[HN Gopher] A list of Hacker News's undocumented features and be...
___________________________________________________________________
A list of Hacker News's undocumented features and behaviors
Author : ssgodderidge
Score : 286 points
Date : 2023-12-26 17:47 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| latchkey wrote:
| I've noticed a shadowbanned behavior. If you submit a link that
| is a banned domain, you will notice that the 'discuss' link is
| missing and the post doesn't show up at all (but you see it).
| ssgodderidge wrote:
| Any examples? I didn't know about this one
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Turn on show dead in your profile and visit the "new" link
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/newest). You'll see a lot of
| [dead] links, those are the sort GP is referencing.
| [flagged][dead] are killed by user action (flags).
| bookofjoe wrote:
| https://www.sciencealert.com/
| tptacek wrote:
| There's lot of articles from this site on HN, including
| recently. But:
|
| * It seems low-quality, at times almost like the Weekly
| World News. On HN, we sometimes replace even high-quality
| science writing with primary sources (when the paper is
| recent and the writing is just a summary).
|
| * It's high-volume, which is problematic in that it
| incentivizes users to submit lots and lots of stuff from
| this one site; front page slots are the scarcest resource
| on HN and everything competes for it, so high-volume low-
| mid-quality sites tend to get downweighted.
|
| * It's slathered with ads and bait-y gimmicks.
|
| If there's something on this site that you think would make
| a good thread for HN, you can probably just find whatever
| it's blogspamming and submit that instead.
| ulrischa wrote:
| Is the 501 karma level true? I heard 801?
| jjulius wrote:
| It's 501.
| XCabbage wrote:
| The list at https://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors is definitely
| not "the complete set of colors users have set" as claimed. I
| know this because it doesn't include my top color (namely
| #64BFBD).
| XCabbage wrote:
| Perplexingly, my color appeared there shortly after I posted
| this. Does that link contain colors of recently active users,
| perhaps?
| dang wrote:
| Yes; users who have recently posted.
| XCabbage wrote:
| Ah, nice - so "my color doesn't appear on the list" is a
| problem that fixes itself automatically when you complain
| on HN about it!
| dang wrote:
| A suitably recursive property for an internet forum,
| which I doubt pg had in mind when he wrote that code.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| (For the curious, this is because HN only loads profiles
| into memory whenever users post. Then they stay in memory
| until a server reboot, which seems to happen every day or
| two.)
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| Speaking of the top colors, the repo doesn't mention that the
| color changes to red during Christmas.
| tptacek wrote:
| Weird, mine is near the top. I wonder what the sort order is.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| It's random. I emailed to submit a patch ordering by
| popularity and adding caching, but got no answer.
|
| EDIT: You can see for yourself how it's ordered here: https:/
| /github.com/shawwn/arc/blob/arc3.1/news.arc#L2611-L26...
|
| This is the original code, which survived untouched till at
| least 2019 or so. I've wondered if they changed it since
| then.
|
| The key is the (users) function:
|
| https://github.com/shawwn/arc/blob/arc3.1/news.arc#L144-L145
|
| This returns the keys of the profs* hash table (short for
| "profiles"). At the time, profs was populated each time the
| server restarts:
|
| https://github.com/shawwn/arc/blob/arc3.1/news.arc#L88-L91
|
| (dir profdir*) essentially returns an `ls` of the directory
| in which user profiles are stored. (Yes, they are (or were)
| stored to disk, not a database.) This was one reason it was
| hard to add a feature to rename users, which Dan somehow
| figured out.
|
| So it takes the `ls` of that directory, giving a list in
| mostly random order, and loads them one by one, putting them
| into a hash table, whose iteration order is also random.
|
| In modern times, profs* is populated in a lazy fashion
| whenever users post after a server reboot.
|
| Arc uses "maptable" to iterate over a hash table, which under
| the hood used hash-table-for-each:
| https://github.com/shawwn/arc/blob/arc3.1/ac.scm#L1082
|
| Nowadays in Racket, it probably uses hash-for-each:
| https://docs.racket-
| lang.org/reference/hashtables.html#%28de...
