[klokoman]

Because there aren't avatars and signatures. Those are essential to recognize users and also find out what they're about (signatures with links to other sites helped everyone). Also even a little personalization will be an incentive to invest a little more time in the community.

[mynewtb]

Also the concept of voting and strictly time-based decaying.

[always_good]

Yeah, without bumping threads on new posts, there's almost no reason to even comment on older topics on HN/Reddit. If it's not on the first two pages, nobody is going to see it.

Even worse, the only person who might see it is the one person you responded to since it's in the profile comment feed, and a back-and-forth isn't very interesting.

This makes forums much different where each new reply bumps the topic into the eyes of any number of people who are online.

The upstream is wrong. Avatars and (ugh) signatures don't make a forum. Being able to converse over time is what does it. That's how you get to know regulars beyond spotting their one-off posts per submission.

[freehunter]

Yeah for sure, and even here on HN. I don't reply to comments older than a few days because the only one who will see them is the person I'm replying to. And if my comment is a correction or a clarification, the person I'm responding to may not take it well, so my comment hits 0 or even negative numbers, without the possibility of the general population correcting that (then again, without the risk of them further correcting me if I'm wrong). It's just not worth it.

[KajMagnus]

Here's a Reddit & HN like discussion system (I'm developing it) that mitigates? (solves?) the problem with Reddit & HN that [only the one you reply to see your comment]:

https://www.talkyard.io/-32/how-hacker-news-can-be-improved-...

Because: 1) when you post a comment, the topic bumps to the top of the topic list. Like a normal forum. 2) inside the topic, people quickly find the recent comments, via the sidebar (as shown in the video "Finding new comments").

(B.t.w. agree that Reddit & HN feel ephemeral. I remember maybe 2 usernames here at HN, and 2 at Reddit, although having spent a lot more time here, than what I've done at Discoure's forum — nevertheless I remember many more people over at Discourse.)

[icc97]

Stack Overflow has the 'active' sorting. This is similar to bumping a topic with any activity to the top. This is the default as opposed to new.

The mentions there work nicely too, I never get swamped with inbox messages, you can only mention one person in a comment, so there's no @channel nonsense as with Slack.

[dredmorbius]

I think you're right on avatars. Goofy as they are, they seem to matter.

It somewhat hurts HN as well, IMO.

[icc97]

Even Facebook allows avatars.

The ability to express yourself in all it's unprofessional ways is important. It's a way to show you're not Facebook. Each topic is built up from the colours of the people that participate there. Individual expression is allowed. Then it's just up to the forum owners to decide what crosses the line.

[dredmorbius]

Yes, there's that. But I'm referring to the visual connection and neurological wiring. There's something about label + picture that transcends just one or the other.

I've developed my own set of, ugh, "collateral" -- avatar, icon, hero -- which seem to work well across several sites. I find the anchoring works pretty well. And see the same for others I follow, again, both over time and sites.

Mostly: G+, Ello, Twitter, Mastodon.

Reddit, HN, and Metafilter would be exceptions.

[oneeyedpigeon]

There is 'flair' which is essentially a signature. And people get creative with usernames to replicate avatars.

[magduf]

Not so much. The "flair" I've seen is very, very limited (so a bunch of people will end up with the exact same ones; there might only be a handful of choices). And part of the usefulness of Reddit is having the same user account across the entire site, so you don't have to separately log into a dozen different forums about different topics. A creative username for a car-related subreddit is going to be pretty useless when you browse over to some subreddit about programming, where no one cares about your obsession with Skylines or whatever. Finally, that stuff isn't really visual the way iconic avatars are, where someone has some small picture for their user account.

[petepete]

There are custom text flairs available on some subreddits (for, say, camera models in r/photography) as well as icons (the club badges in r/soccer). It's quite flexible.

Reddit now has profile images too but they are only displayed there.

[oneeyedpigeon]

Most of the subreddits I frequent allow you to choose freeform flair, and it's specific to each subreddit. Sure, though, it's limited in length and it's more closely analogous to a signature than an avatar.

[magduf]

Yeah, that was part of my point. That's not an avatar, it's just like a signature like you said.