[HN Gopher] Tell HN: Thank you for being fast, almost ad-free an...
___________________________________________________________________
Tell HN: Thank you for being fast, almost ad-free and text-only
I've been visiting HN for more than a day. Almost daily. While
Reddit, Digg, FB, Twitter etc have jammed in more features and ads
looking like posts, HN has remained high signal to noise ratio.
Thank you for that. As I get older, my brain is unable to deal
with ads and too much flashy imagery/videos. HN is an oasis. My
only ask is to revisit CSS a bit and make it mobile friendly. I.e
slightly larger fonts and hit areas for expand/collapse. It's too
easy to hit the wrong button on a phone. Thank you for keeping HN
clean.
Author : nojvek
Score : 811 points
Date : 2023-01-24 15:57 UTC (7 hours ago)
| dewey wrote:
| I know what you are saying and I agree and am grateful for it's
| existance but keep in mind that HN is a marketing tool of a big
| VC fund.
|
| It has money to pay a moderator and doesn't need to directly make
| money from it by putting ads or tracking scripts up like other
| sites.
| mbil wrote:
| Yes, and there are often YC company job postings on the front
| page, which are technically ads.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| And there's a favicon so it's not text-only. /s
| dang wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34460478
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Appropriately motivated and principled patronage ... is a
| fairly good media model.
|
| Far superior to naked advertising. On par with public or
| membership sponsorship.
| mopsi wrote:
| People often say that the internet would die without
| intrusive ad tracking. HN is a pretty good example of the
| opposite, and there are many others. An electronics store I
| frequent hosts old-school electronics forum, a nearby youth
| hobby center hosts news and forums for scale model building,
| and so forth.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| The smaller your audience, the less likely you are to get
| trolls and just the general population of morons.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| True, though if that's your _starting_ cohort, or they
| _do_ move in in any significant way, You Now Are Having
| Troll Problem.
|
| Another element is that HN's audience is largely self-
| segmenting such that targeted advertising would
| _probably_ offer little additional benefit. The startup-
| founder and tech-worker pools are already global and are
| largely automatically segmented (filtered for) by HN 's
| content, site dynamics, and reputation.
| dang wrote:
| > It has money to pay a moderator and doesn't need to directly
| make money from it
|
| Yes, that's the sweet spot that HN ended up in, kind of by
| historical accident, and it seems to be a local optimum.
|
| If we had to make money from HN in any of the standard squeezy
| ways, it would get worse, which would degrade if not ruin the
| community. It would also be a miserable slog and who would want
| to work on that? so the quality would go down that way too.
| There are a lot of gradients along which the quality would go
| down.
|
| Because we don't have to do that, we can focus on just trying
| to keep the community happy, which boils down to trying to keep
| HN as good as possible. It's incredibly satisfying to just have
| to make something good. (Not that it _is_ good...but that 's a
| separate question, and this is the internet and we get graded
| on a curve.)
|
| There are a bunch of old comments here about how we/I think
| about HN vis-a-vis YC's business interests, if anyone is
| curious - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=f
| alse&so....
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The text-only / ad-free nature probably explains a fair bit of my
| own ... enthusiastic ... readership of HN (recent comment on
| which: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34490839>).
|
| As for CSS tweaks, I've applied some modest changes to the basic
| style which are linked in my profile:
|
| Dred's HN CSS Madhackery: <https://pastebin.com/gLXiqKyd>
|
| Dred's HN CSS Madhackery -- Dark Mode:
| <https://pastebin.com/6PF3dCXH>
|
| Both can be applied using a CSS style management extension such
| as Stylus:
|
| <https://add0n.com/stylus.html>
|
| (For Firefox, Chrome, & Opera.)
| gigama wrote:
| Thanks for these helpful links and tweaks. Customization and
| code sharing -- both in keeping with true hacker ethos.
|
| Got a good chuckle from the Stylus plugin privacy policy:
|
| "Unlike other similar extensions, we don't find you to be all
| that interesting. Your questionable browsing history should
| remain between you and the NSA. Stylus collects nothing.
| Period."
| asim wrote:
| Bring back text only services! Everything should be accessible in
| some simple text UI that's simple and clean. I don't think that's
| possible by stripping back websites, maybe layers on RSS feeds,
| APIs with a new UX, etc, etc.
| ploum wrote:
| You may be interested by Gemini...
| tapoxi wrote:
| How does Gemini compare to Gopher?
|
| Slightly related, HN is available via gopher://hngopher.com
| ploum wrote:
| Main differences are: - Gemini is conceptually simpler (no
| difference between map and text, straightforward URLs) -
| Gemini is easy to write (unlike gopher maps) - Gemini has
| mandatory tls (which may or may not be an advantage)
|
| But Gemini was created from within the Gopher community and
| there are very strong links between Gemini/Gopher users.
| Most Gemini browsers are also Gopher browsers.