|
| It does have a "try-order?" option, which gives a
| deterministic ordering if set. But whenever I set it, I
| sometimes get strange errors, at least on MacOS. Since it's
| disabled by default, I doubt they set it. Even if they did,
| it would be ordered alphabetically, which means your topcolor
| wouldn't be anywhere close to the top unless someone else
| whose name starts with "a" also set it.
|
| I only know all this because I've spent five years updating
| Arc for the modern era over at
| https://github.com/shawwn/sparc
|
| Past discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38586832
| covercash wrote:
| Mine isn't on the list either - #9db2cbd
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Drop the extra `d` and it's on there.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Didn't know about this list. It's time for a vibe shift, so
| after a decade I'm switching to #2288ff. Thanks for sharing!
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I'm grumpy because I am 100% sure that the "automatic
| downweighing" is applied to me (my comments are often below
| faded despite multiple upvotes), but it's never been explained.
|
| I'm just guilty without knowing the crime.
| pests wrote:
| Email dang he can let you know what's going on.
| hamburglar wrote:
| This actually happened to me when I first signed up and after
| emailing dang asking why, it went away. I don't think I ever
| got any actual explanation but I think it must have been some
| false positive which, once corrected, would never recur.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I once submitted this link to the front page, which promptly
| took down HN because it had no caching.
|
| I fired off an email to Scott, frantically telling him "I think
| I took down HN. If you're scrambling to figure out what's
| wrong, it's because so-and-so story is on the front page, and
| you can fix it by booting it off." A minute or two later the
| site came back to life, so I emailed saying "oh, never mind. I
| guess it was something else." And to my surprise he emailed
| back saying you were exactly right, thanks.
|
| Presumably they either added caching, prevented it from going
| to the front page, froze the list for posterity, or it's still
| a ticking time bomb that can take down HN again if you happen
| to submit it. Either way, maybe the explanation of your missing
| topcolor is there somewhere.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Well, given the name I assume it's a ranking? Though some
| colors are weird and it would be hard to believe a lot of
| people use it (like #fafafd or #0082a0 )
|
| And yes my choice is there (#ffaa33)
| aragonite wrote:
| I'm not sure if this is undocumented, but I've noticed that
| submitted links sometimes have either the pathname or search
| parameters portion of their URL truncated or stripped entirely.
| Sometimes the truncation happens after a slight delay.
|
| For example, if you try to submit a link to a particular Google
| Books page, say the one I just tried:
|
| https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Albert_Einstein_Col...
|
| the link will remain intact for a short while before losing its
| search parameters and turning into a link to the book itself
| rather than to a page in it.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Possibly canonical links. HN looks at the submissions and
| updates the links to the canonical link if present. I'm on
| mobile so not able to double check the Google books page at the
| moment, but if you view source check to see if there's a
| canonical link in there. This also bites some blogging sites
| that end up with a canonical link to their base
| http://blog.example.com on all their posts.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_link_element
| aragonite wrote:
| Just checked and you are exactly right (it's not in the raw
| source but the element is found in the DOM tree). This
| explains the delay also!
| dang wrote:
| Jtsummers's answer is correct, but we turn off canonicalization
| for some classes of URLs and I think you've found a good
| example of that. I've exempted Google Books links for the
| future and put your submitted URL back in
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38774261.
| aragonite wrote:
| Thanks dang!
