[giancarlostoro]

Wow yes... Are specific emojis allowed over others?

Test:

⏩⏫⏪⏬◀▶⤵↩↔↙↘↖↗⬆⬇⬅↕↪ℹ⤴🆒🈳🈶🈚🈵🆓🆗🆖🈴🈲🉐🈹🈁🆕🆙🈺🆔🆘🆑㊗㊙🈂Ⓜ🉑🈸🈷🅰🅱🆎🅾©®™‼⁉⭕〰◼◻◾◽▪⬜⬛▫〽

Course HN does just fine without Emojis. I can only imagine the amount of downvoting that would ensue. I could see maybe some being useful like the arrows.

Edit:

By the looks of it the emojis that are meant to be signs work. The ones that are actual faces do not.

[Fnoord]

Infestation of mIRC on IRC deja vu.

Emojis might not work well if you use a custom theme for HN ie. custom colours or a different style via Stylus (I'm using this one [1]).

Just to make it clear: I have no issue with them, as long as they don't contain a forced colour.

[1] https://userstyles.org/styles/92693/dark-hacker-news-solariz...

[t0astbread]

> Course HN does just fine without Emojis. I can only imagine the amount of downvoting that would ensue.

You're probably right on the downvotes but I do wonder why. Is there anything inherently bad about emoji or is HN sometimes just a counterculture for the sake of being a counterculture?

[xemdetia]

I may just be old and bitter but I've never found emojis to actually help in commentary and are actively distracting when people already have established norms in communicating in a particular language as to my eyes it becomes adding a second language where there was already one. There's no rock solid definition for any emoji that has been normalized with a universally accepted dictionary especially when it is intermixed in another language that has its own complex grammar rules. As a single character statement of a symbol e.g. 'thumbs up' it works well, but that's the limit of emoji usefulness.

As someone who works in tech I'm always aware of the hundreds of completely overloaded terms I have to use and redefine on the fly but I also have the structure of the language I am using to provide context clues to have my actual intent, meaning, and purpose of said writing last to any reader including myself five years from now. I have so little confidence in effectively using emoji to actually provide expression in a way that is persistent to myself in five years that I abstain from it entirely. In small communities of people I have seen emoji-esque symbols exist (slack/forums/odd IRC emoticons) but it is because that is part of the living culture of a particular community and has to be taught to each person that chooses to join a community. I feel that is fine because there is a context to it and an established rule of use that allows it to enrich the conversation, but on a site like HN where it's a lot of people coming together it seems like trying to put a wall up for communication. A simple example is well is most HN commenters fully understanding what a line that starts with '>' usually referring to a quote of a prior post that they want to highlight in particular. It is a useful shorthand compared to writing out longhand 'In your post you have written many things but I particularly want to respond to your comment that reads "x to y".' You have to learn that and it's overhead.

I also depending on theming/font of the emoji characters themselves can sometimes take the wrong tonal interpretation even to me. Some seem sarcastic, some seem more intimate, some seem hostile, even though the underlying emoji is supposed to be neutral in tone. This is another reason why I avoid them, as I don't want to give off the wrong impression based on that.

For a discussion forum like HN I'd say that emojis are generally harmful to making sure that the conversations last longer than the moment they were written in case it becomes useful tomorrow.

[gigama]

> For a discussion forum like HN I'd say that emojis are generally harmful to making sure that the conversations last longer than the moment they were written in case it becomes useful tomorrow.

I just had a horrible nightmare vision of having to debug a code repository entirely commented with emojis...

<shakes away>

But I agree with you, words work fine and, especially as full sentences, are less ambiguous than cutesy symbols.

[giancarlostoro]

I think it falls under the "this is not reddit" mantra which I am okay with. I rather see the type of discourse we have on here than just 1 word / 1 emoji responses.

[t0astbread]

I agree, although I think there's some room between not having any emoji and being flooded with low-quality emoji comments.

[woliveirajr]

Moderators, please, act quick and update the rules to forbid color on comments! Make emojis restricted, too, just for those cases where letters are insufficient.