|
| (My own turned into a web browser and RSS reader. I only
| need to add mail reading to have a complete office suite,
| see https://sr.ht/~lioploum/offpunk/ )
| rchaud wrote:
| lite.cnn.io has been a revelation
| apnew wrote:
| TIL! Thank you.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| HN looks just perfect using w3m text browser, no js, no css. The
| clean HTML makes it feel like something running from a local
| server. Plus there's no "cloudflare" type nonsense blocking my
| Tor overlay. Excellent straightforward web.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Clean HTML? It's nested spaghetti tables, which makes it super
| hard to write user styles for.
| dang wrote:
| > _hard to write user styles for_
|
| Yes and that's probably the one thing that would get us to
| rework the HTML. That or if we could significantly reduce its
| size.
|
| Otherwise I see that HTML table goop as an advantage--the
| consequence of a clever design by pg years ago, which pays
| off every time I get to work on the code - https://hn.algolia
| .com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....
|
| I was going to add "and also a curmudgeonly throne to sit on"
| but maybe I'd better not.
| inasio wrote:
| HN is my `ping google.com`, first thing I check whenever I
| connect to a new wifi connection (or when I hear my partner
| complaining that the internet is down).
| brhsagain wrote:
| I use HN to test my internet. If other sites don't load, I don't
| know if it's because they're just down, taking forever to load 20
| MB of crap, etc. If HN doesn't load, my internet is broken.
| kibwen wrote:
| As others will be quick to point out, HN does have ads in the
| form of job postings for YCombinator startups that are delivered
| inline with the links on the front page. That said, it's
| relatively unobtrusive. And of course, the existence of HN is a
| large part of the marketing for YCombinator itself. Personally,
| I'll commend dang for doing a high-effort job at moderation, and
| tolerating all the dunking on Paul Graham that we do.
| 93po wrote:
| I use hckrnews.com and everyone else should too. Not seeing
| those ads is a nice side effect
| Rooster61 wrote:
| Ads that I won't see unless I actually have interest in them?
| That's not very web 5.0...
| vlunkr wrote:
| Those ads are also very likely to be relevant to HN users
| relative to typical internet ads.
| amelius wrote:
| But ... these job postings are difficult to discern from other
| posts. At least Google puts "Ad" in front of ads ...
| dredmorbius wrote:
| There are several userscripts to block those.
|
| <https://github.com/brownie-in-motion/hn-adblock>, discussed:
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31597486>
|
| Another: <https://gist.github.com/pxeger/4aed4baaa87028a2ecc6
| 441a84a1f...>
|
| (I've used neither.)
|
| I've briefly looked into managing these through CSS alone.
| Not obviously that I can tell, though the text of job
| listings should match the pattern: <company>
| (YC <class> ) Is Hiring <position>
|
| I think CSS can act based on content, but need to look at
| selectors for that.
|
| SO suggests not:
| <https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1520429/is-there-a-
| css-s...>
|
| HN doesn't assign a distinctive class to these posts, though
| the "votelinks" class is missing, which can be used to
| highlight the listings. E.g.: /* HN startup
| job ads */ .athing td:nth-of-
| type(2):not(.votelinks) { background: #fcc; }
| .athing td:nth-of-type(2):not(.votelinks):before {
| content: "Ad"; position: relative; left:
| 0.4em; color: #000; }
|
| (Other properties might be set.)
|
| I'd need to futz with this some more to see if the entire
| entry could be dropped, though I'd prefer to simply have them
| stand out, I think...
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| Putting an ad with text color #FEFEFE on a white background
| doesn't do much.
| eliasdaler wrote:
| FTC actually has guidelines and rules for online
| advertising. Here's a doc from them saying that the ads
| should be clearly marked as ads:
| https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/plain-
| language/bu...
|
| Strange it doesn't seem to be respected on HN.
| guntherhermann wrote:
| A giveaway is that you can't comment on them :)
| capableweb wrote:
| Nor do they have points, you can't upvote or flag them.
| They do stick out a bit and are easy to ignore.
| bambax wrote:
| You can hide them though.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| It is done with a lot for respect for the reader, and in a non
| intrusive way.
|
| There's no profiling or targeting of users. Everyone sees the
| same ads.
| tiotempestade wrote:
| > As others will be quick to point out, HN does have ads in the
| form of job postings for YCombinator startups that are
| delivered inline with the links on the front page.
|
| The way all ads should be? :)
|
| Succinct, relevant and unobtrusive
| barbs wrote:
| And non-tracking!
| eliasdaler wrote:
| The ads should be clearly marked as ads, in my opinion.
|
| I hate when social media sites hide ads by making them look
| like regular posts. It's a dark pattern.
| slim wrote:
| Not sure jobs are the only form of advertising. Sometimes I
| feel like some domain names like substack are pumped up
| colesantiago wrote:
| There should be a way to remove all ads from HN on the account
| level.
| jedberg wrote:
| > and tolerating all the dunking on Paul Graham that we do.
|
| Who wouldn't enjoy some friendly ribbing of their boss's boss?
| :)
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| Jeff Bezos should consider a haircut
| henning wrote:
| True, but those job ads are text-only and unlikely to contain
| malware. Normal web ads are the opposite in both regards.