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Minor nit: I've posted about this before, but I wish folks would
| not refer to dang as a "moderator" or say stuff about "the HN
| moderators". If anything, I think it's more appropriate to refer
| to dang as the site admin.
|
| The reason this is a pet peeve of mine is I often see people
| complaining about "the HN moderators" (e.g. "the HN mods are on a
| power trip and keep flagging my submissions!" or some such),
| where they are clearly taking this conceptual model from Reddit,
| and they seem to think there is a shadowy cabal of "mods" who
| control what gets downvoted/flagged (and, in fairness, this does
| and can happen in subreddits). In other words, when you see your
| submissions being flagged or comments being downvoted or flagged,
| 99.9% of the time it's not "the HN mods" who are downvoting you.
| It's just other, normal HN users (who have earned 501+ karma as
| TFA explains) who simply don't like what you have to say.
|
| Not saying dang _never_ blocks users /comments, but it's
| exceedingly rare and I've only seen it for the most obnoxiously
| egregious behavior after (usually multiple) warnings.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| > and I've only seen it for
|
| Speculation/intuition, but I figure it happens in ways
| specifically designed to evade the type of detection you're
| basing your claim on, akin to shadow banning, whereas on Reddit
| there's often more visible evidence like corpses of deleted
| comments.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| You can see all of those deleted/flagged comments if you turn
| on "showdead" in your options.
| gus_massa wrote:
| You can see the [dead] comments if you go to your profile and
| enable "showdead". Most of them are very bad, but from time
| to time you can find a false positive and vouch it.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| Yes, I keep that enabled. I guess I provided poor examples
| but what I'm saying is that it seems like on Reddit
| moderation activities are quite obvious (i.e., a giant
| chain of deleted comments tends to indicate moderation and
| elicit resentment) and here they're less obvious (there's
| an air of strong moderation but little to point at
| directly, which is great IMHO as it evades resentment).
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| dang, or someone at HN, can and does silently modify the
| "weight" of a submission. That is why some articles stay on the
| front page longer, and some slip off the front page in a couple
| of hours.
|
| This is far more control than reddit mods have. Reddit mods
| have one ability, an that is the ability to remove or not
| remove a submission, which is a very public action. HN can put
| its finger on the scales in a way that is much more subtle.
| romafirst3 wrote:
| Very much so and it all happens with zero transparency,
| explanation or acknowledgement, very sus.
|
| Your account can also be effectively shadowbanned with
| everything you submit going straight to the "dead" pile.
| Again no explanation and the only way you realize it is cause
| your submissions slowly die with no comments (and when you
| view the site in a non logged in fashion your submissions are
| not there)
| tptacek wrote:
| That happens to spammers and serial abusers and, as I
| understand it, nobody else. People are overwhelmingly told
| when they're banned.
| realusername wrote:
| I've seen at least one user recently which has all his
| comments as [dead] automatically and they are pretty
| normal comments. I did not write down the name but I've
| seen that only once.
| censthrowaway23 wrote:
| If only we had some transparent way to know if it's
| common or not or if it just happens to bad people we
| don't like.
|
| Unfortunately we don't and we just have to trust dang and
| the benevolent hacker news gods to always have our best
| interests at heart and only spam us with the content that
| they want to spam us with and of course their friends and
| insiders content which we should be grateful to be
| spammed with.
| pvg wrote:
| We do know to a reasonable degree because otherwise the
| 'improperly' banned would make a noticeable fuss. It's
| not a common enough occurrence but maybe you have some in
| mind.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Assuming no violent (as in promoting) or particularly
| racist/sexist comments in their history, this hits some
| new accounts if they're using a VPN (some particular
| VPNs, I guess?). Sometimes they get caught up in the same
| filters used to block spammers/abusers from using HN. Or
| if their first (or one of their first) comments was a
| link without substantial text, that also gets people put
| into some kind of "spammer" category. You, or they if you
| tell them, can reach out through the email in the contact
| link at the bottom to get the ban addressed.
| realusername wrote:
| I found back the username in my browser history, the name
| is baybal2, it's a fairly old account so I'm not sure
| what caused it.
|
| I'm going to contact the moderation indeed, it's the
| first time I was seeing non-spam comments being shadow
| banned automatically.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > so I'm not sure what caused it
|
| The behaviour of the account holder.
| nkurz wrote:
| You've found an odd edge-case. baybal2 is banned
| intentionally, despite the fact that most of his posts
| are good, and some are great. Unfortunately, the
| remainder aren't. The compromise is that he's banned, but
| users like me vouch for many of his good posts to make
| them visible. Here's a post from Dan about him a couple
| years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29692791.
