I open I don't care to read,
| and often just the headline or a few sentences about a topic is
| the best signal/noise ratio and use of my time. This is
| especially the case for most news/politics/event articles
| (although in that case I'd not even bother with most headlines
| either).
| ip26 wrote:
| My version of this has been saving news to a reader. I read
| very few articles in the moment, it's all pushed onto the
| reader stack.
|
| The stack gets a little out of control, but it also makes it
| easier to make reading news a discrete time chunk of acceptable
| duration. It also makes clickbait a waste of effort.
|
| Maybe it's like the news version of sleeping on a purchasing
| decision. See if you still care about it tomorrow.
| input_sh wrote:
| I do pretty much the same. If it takes longer than like 10-20
| seconds to get through, it goes straight into Pocket.
|
| I then pick up my Kobo reader (built in Pocket support) which
| is usually on my living room desk when I feel like reading a
| thing or two. Usually during morning coffees or over the
| weekend.
|
| Two problems I have: I can't highlight stuff on Kobo, so I
| have to awkwardly highlight them on my phone when I find
| something interesting, and I have used this method for many,
| _many_ years to the point where it 'd take me months of non-
| stop reading to go through all of them. And I remove like 70%
| of the saved articles within the first week.
| outime wrote:
| We're all getting used to insta-load but around half of us will
| leave a site if it takes more than ~3 seconds to load about
| half of the people give up and the majority won't come back
| [1]. It's that dramatic, and I've seen myself doing it - or
| well, I just fallback to Google cache/web archive.
|
| [1] https://www.hostingmanual.net/3-seconds-how-website-speed-
| im...
| thotsBgone wrote:
| I have often thought something like this would work much better
| than those extensions which block websites outright. Sure, you
| can watch that youtube video, but you have to wait 10 seconds
| first.
| k__ wrote:
| I expected a sentiment analysis that marks drama threads.
| dominotw wrote:
| wouldn't that simply be comment_count > N ?
| Terretta wrote:
| Drama (controversy) may be more like replies per parent.
|
| Flame wars, depth per parent.
|
| Engagement, top level comments per upvote.
| samatman wrote:
| If I were designing a heuristic for this, it would be based
| on a threshold of flagged comments and the existence of
| more than one post from dang.
| Terretta wrote:
| Well sure, easy mode if you add in the dang AI.
| Kiro wrote:
| People talk about the attention economy and how Facebook is
| optimized for mindless scrolling but HN is by far the worst drug
| for me. I get serious FOMO from potentially missing out on a good
| thread so not sure this would actually help but I like the idea
| nonetheless.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Not to mention that the threads shift up and down due to votes
| in-between clicking on Page 2 and further, so really the only
| way not to lose sight of the threads you want to read is to
| open them _all_ as tabs at once, and then be left with 20-30
| items that are of marginal interest.
|
| HN to me feels like being nerd sniped[0] in perpetuity. I've
| only myself to blame for this, ofc, but that doesn't change how
| strong the draw is.
|
| LeechBlock NG has helped me somewhat. I still waste time on HN,
| though not as greatly as before. That override button makes me
| think: am I willing to burn another 10 minute block of
| productive time this day on doom-scrolling Reddit and HN?
|
| [0] https://xkcd.com/356/
| dschuessler wrote:
| I combat this problem with a combination of LeechBlock NG
| (https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/leechblock-ng/)
| and hckrnews.com. The former prevents me from visiting Hacker
| News before 8 o'clock. The latter records every link that made
| it to the front page so that the possibility of FOMO is
| properly addressed.
| trhaynes wrote:
| Knowing that hckrnews.com exists helps me, too. I use HN's
| built-in "no procrastination" feature to prevent checking too
| often throughout the day,
| johnfn wrote:
| I'd love this to be part of the site (perhaps as something
| similar to the noprocrast setting).
|
| While I'm asking for things, I'd also love upvotes to be
| restricted - e.g. the button to upvote doesn't appear until after
| you've clicked on the upvote button and a minute goes by (or so).
| I feel like this would do a lot to cut down on
| clickbaity/incendiary articles without much substance, and
| emphasize longer-form content.
| vemv wrote:
| Related, I really wish threads had a tooltip with a tldr of its
| contents. Sometimes it's impossible to tell what the article
| talks about without clicking on it.
|
| Which can be subtly exploited by using clickbaity titles, or
| 'fixed' by using editorialized titles (which also are a problem
| on their own).
| ldbooth wrote:
| If I keep finding myself in black holes - the real problem is I
| am not busy enough, and being busier will not only solve this but
| several other things one can't predict.
| ldbooth wrote:
| okay I see your point after falling into a black hole again.
| yesenadam wrote:
| The noprocrast setting on your HN profile can be useful. Having
| e.g. 10 or 20 minutes a day max on HN tends to concentrate the
| mind wonderfully.
| akurzon wrote:
| I think I'll try this out, I definitely have a bad habit of
| opening up multiple tabs of comments at a time. It's pretty much
| just muscle memory now. And that's a tasteful loading bar. Thanks
| for sharing!
| qqii wrote:
| Can you explain your motivation behind this?
|
| If you're looking to evaluate if a thread is worth your time
| would it not be better to skim the article and comments? What
| benifit is there in making a decision with restricted
| information?
| usmannk wrote:
| I think it's to stop the HN equivalent of "doomscrolling" or
| mindlessly wasting time. If you have to wait then there's time
| to think, ok should I even be doing this right now?
| disillusioned wrote:
| I do the inverse of this: scan the front page, middle click
| to open the most promising articles into new tabs, group them
| and save them for later, and then skim/read the ones that
| interest me.
|
| HN is probably one of the most varied, important bits of my
| media diet. Then I'll circle back for any discussions I think
| might be interesting.
| Zancarius wrote:
| I do the same thing. Middle click -> open up a ton of tabs
| -> read later or forget about them and have them persist in
| the long forgotten vestiges of my bookmarks. Most of them
| never get read.
|
| Do you also do that thing where you think of an HN headline
| some weeks later and go "Oh! I think I saw something about
| that?" then dig through your history, find it, and _then_
| read it?
| clairity wrote:
| "Do you also do that thing where you think of an HN
| headline some weeks later and go 'Oh! I think I saw
| something about that?' then dig through your history,
| find it, and _then_ read it?"
|
| i do this all the time, with websites of all sorts. i
| really wish the browser would allow me to search the
| _text_ of all the sites i've ever visited (realizing
| that's a big ask), as regular internet search (ddg) often
| doesn't return the page i dimly (and perhaps incorrectly)
| remember.
| Terretta wrote:
| Certainly showing 3 - 5 "summarization" bullets on mouseover
| would be more useful.
|
| Rather more difficult to do in a CSS style sheet though, so
| perhaps this is the right ROI.
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(page generated 2021-03-01 23:01 UTC)