| notTechbut wrote:
| dang has dunked on the quality of HN discourse remaining
| repetitive and boring to him, never really changing in the
| aggregate over the years.
|
| He might consider seeking novel to him work routines rather
| than complain everyone else is prosaic. I quit treating systems
| like pets a while ago, while he tends the same flock.
|
| If everyone else's figurative identity can be a target why not
| PG, dang, etc.
|
| "Thanks" for being over educated systems admins like many of
| us, I guess?
| dang wrote:
| I have? Where?
| okCompewtr wrote:
| You even asked for a response and the hivemind flagged it
| to spare you.
|
| Identity obsessed snowflake-ism is alive and well in the
| US.
| notTechbut wrote:
| You have admin access to the database that includes the
| comments I refer to; query yourself.
|
| Self policing is a powerful tool for self improvement. Go
| reflect on asking people here to see the "poetry" in their
| livelihood being usurped by VC backed technology which
| coincidentally help's guarantee your employment and rather
| trashes the environment, eh?
|
| Other themes include finding run of the mill political
| speak as banal, despite such memes being how the vast
| majority of the population understands the world, as if
| you're the High Mind we should all be soothed by;
| personally you're just another over privileged first
| worlder to me _shrug_ one of billions on Earth. The
| figurative identity you feel yourself to be is _shrug_ to
| me. The energy SV projects to everyone else.
|
| I get the difference between theory backed by evidence
| versus spoken traditions of politics, but it's not
| unreasonable to describe some of your comments as tone
| deaf, lacking empathy for those made anxious by the rapid
| economic and social change, from your Ycombinator backed
| ivory tower.
|
| The audience is here to rescue your figurative identity
| though by burying reasonable takes on your past comments
| _about them_. You should be thankful you have yourself such
| a self loathing flock.
|
| You're one particle among billions. Whether the rest of us
| are titillating you correctly is not on us. It's on you to
| find a more titillating routine. Having moved from CE, to
| general SWE, and into ML backed biology research, if I held
| onto one role for so long I'd question if _I_ am
| responsible for coloring my view in the same shade of grey.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Ad free? This is all part of one big ad. Ads are not evil
| though.. tracking might be.
| powera wrote:
| Well, actually, it's not "ad-free". There are fairly regular job
| ads for YCombinator companies on the home page.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, I've squeezed an 'almost' in the title above. I suppose
| that's not strictly accurate either but I don't want to spoil
| the OP's sentiment too much.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| But:
|
| 1. Not within articles or threads. Contrast, say, the
| Washington Post which is currently inserting ... four ... ad
| placements _per story_ ... and that 's just within the text of
| a story itself. That excludes other interstitial nags ("see
| also" which are often very thinly-related if at all items),
| sign-ups, pop-ups, etc.
|
| (I'd recalled this being higher, four is still a few too many,
| but less than I'd thought.)
|
| And it's not just the ads themselves, but the motivations
| created around them for clickbait, sensationalism, etc., etc.
|
| Contextually-appropriate service-oriented (e.g., jobs) notices
| ... seem a highly reasonable option. Note too that HN also runs
| a free "who's hiring" and "who wants to be hired" thread
| monthly.
| rchaud wrote:
| There is plenty of sensationalism in the comments, when the
| topics are similar to those that newspapers would discuss.
|
| Take for example the recent spate of techco layoffs. I think
| you'll find the discussion is not nearly as polite and
| detached as those on regular nerd stuff would be (Rust,
| React, Static Site Generators etc).
| dredmorbius wrote:
| True.
|
| Though I make liberal use of the "collapse" toggle, and try
| to prioritise original content over comments (not entirely
| successfully, I'll admit).
| jayant_kaushik wrote:
| Meanwhile, you can use third party mobile apps for HN that work
| perfect. Just type "hacker news" on the App Store (iOS) and
| you'll see a bunch of apps. Try and see which one fits your usage
| style. I personally use the app called "HACK for hacker news" and
| it fulfils all I could ask for. I mostly browse and write on HN
| using this app. Not promoting this app, just helping fellow
| users.
| type0 wrote:
| It isn't ad-free, rather it has old school direct ads; what other
| popular web pages still run ads directly?
| pcurve wrote:
| I visit HN a few dozen times a day. For it, it's like the
| stumbledupon with ability to comment. Best of both worlds.
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| IMO, Reddit is still usable but only via https://old.reddit.com.
| I still use Reddit daily, but I can't stand the horrific new
| design. I also highly curate my subscribed subreddits and use
| multireddits to combine subject matters.
|
| On Android I use Reddit Sync[1] (which has an ad-free pro version
| I paid a one-time $5 fee for).
|
| I worry about the day they discontinue old.reddit.com, or decide
| to cripple third-party apps in order to steer people toward their
| official apps. I wouldn't put it past them to do something like
| this. All it takes is a new CEO, or their investors, wanting to
| see more profit. They'll probably lose users but I bet the amount
| of people who use Reddit like I do is decreasing over time
| (speculation, maybe I'm wrong) so it might not be a significant
| amount.
|
| 1.