| And other from 4 years ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195898.
| dang wrote:
| This could be because they got caught in a spam filter,
| or because we banned them and the comments they've posted
| since then are better. In such cases we're always happy
| to take a look and unban the account if they're using HN
| as intended.
|
| There are some weird edge cases, like sometimes a banned
| user, once they're unbanned, will revert to posting
| abusively. Then we ban them again and they revert to
| posting good comments again. Who can fathom the psyche of
| homo internetus.
|
| It's also common for an account to post both fine
| comments and abusive comments. It's the latter that
| determine whether we have to ban the account--that's how
| rule enforcement works. But if a banned account posts
| something good, there's no reason why the good post needs
| to remain [dead]. This is what vouching is for:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#cvouch.
| realusername wrote:
| Thanks, I didn't know about vouching. I guess there's
| indeed an history behind each ban of a real user. (Not
| talking about spam of course, it's a different thing)
| throwawaysugar wrote:
| > Not saying dang never blocks users/comments, but it's
| exceedingly rare and I've only seen it for the most obnoxiously
| egregious behavior after (usually multiple) warnings.
|
| Issuing warnings or reminding people of the guidelines (rules)
| is also part of being a moderator, so the moniker is perfectly
| cromulent to describe dang's role
| cowpig wrote:
| I had never heard the word "cromulent" and so that led me to
| a Mirriam Webster article describing how The Simpsons made
| the word up for a joke and then from there "seeped into our
| lexical consciousness". Worth a read!
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/what-does-
| cromulent...
| throwawaysugar wrote:
| It's way too good a word to be left unused! ;-) That whole
| episode is hilarious tbh
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| My issue isn't so much with the word, but it's that so often
| I see tons of users who are clearly bringing preconceived
| notions about how the moderator role works at Reddit and
| thinking it works the same here. At the very least there
| definitely aren't moderator _s_ , plural, on HN currently by
| that definition.
|
| The other reason I think "admin" is a much better word is
| that it much more clearly indicates that this is a special,
| privileged role. That _vast_ majority of "moderation" on HN
| is done by normal users with upvotes, downvotes and flagging
| (and also, of course, by automated systems e.g. with spam
| filters/bot detection).
|
| But again, my primary point is that I see users blaming "the
| mods" for why their post is downvoted or hidden, when usually
| it's that people just don't want to acknowledge that the
| community, at large, didn't think they were contributing
| productively to the discourse of the site.
| tptacek wrote:
| There are, I believe, multiple HN moderators; Dan is just the
| only vocal one. And among all the different sites on the
| Internet, there are multiple different moderation styles, of
| which Dan's is just one.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I don't believe that is correct anymore, and I think TFA is
| right:
|
| > 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.
|
| I've never seen an anyone else besides dang comment that they
| are an HN admin in the past 5-ish years or so.
| tptacek wrote:
| Dan is the only one who currently posts publicly as a mod,
| but if you search his comments, you'll see he implies there
| are others.
| nyjah wrote:
| The second chance pool blew my mind the first time I got an email
| to resubmit. You figure if a post gets no traction, that's just
| how it is. But I'll never forget getting that email.
| susam wrote:
| +1
|
| My post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37956065 got no
| traction when I posted it and quickly disappeared from "/new"
| without many people noticing it. The next day, I received an
| email that this post was entered into the second chance pool.
| Then sometime later, it got picked for the front page and led
| to a good amount of community participation! Thanks to the
| second chance pool, I received several interesting demo
| submissions to my hobby project!
| lossolo wrote:
| Your ability to download or upvote comments and stories can also
| be shadowbanned, rendering these actions ineffective.
| alberth wrote:
| Missing "Classic"
|
| It's missing the relatively recent new list called "Classic".