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Red+Apps+LTD...
| sbayeta wrote:
| I've been browsing Reddit using Reddit is Fun on android and
| it's a delight to use.
| Semaphor wrote:
| All I can say is that when I post copies of code or recipes,
| but with the markdown fixed for old, I usually get quite a lot
| of upvotes. So depending on the sub it might be significant (of
| course, I'm also not in any huge subs).
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| I really hope it's significant! Keep old.reddit.com alive!
|
| Was wondering if they provide stats for this anywhere and
| apparently they do on a per-subreddit level that only mods
| can see:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/m2615l/what.
| ..
|
| Look at the unique pageview charts, it seems like
| old.reddit.com is just a bit higher than new reddit but not
| by much.
|
| This user[1] posted a graph[2] from a much larger subreddit.
| They didn't mention which but they moderate quite a few
| subreddits but I think this one if from /r/Minecraft.
|
| 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/m2615l/wh
| at...
|
| 2. https://i.imgur.com/dUYWZNd.png
| [deleted]
| bambax wrote:
| I too only use Reddit via old.reddit.com; if it was ever
| discontinued I would stop using it... but I don't think I would
| miss it much.
| cainxinth wrote:
| The funny thing is old.reddit _is_ reddit. It's the actual
| content I want to see. The new design is just a layer of
| cruft on top that I don't want.
| ptasci67 wrote:
| Just as an alternate data point, I personally prefer the new
| design as I find it more inviting, and easier to browse on
| mobile. I think both should exist because there are enough
| people who prefer the old way but it does beg the question of
| whether it is worth supporting both from an engineering
| perspective. I'm sure it has a real cost to Reddit.
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| For mobile web, I can see how the new design would be an
| improvement there. The old site doesn't even support mobile.
|
| I posted a reply to another comment here about some of their
| stats accessible to mods of subreddits. So far it seems to me
| that enough people use old.reddit.com to make it worth it.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34506885
| mschild wrote:
| I'd highly recommend https://i.reddit.com for mobile.
| Significantly better experience for me.
| entropicgravity wrote:
| It's interesting to note that the bare bones sites of Craig's
| List, Reddit and HN have some of the lowest costs and longest
| staying power. All content supplied by users and curated with
| care. (hello dang)
| voisin wrote:
| I concur. Though I would love if the mobile experience made it a
| bit easier to click the vote buttons!
| eric4smith wrote:
| Sometimes capitalism works!
| SpeedilyDamage wrote:
| This site is wholly subsidized by YC and could not stand on its
| own, so I'm not sure it's a straightforward example of
| capitalism working...
| smbullet wrote:
| How is this not a straightforward example of capitalism? This
| site is privately owned, therefore it is free to flow in the
| capital market.
| SpeedilyDamage wrote:
| It's not a straightforward example of capitalism because it
| doesn't earn enough through its service to support itself,
| and must be propped up by an otherwise external entity.
|
| The concept of "private ownership" is not definitionally
| identical to the concept of "capitalism", I hope you
| realize...
| smbullet wrote:
| Private ownership and the protection of those property
| rights are exactly what capitalism is. As long as there
| is no coercive entity dictating what YC can and cannot do
| with it's capital then HN absolutely is a product of
| capitalism.
|
| Capitalism doesn't mean "earn[ing] enough through its
| service to support itself". Why do you think that people
| are not free to finance sites that promote other branches
| of their business under capitalism?
| SpeedilyDamage wrote:
| People are free to finance whatever they want, I don't
| care, it's just not a "straightforward" example of
| capitalism when they do.
|
| Spend money to make a thing -> sell that thing for more
| than it cost to make it. That's not happening here.
| smbullet wrote:
| That's an interesting misconception of what capitalism
| is. I had not seen that one before. Thank you for
| sharing.
| SpeedilyDamage wrote:
| For what it's worth, I Googled "Define: capitalism" and
| when I saw:
|
| > an economic and political system in which a country's
| trade and industry are controlled by private owners for
| profit.
|
| I synthesized this to what I wrote above. If you disagree
| that's fine, but I think "for profit" is a critical
| aspect of capitalism, and while it's arguably true that
| HN provides YC with "a profit" it's an intangible and
| indirect one, which to me is not "straightforwardly
| capitalistic".
| smbullet wrote:
| I'll admit I was a bit snarky but my thanks was genuine -
| I enjoy learning why people believe the things they do.
|
| Anyways, my final argument is if an individual asset of a
| company doesn't directly generate revenue yet increases
| company profit, would it not be "un-capitalistic" if that
| company were to extinguish that asset? It seems to me
| that throwing away profit would be antithetical to that
| definition of capitalism.
|
| The $30k espresso machine in the Google office does
| nothing to generate revenue, however it helps Google
| become more competitive in the labor market which (at
| least they think) increases profit. None of these
| situations are edge cases, they are just natural outcomes
| that exist when people are free to compete. If it is
| expected that a decision will lead to a profit, it seems
| straightforward that one would make that decision.
|
| It was fun discussing this with you, I hope you have a
| good day.
| SpeedilyDamage wrote:
| That sounds capitalistic, just not "straightforward" is
| all I was trying to say.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't be snarky and please make your substantive
| points without swipes. This is in the site guidelines:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| dang wrote:
| That's an interesting question. It's true that HN doesn't
| _earn_ revenue and that it could not stand on its own.
| But it 's also true that YC is more valuable with HN than
| without it. I think you have to mark that in capitalism's
| column, even if it's a weird edge case.
|
| Maybe more companies should be more open to more weird
| edge cases and maybe that would make them richer and
| therefore more capitalist? I don't know.
| SpeedilyDamage wrote:
| My focus was on the word "straightforward" more so than
| trying to argue that HN isn't "capitalism".
|
| It's definitely capitalism, and arguably highly effective
| at that, I just don't think it's "straightforward" is
| all.
| dang wrote:
| Ah ok. I agree!
| iammjm wrote:
| i love you guys
| alpenbazi wrote:
| very true, i fully commit to that statement
| fronterablog wrote:
| Totally agree.
|
| I feel the same when I open a good book and read without
| distraction for hours. It's like mental detox after social media
| full of short-form videos.
|
| We'll see a wave where what's timeless and simple make a return
| -- like text-only content.
| schemescape wrote:
| Mobile friendly CSS is long overdue :)
| blackbear_ wrote:
| What do you mean? I mostly browse from mobile and I found no
| issues.
|
| You know what is actually long overdue? Lynx-friendly [1]
| layouts! ;)
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser)
| dredmorbius wrote:
| What would that entail?
|
| Note that HN's page structure (table-based design) makes some
| things in pure CSS ... challenging.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| Slightly larger buttons would be welcome, at least as an
| option. That's all I'd change.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Quick mock. Roughly doubles arrow size, and spaces them
| vertically:
|
| <https://pastebin.com/qEeLNK9b>
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| I feel like there's a systemic issue in modern software that HN
| is immune to. After an initial success, companies will hire tons
| of project managers and engineers to build new features and
| continue their growth. The result is a corporate paperclip
| optimizer.
|
| The problem is that these features won't get used and nobody gets
| promoted if they're not pushed to the front of UI so you end up
| with cluttered interfaces loaded with popups and other
| misfeatures.
|
| Reddit's new interface is a good example of this, but gmail has
| the same problem. Shit, even QuickTime/Real Player used to fight
| over Windows file extensions and taskbar icons in the 90s and it
| was horrible.
|
| Because Y Combinator's business model is different, HN more or
| less stays the same. It's kind of like open source Unix utilities
| in that way, nobody's pushing modal ads into the ls command.
| Terretta wrote:
| > _My only ask is to revisit CSS a bit and make it mobile
| friendly. I.e slightly larger fonts and hit areas for expand
| /collapse. It's too easy to hit the wrong button on a phone._
|
| There is a weird thing with the vote arrows on iPad in
| particular, if you tap the upvote arrow, the downvote arrow
| disappears first, then later the upvote arrow disappears.
|
| Always second guessing which arrow I've hit. Can only tell by
| looking at the text to unvote vs. undown.
| kayge wrote:
| If any newer folks are wondering "... what downvote arrow?" it
| only appears once your Karma is above a certain level (501+, I
| think?)
| dalmo3 wrote:
| >=501. Coincidentally that's the exact number I'm on now, and
| just like GP said due to my fat thumb I'm always guessing
| whether I've up- or downvoted a comment.
| Oras wrote:
| Totally agree.
|
| But I noticed I only accept this format from HN. I've seen some
| services tried to do the same or follow the same style and I
| wasn't as engaged with them.
|
| I suppose for HN because that's how it started, and I am
| confident about the quality of links/articles/comments. That's
| how I picture the value.
| rpgbr wrote:
| I use a simple custom CSS to: 1) increase font size; 2) limit
| line length, and; 3) change OP's font color:
| .comment, .toptext { max-width: 72ch; font-
| size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; color: rgb(27, 27, 27)
| }
|
| In Safari, using Userscripts extension:
| https://github.com/quoid/userscripts#userscripts-safari
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| Hot take: I think the lack of mobile support is a feature, not a
| bug. Mobile interfaces are responsible for much of the noise of
| mainstream social media, they encourage short form content
| creation because the interface is too simplistic and typing on a
| tiny touchscreen keyboard is unpleasant and error-prone. By
| making the only viable interface a desktop interface you put up
| an additional barrier to that type of noise.
| capableweb wrote:
| If you look at the HN stylesheet
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/news.css) there is actually some
| minor work being done to make it easier to use on mobile. It
| used to be much worse than what it is today.
|
| I use HN for both browsing and commenting on my phone plenty,
| although it could always be easier and there are some warts.