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/classic
|
| Classic: _Frontpage as voted by ancient accounts_
| TheCleric wrote:
| I see it there: https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-
| undocumented/blob/m...
| n2d4 wrote:
| Not relatively recent! The feature is from 2009:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=607271
| isoprophlex wrote:
| It's missing "highlights" at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights
|
| ... which, anecdotally, I learned about JUST after getting a
| comment on there. Imagine my surprise at learning about this (in
| a manner totally unrelated to the post I wrote that made it to
| the list), and seeing my own writing as the most recent item on
| the list.
|
| Truman show vibes for sure.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Interesting! Is there something similar for stories?
| aragonite wrote:
| There's "best" (Highest-voted recent links), "classic"
| (Frontpage as voted by ancient accounts) and "active" (Most
| active current discussions):
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/lists
| cantSpellSober wrote:
| H
| godelski wrote:
| I actually really hate this feature. The landscape has changed
| and I've been seriously contemplating asking @dang to nuke my
| account.
| goles wrote:
| I would greatly encourage you to not nuke (but do contact)
| despite having had this thought myself.
|
| But I appreciate the fact the consequences for everyone are
| not the same, and potentially even fatal in current times.
|
| I believe I understand why it's done in the way it's done,
| but also this can drive self-censorship. Which is a growing
| problem at large.
|
| Without speaking out of turn, which may just create more
| work, they can help.
|
| Contact hn@ycombinator.com.
| fabian2k wrote:
| I do put a lot of value on privacy, but I actually don't really
| find that problematic. I don't have the expectation to be able
| to just erase everything I wrote online, I assume it is public
| and persistent. So for things where I want to preserve private
| aspects I have to take that into account from the start.
|
| There are certainly individual cases where some post might turn
| out to be problematic later, but that's more of an exception
| and can be handled by manual intervention.
|
| I do find it annoying in some places how users can just erase
| their posts without a reason. Because they don't just erase
| their own content, they take the responses to it with them or
| at least make them less understandable. And those people
| responding did put some effort into it.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Seems to be missing comment vote manipulation. Users can see the
| number of votes their own comments get but can't see the number
| of votes other comments get, or even if their vote changes the
| vote count on a comment, which allows shadowbanning of unwanted
| comments by vote count alteration by mods/admins.
| godelski wrote:
| https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/blob/m...
| photochemsyn wrote:
| That only covers downvoting comments, it doesn't mention why
| comment vote counts aren't publicly visible. Keeping comment
| vote counts invisible makes sense if upvotes on some comments
| are not being recorded as a form of shadowbanning those
| comments/users.
| tptacek wrote:
| Other people's vote counts are invisible because they led
| to constant bickering about the merits of any given
| comment's "spot" vote count (this is also the reason
| there's a guideline that asks you not to write these kinds
| of comments, but changing the affordances so you can't see
| them at all was a much more effective solution to the
| problem).
|
| (My confidence in this explanation comes in part from the
| fact that I'm pretty sure I had a hand in this coming to
| pass: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403716).
|
| The conspiracist rationale here doesn't make much sense,
| because the site operators also control the displayed
| comment count _and_ the registration of votes.
| fmx wrote:
| Discussion from 5 years ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16437973
|
| Nice to see that some of the suggestions from there, like listing
| the hidden URLS (/leaders, etc.) seem to have been implemented.
| dang wrote:
| Let's document it shall we:
|
| _A List of Hacker News 's Undocumented Features and Behaviors_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33076053 - Oct 2022 (68
| comments)
|
| _A List of Hacker News 's Undocumented Features and Behaviors_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30459276 - Feb 2022 (64
| comments)
|
| _A List of Hacker News 's Undocumented Features and Behaviors
| (2018-20)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26866482 -
| April 2021 (255 comments)
|
| _A List of Hacker News 's Undocumented Features and Behaviors
| (2018)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439437 - June
| 2020 (266 comments)
|
| _A List of Hacker News 's Undocumented Features and Behaviors_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20292361 - June 2019 (25
| comments)
|
| _A List of Hacker News 's Undocumented Features and Behaviors_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822 - Feb 2019 (183
| comments)
|
| _Hacker News 's Undocumented Features and Behaviors_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16437973 - Feb 2018 (391
| comments)
| b8 wrote:
| There's other moderators than daang and some users help out with
| site stuff sometimes.