| asdff wrote:
| The HN interface is mostly fine but the vote buttons certainly
| need to increase by 100% for mobile versions. I can't reliably
| hit them without zooming in quite a lot. It wouldn't dumb down
| the UI or anything to make the hitbox larger for these arrows
| if your viewport is so large.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm reading this on a phone, right now, and it's perfectly
| usable.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Yeah, it's very usable on mobile
|
| It uses very little data, making it also useful to test those
| "is my connection bad or is it the website that's down?"
| cases
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| I think parent meant that mobile phone creation should be
| discouraged. Mobile phone consumption is no issue.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Fair 'nuff, but creating any kind of text content is a big
| fat pain, on most mobile devices. I'm not sure how much
| site design can help. This site is about as good as you'll
| get, there.
| asdff wrote:
| OK now try and upvote this comment without missing the arrow.
| If you do, you have a lot more dexerity than I do at least.
| Its usable but certain elements are a little too small where
| it makes me misclick.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Yeah, the arrows could be a bit bigger, and have more
| gutter. I agree.
| scarface74 wrote:
| > While Reddit... ads looking like posts, HN has remained high
| signal to noise ratio.
|
| I have no sympathy for people complaining about ads on Reddit
| when they give you an alternative - you can pay a subscription to
| have them removed.
| dcchambers wrote:
| General shout-out to all the services that provide an optional
| text-only/minimalist interface, e.g. https://text.npr.org/
| amelius wrote:
| It is kind of ironic that so many professionals come to HN for a
| breath of fresh air, after which they continue building the UX
| they were escaping from in the first place.
| abraxas wrote:
| Most visitors to HN are unlikely to have a significant voice in
| defining the UX of things they build for a living.
| amelius wrote:
| I thought this was a place for startup founders.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Sure, and a lot of other folks too.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| Startup founders are certainly a minority of HN visitors.
| halfjoking wrote:
| Let's do a poll:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34507665
|
| I'm curious how many people are starting or want to start
| a business here. I always assumed the percentage was
| pretty high.
| SilasX wrote:
| Right -- I joke that HN's design weeds out people who both a)
| need a site to look glamorous, and b) are incapable of
| modifying it on their end to look that way. That probably has
| significant overlap with UX designers who determine other
| sites' looks!
| low_tech_punk wrote:
| Most stakeholders with voice in defining the UX of things
| they build for a living do not visit HN.
| amelius wrote:
| I see many posts on HN about how to design a good UX. Are
| these posts made for the wrong audience?
| pwinnski wrote:
| The hope is that the audience for these posts, generally
| indie developers building new sites from scratch, will
| one day be able to shape the existing large sites that
| can afford to employ the majority of developers.
|
| The reality is that the existing large sites that can
| afford to employ the majority of developers have PMs that
| mandate the horrific UX we encounter day to day.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| honestly, to me its not the UX.
|
| - it is a lack of disinformation, people here tend to push
| conversations in the right direction
|
| - it is a lack of advertising and bullshit articles
|
| It is like Craigslist. Everyone and their mother has tried to
| re-design craigslist, with yearly graveyards of competitors.
|
| The problem is CL's interface isn't the product. It is
| _already_ extremely useful, and so to get people to leave CL
| you'd need to give a value add on top of what seems to already
| be a pretty feature packed service.
| eschulz wrote:
| It is, although I guess that's common in the modern world where
| mass value is created in an assembly line workplace
| Jerrrry wrote:
| My only (primary, continuous, and ignored) complaint is that OP's
| text post's contrast matches the contrast of less-useful
| comments, making every Self-HN post seem subconsciously and
| automatically downvoted.
|
| It was "tradition,"? No, it's archaic and ironic for a site with
| so many A11y/accessibility advocates.
| kzrdude wrote:
| I agree. The comment section teaches the user to be suspicous
| of grayed-out comments, but then if we post a text post it's
| also grayed-out.
| habibur wrote:
| PG did it in the early days, as far as I can recall. The point
| was to discourage descriptive posts, preventing it from turning
| into reddit, and rather encourage posts linking to tech
| materials.
| Jerrrry wrote:
| emphasizing the <a> elements is practically, semantically,
| and technically easier than de-emphasizing the entire post
| text node.
| thefifthsetpin wrote:
| I am just now realizing that greyed out text posts weren't
| downvoted.
| coldpie wrote:
| I emailed them once asking to change that and kind of got a
| shrug in response. Maybe more emails will convince them?
| valtism wrote:
| I also emailed them. Was asked for a minimal change to make
| it better and I suggested changing adding a class to the <td>
| to color: #333. This was in August 2021 but it hasn't been
| changed.
| Jerrrry wrote:
| Another user mentioned the reply basically cited tradition.
|
| @dang, can we ever get a reply to this?
|
| either an excuse or an 0xFF in a .css stylesheet, please?
| LLyaudet wrote:
| I thought the grey color for main post was to discourage us of
| reading it and to make us: - look only at the shared link when
| there is some, - or use the reader mode of our web-browser, -
| or make it harder to read and create a relief when we go back
| to our source code, ;)
| LLyaudet wrote:
| But definitely, I would vote in favor of better contrast for
| main post.
| apeace wrote:
| > My only ask is to revisit CSS a bit and make it mobile
| friendly. I.e slightly larger fonts and hit areas for
| expand/collapse. It's too easy to hit the wrong button on a
| phone.
|
| Does anyone know why this hasn't been done? I find things are
| very small to click even on desktop. Seems there is a lot of low-
| hanging fruit that could be cleaned up.
|
| I don't like using plugins or custom stylesheets because I fear
| something breaking one day and giving me a headache (HN
| withdrawal). I also don't like using alternate HN viewers for
| fear that they will track me.
| rebolek wrote:
| I have HN on 150% in Firefox on desktop (FF remembers
| individual scaling, not sure about other browsers) and on
| mobile I scale with two fingers. It's of course not a perfect
| solution but works.
| prenoob wrote:
| Everything OP said plus kudos for keeping RSS alive !
| dumbaccount123 wrote:
| Reddits "new UI" is so bad, surprised they're still trying to
| save it.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Yep, absolutely horrible. Thank god they still allow
| old.reddit.com
|
| The iphone app is even worse. The swiping UX is seemingly
| random, video player is terrible etc etc
| [deleted]
| kibwen wrote:
| For me, the worst thing is how few comments show up by default
| in the comments sections. As a moderator of a large subreddit,
| the new UI is unusable because I can't quickly glance over a
| massive thread, I'd have to click through to a hundred sub-
| pages. If they ever remove old.reddit.com, I don't know what
| I'd do. It's a shame, because the redesign has some actually
| useful tools that I'd like to be using, but the basic
| experience is so poor. Every other aspect of the redesign could
| be fixed in the client with CSS rules, and the slowness and
| bloat could at least be tolerated.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's madness. Even old.reddit.com is littered with "load more
| comments" links that you have to keep clicking through to
| read. A comments section with 2000 comments should be easy to
| serve in a single static page. _It 's just text!_
| dang wrote:
| I agree and it will be a fine day when HN doesn't do that
| anymore.
| dewey wrote:
| Reddit without using https://apolloapp.io is impossible for me.
| I wonder when they start cutting off third party apps like
| Twitter.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Once Old.Reddit and third party apps like Apollo go away, I'm
| done with Reddit. I'm already interested in competitors if
| anything crops up that might be a suitable replacement.
|
| Unfortunately they're already funneling rich media into their
| own broken solutions, so things like streaming video is
| unreliable if people upload it to Reddit directly.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| Sunk cost fallacy undoubtedly.
|
| Reddit is really unusable for me with the new UI.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| It's kinda embarrassing. It's been I don't know how many years,
| and pasting text in the comment field still breaks the new
| reddit UI.
|
| I don't know how to explain it. Does everyone on the new reddit
| dev team use old.reddit.com so they don't notice this extremely
| obvious bug?
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| Yeah, I find so many bugs in reddit that it's surprising to
| me that a more streamlined replacement hasn't arisen.
|
| But I get shouted down if I say my experience with Elon's
| buggy Twitter 2.0 is about on par with how my reddit
| experience has been for years and yet reddit is still
| massively popular. Shrug.
|
| I guess it's hard to believe that sometimes market conditions
| can overcome bad engineering and then you add all the
| politics around Twitter's layoffs and people get raw.
| capableweb wrote:
| > But I get shouted down if I say my experience with Elon's
| buggy Twitter 2.0
|
| What visible changes have been done since Elon took over
| Twitter + are buggy changes? I hardly notice anything
| different to be honest. There is a view counter and more
| people have the blue checkmark, otherwise things mostly
| seems to be the same. The ads panel (for publishing ads) is
| as broken as it has always been, so seems it has neither
| improved nor declined.
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| Well here's what the people who said reddit is great and
| Twitter sucks yelled at me:
|
| - They went down in Australia for a day.
|
| - The "For You" tab keeps selecting itself.
|
| - The Twitter feed keeps injecting randos that aren't
| followed.
|
| - Nothing is there when you click on a notification
| sometimes. There are phantom likes and retweets.
|
| - For a while people were unable to change their display
| name or 2FA would break.
|
| - The view counter doesn't match the analytics view
| counter.
|
| - Latencies are high
|
| Apparently nobody can agree if a website is bad.
| Depending on whatever you're arguing, one is great and
| the other is terrible.
|
| As for reddit, I've been getting phantom notifications,
| incorrect comment counts on posts, and a 10-15 minute
| block of "Reddit is down" pages on a monthly basis for
| years. So as far as I'm concerned, they're both pretty
| bad.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I've had a few instances of data inconsistencies. Like a
| tweet says it has three likes, but you check which who's
| liked it it's only one person.
|
| Still very far from the same league as new reddit's jank.
| cloudking wrote:
| Try https://teddit.net
| avree wrote:
| It's like the old reddit UI, but... broken (at least on
| Safari on Mac OS)
| dewey wrote:
| Why not just https://old.reddit.com?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| 1. At a certain point, the dark patterns are just not worth
| rewarding.