| stormed wrote:
| A lot of these backend features/behaviors are super interesting
| to read through, especially in regards to the "flame war
| detector" section. I've only ever seen link aggregator websites
| such as Reddit relying on community moderation & spam detectors
| rather than anything to improve the quality of the discourse.
| CharlesW wrote:
| I'm curious about the full list of automatic headline changes.
| They seem reasonable, but it's worth knowing that if they change
| a headline for the worse, you can immediately edit the submission
| and restore the original headline (or an "in the spirit of" edit
| that fits within HN's character limit).
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| My favorite is /leaders.
|
| Shame I'm not in the top 50 anymore, but there just ain't a lot
| of good content to submit anymore and karma whoring seems like a
| waste of time.
| drfuchs wrote:
| I accidentally hit "hide" on an item I want to see. Where's the
| documentation on how to unhide?
| aragonite wrote:
| If you see it on this page (not accessible to anyone except
| you, logged in), you can just click "unhide"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/hidden?id=drfuchs
| drfuchs wrote:
| Very cool, thanks. How does one become aware of this class of
| magic? It seems completely undiscoverable, not being in the
| FAQ, nor in the present "List of Hacker News's undocumented
| features..."
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| Your view of your profile page
| https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=drfuchs should have a
| "hidden" link where each story has an "un-hide" link instead of
| "hide."
| drfuchs wrote:
| Thanks. For those wondering how someone may have missed this:
| Evidently I had not in fact accidentally done a "hide", so
| nothing was in my hidden list, and thus my profile page
| cleverly didn't have a "hidden" link at all.
| voytec wrote:
| 1) I enjoy figuring out how HN works over time by noticing
| certain patterns. Still haven't figured out (please don't spoil)
| why I can't downvote certain comments in threads where I see both
| arrows on other comments. HN feels like games in the past -
| you're given some docs but over time you'd go "ooooh" about
| something undocumented. Good stuff.
|
| 2) voting system works well for just users but HN is infested
| with corporate voting manipulation. It seems that an entity
| monitoring eg. brand's name is able to use just a few 501+ karma
| accounts to bury, or a few more to strongly boost, any post
|
| 3) based on what I learned about posts' scores (more than a grain
| of salt - as I mentioned - I'm still figuring things out) it
| seems a little out of place that sometimes a few hours-old posts
| (not as old to qualify for the "second chance" thing) with barely
| any comments and points are positioned higher on the top page
| than younger posts with more activity (higher score and more
| comments). I've noticed it more than once with substack and my
| assumption is that HN may be boosting YC-backed products
| tptacek wrote:
| They do the opposite thing: they're extra hands-off with YC-
| backed things, and quicker to turn off flags on stories
| critical of YC-backed things.
|
| I don't see much evidence of voting manipulation (and a lot of
| evidence of HN being hair-trigger about suppressing vote
| manipulation).
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It may not even be official corporate manipulation. HN is
| frequented by a lot of industry insiders, and if they see
| something that doesn't resonate with what they know to be true
| they'll downvote.
| lampiaio wrote:
| > 2) voting system works well for just users but HN is infested
| with corporate voting manipulation.
|
| You mean to say that next week's Kagi thread won't be as
| organic and spontaneous as it purports to be? Impossible.
| local_crmdgeon wrote:
| I don't think Dang is advancing YC interests - I think it's
| just bog-standard astroturfing. Especially with the low vote
| count of most stories, it's not hard to make your story pop or
| disappear.
| goplayoutside wrote:
| Are there any browser extensions that provide a user tag feature,
| similar to Reddit Enhancement Suite?
|
| There are so many notable tech people on HN, it would be useful
| to be able to recognize their posts and comments.
| gnicholas wrote:
| https://github.com/veggiedefender/hn-friends
| divbzero wrote:
| When did Hacker News start applying _topcolor_ to the YC logo? I
| just noticed it today but am curious if it's been there for
| awhile.
| dang wrote:
| I did it a couple days ago because a user had been emailing
| since 2016 that the orange Y doesn't look good when the bar is
| changed to Christmas red.
|
| Btw, that's not the record for how long a bug fix has taken. We
| get there eventually.
| JorgeGT wrote:
| This update broke my workflow!
| dang wrote:
| I did warn him that people might complain about side
| effects
| cantSpellSober wrote:
| I use [bgcolor='#ff6600'] as a CSS selector for the <td>
| wrapping the header to remove the header bar color.
|
| So this really _did_ break my workflow, hah
| rob wrote:
| Don't make me start emailing you every day to update the
| default font size from 12px to a modern default like 16px.
| This isn't 2007 when everybody had 1024x768 monitors. I had
| to dust my monocle out of storage before adjusting my browser
| zoom level.
| ilamont wrote:
| Thank you for compiling this list. I have been using the site
| since 2007 and had never looked into the classic page (assumed it
| was an old stylesheet or something similar). Also had no idea
| about some of those special URLs such as noobcomments.
|
| _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)._
|
| Is this consistent? I recently vouched for something on the New
| page and it wasn't restored.
|
| One other thing I would like to ask: I currently bookmark about
| 20 users whose comments I find especially insightful across a
| wide range of subject matter expertise. Is there another
| way/better way to do this?
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _I currently bookmark about 20 users whose comments I find
| especially insightful across a wide range of subject matter
| expertise. Is there another way /better way to do this?_
|
| I don't know if it still works, but I used this a few years ago
| for this exact reason: https://github.com/veggiedefender/hn-
| friends
| minimaxir wrote:
| fine, I'll update the list today
| ssgodderidge wrote:
| Thanks for putting this together. I've been on HN for a while
| (even before getting an account) and learned a ton with this
| list
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Guilt Driven Development
| mayormcmatt wrote:
| Ha, truly! I read his comment, refreshed the GitHub repo and
| saw the "changes made < 1 minute ago" flag.
| minimaxir wrote:
| I needed an excuse to be productive. :)
| tech234a wrote:
| I figured this list was on the front page again when I was
| notified that my PR [1] was finally merged :)
|
| [1]: https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-
| undocumented/pull/6...
| StevenNunez wrote:
| Guess I need to figure out how to get more Karma! I didn't know
| there were more features to this site since I'm essentially a
| lurker.
| MatthiasPortzel wrote:
| One undocumented heuristic that I wish was documented better is
| that repeated submissions to the same domain, especially without
| discussion activity, leads to an automated shadow ban. This is
| just from what I've observed browsing /new with Show Dead turned
| on. There are lots of people submitting their own blog posts or
| repeated posts from their favorite news outlets who have been
| shadow banned. Vouching provides a mechanism for restoring posts
| of particular quality, but most of these people aren't trying to
| spam, they just don't know this unspoken rule.
| cloudking wrote:
| Idea: 1000 karma should get custom CSS as a setting.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| and a dark mode button ;)
| charcircuit wrote:
| HN also has rate limits on making comments for certain users. The
| limit is easy to hit and takes hours to go away. This results in
| having to ignore people's questions because it will waste a
| comment contributing to one's rate limit. One can also respond to
| people by editing one's comment, but that has poor ux.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| Had it in the past on my acct. It always showed up when I
| posted on topics about trees and commented faster than normal.
| Wasn't aware it was a thing until emailing HN and dang
| mentioned it.
|
| I'd maybe suggest updating the message to include some
| approximate time the limit expires. 'Come back in a few hours'
| or something. I say this because it was unusual enough for me
| to hit that I'd rewrite my comments thinking it was some kind
| of word flag I'd tripped, then try to repost it in 5-10 minutes
| only to have it fail again.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| This is an annoying feature which I have encountered. I know it
| is to calm heated discussions, but the ambiguity of the message
| is belittling. I'm not overwhelming the database; just tell me
| how long I have if you're going to put me in timeout for a few
| hours.