|
| 2. Teddit rewrites _all_ Reddit URLs to the Teddit host.
| Reading Reddit via old you 'll still be redirected to the
| standard "new" site if "www.reddit.com" is hardcoded into a
| link, and it very, very, very frequently is.
|
| 3. Teddit's persistence works even if you're not logged in
| (which is to say: always, as you can't log in via a Teddit
| instance). Reddit's "just set your profile preference to
| "old" requires logging in _and_ can lure you into visiting
| or posting "www.reddit.com" links rather than
| "old.reddit.com" links.
|
| Cumulative dark patterns on Reddit spurred me to all but
| entirely abandon the site years ago. I no longer post
| updates to my own (several) subreddits, nor actively
| moderate (again several), though with some regrets on that
| last (a dark pattern itself).
|
| I'll occasionally visit to research something, or post for
| support for tools which principally use Reddit for support
| (DuckDuckGo, Firefox, and Onyx, presently). That's ... down
| to a few times a year.
| fullstop wrote:
| I find this extension for Chrome very useful:
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-
| redirec...
|
| It's also available for Firefox:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-
| reddit-re...
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I've installed and use LibRedirect which addresses
| numerous dark-patterns sites, including Reddit:
|
| <https://libredirect.codeberg.page/>
| aliqot wrote:
| I wouldn't call it ad-free, but it is free from overt ads.
| colesantiago wrote:
| Agreed, I wish more sites were like HN, fast, free and ad-free,
| text only and no bullshit algorithmic garbage shoved in my face.
|
| All it needs is dark mode and it's perfect.
| cloudking wrote:
| +1 dark mode on mobile would be great. They let you customize
| the color of the header when you get 500 points, it would be
| nice to allow custom CSS as a feature (without extensions).
| danuker wrote:
| https://www.userchrome.org/how-create-userchrome-css.html
|
| https://userstyles.org/styles/113994/hacker-news-dark
|
| While you're at it, also add this one:
| https://github.com/community/community/discussions/8098#disc...
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Try this https://jgthms.com/hacker-news-dark-mode/
| nayuki wrote:
| HN's front page is algorithmically determined, but not
| personalized to each user.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| My dark-mode tweak: <https://pastebin.com/6PF3dCXH>
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| I completely agree on this. I have nothing of substance to add,
| just say thank you.
| janitor61 wrote:
| This might date me but I'd love to see a resurgence of the Gopher
| protocol - maybe a touch more modernized, but still just plain
| text files with hyperlinks. Some sort of public-commons version
| of the overcommercialized web where advertising is very difficult
| but information is dense and discoverable.
| efreak wrote:
| Gemini?
| everybodyknows wrote:
| https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ rather than the like-named
| crypto site. I found no way to sample current discussions
| i.e. read-only, from a web browser -- software installation
| seems required.
| 2devnull wrote:
| "only ask is to revisit CSS a bit and make it mobile friendly.
| I.e slightly larger fonts"
|
| _record scratch_
|
| No! I've been visiting daily on the smallest of phones for well
| over a decade. Please, please, please don't change anything. It's
| great as is. If it's not broke, don't fix!
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| The font size is fine, but the buttons are tiny.
| ptx wrote:
| Hitting the wrong button on a phone is less of a problem that it
| might appear at first. An up-vote results in an "unvote" link
| being shown and a down-vote results in an "undown" link instead,
| so you can confirm that you hit the right button and undo the
| vote if it was wrong.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Thank you HN for showing (essentially) the same list of stories
| on the front page for everyone. A shared display of common topics
| is a good foundation for a good forum.
| amelius wrote:
| How do you know this is true?
| kzrdude wrote:
| I'm guessing from what I see in incognito mode and logged-in.
| One reason I have a caveat in there, is that there is a
| button called hide, so you don't have to see particular
| stories.
| amelius wrote:
| I was referring to the last sentence. How do you know this
| is a good foundation for a good forum?
| kzrdude wrote:
| I don't know, it's an opinion.
| aliqot wrote:
| how dare you
| dang wrote:
| We don't know that it's true, but what kzrdude described is
| definitely part of the mental model (or, if you like, the
| DNA) of the site.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?query=silo%20by%3Adang&dateRange=all.
| ..
| kzrdude wrote:
| That was interesting, thank you. I had picked up some of
| that by osmosis of course, but not read all that you linked
| to.
| asdff wrote:
| OTOH it changes dramatically with time and certain topics seem
| to end up below the fold, even if its a couple hours old post
| with a lot of engagement. I wish there was a chronological sort
| with a threshold vote filter, I guess I can get that from hnrss
| though.
| 93po wrote:
| hckrnews.com is exactly what you are asking for, I use it
| exclusively
| jiripospisil wrote:
| I do find it hilarious that almost every day you read about a new
| shiny CSS / JS framework here on HN, all the while HN itself is
| using tables for layout. Hell, some pages don't have design at
| all (login page)! Maybe worse really is better.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-01-24 23:02 UTC)