|
| It isn't a frequent issue, but putting duct tape on someone's
| mouth when they're talking about something they care about does
| not calm them down, even if it achieves the primary goal.
| xienze wrote:
| You're talking about the "you're posting too fast, please slow
| down" message? IME it's not a rate limit but a passive-
| aggressive way of banning someone from a conversation for some
| amount of time.
| submeta wrote:
| Would like to mention Dang here, he is doing an extraordinary job
| in keeping this place sane and civilised.
|
| I really am wondering how he can read and react to so many
| comments quickly.
|
| Dang, care to elaborate? Do you see a flat list of new comments,
| review them quickly? Do you use a moderation tool that scans the
| mood / tone / aggresiveness of a post? How do you do the
| screening and the replies? Manually?
| core_dumped wrote:
| Dang is just a 10x moderator
| Y-bar wrote:
| > Inclusivity [...] Unfortunately. (Moderators occasionally
| unkill such threads if they see it in time, although it rarely
| sticks).
|
| Why would this be described as "unfortunate"? For example tings
| like LLM:s being trained on flawed/biased data is a known real
| and unfortunate thing which can hurt already marginalised groups
| in society if used for eg. policy derisions.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The "unfortunately" refers to the preceding text rather than
| the following.
|
| > However, despite these discussions not being off-topic, they
| tend to be flagged to death by users regardless. Unfortunately.
| Y-bar wrote:
| That's my point, I think. It seems to me that moderators are
| doing the right thing by HN rules and context by tagging such
| discussions are not off-topic. Why is it described as
| "unfortunate" then?
| djur wrote:
| I think you're reading it as "Unfortunately, moderators
| occasionally unkill such threads..." when it's meant as
| "...they tend to be flagged to death by users regardless,
| unfortunately".
| Y-bar wrote:
| I think so too perhaps and hopefully, but there is no
| comma As in your example. Just a period suggesting the
| previous sentence has ended.
| sokoloff wrote:
| True. But the following phrase is set off by both a
| period and a set of parentheses. I think it's pretty
| clear the author's intent is for there to be a complete
| sentence about the behavior of HN users and then a
| complete thought saying that was unfortunate. (Then a
| parenthetical about the moderator behavior.)
| bmicraft wrote:
| If you quoted the whole thing it would be more apparent:
|
| > [...] they tend to be flagged to death by users regardless.
| Unfortunately.
|
| What the author finds unfortunate is the flagging by users, not
| the moderator action.
| Y-bar wrote:
| I hope i can agree with you. But are you really sure? The
| period seems to indicate that the "unfortunate" belongs to
| the moderator action and not the flagging.
| bmicraft wrote:
| In my mind unfortunately can only ever refer to a previous
| sentence, not the next one. I read the period simply as a
| stylistic choice meant as a pause. They could have written
| it with a dash or a comma:
|
| > [...] they tend to be flagged to death by users
| regardless -- unfortunately.
| Y-bar wrote:
| To me it is always preceding, like here:
|
| > 1. Placement: "Unfortunately" is typically placed at
| the beginning of a sentence or clause to emphasize the
| regrettable aspect of the situation. It sets the tone for
| what follows and ensures clarity in your expression.
|
| https://thecontentauthority.com/blog/how-to-use-
| unfortunatel...
|
| > Unfortunately, my time is limited.
|
| https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/unfo
| rtu...
| djur wrote:
| "[unfortunate statement]. Unfortunately." is idiomatic (if
| informal) English. "Unfortunately. [unfortunate
| statement]." is not, especially in this case where the
| second statement is parenthesized. If it was
| "Unfortunately:" or "Unfortunately," that would be
| different.
| orenlindsey wrote:
| This list is pretty nice, I learned a lot from it.
| cinntaile wrote:
| Another undocumented feature is that flagging posts/submissions
| very likely is weighted differently for different users.
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