[piou]

For some part of the population, me included, taking the action of reloading feels better than being pushed from one piece of content to another - it helps me tell myself I'm in control, unlike with, say, video sites that automatically queue up the next video.

A killer anti-design feature for a place like Hacker News would be to limit how many links and comments get posted every hour or day. Which would have me reloading less often, which would - accomplish the goal of me spending less time here, I guess?

But seriously, the thing most likely to keep me from infinite scrolling or reloading is to have a roommate or live-in significant other.

[saurik]

The #1 thing I need is a feature that makes me feel confident that if I spend a few hours carefully and deliberately looking at Hacker News this weekend that I will not "miss" the stuff I would have seen throughout the week. The various sites which try to show you the highlights never seem to actually show me the stuff I would have found in the moment looking at the site :/. It sucks too because it isn't like anything af all about this site is "real time" in the sense that it goes away later... except figuring out how to show people the historical rankings is missing. (I am considering trying to build a mechanism to do this for me, as I often feel like my solution to things I am addicted to is to automate their recording and then realize I never bothered to look at the recordings.)

[presentation]

I assume you’re not happy with stuff like HackerNewsletter [1], though my experience is that missing out on the latest stuff on Hacker News has never had a material negative effect on my life. I see it as entertainment, not a need per se.

[1] https://hackernewsletter.com/

[saurik]

Well, congratulations on not having the problem being discussed ;P. One may as well tell an alcoholic that not drinking during an outing has never been a big deal, and that you see it merely as an interesting flavor ;P.

[presentation]

Huh? I’m not saying it’s not addicting, I’m saying it’s an illusion of importance - you mentioned you worry about negative consequences of missing out, I was just pointing out that in my experience I can’t think of a time where missing out actually had a negative effect (regardless of how important I perceived information on HN, and I’ve compulsively viewed HN plenty). Sorry if that came out wrong.

[bijant]

Please do! My Issue is that I rarely want to actually read the articles, the discussions are usually much more interesting. Most hn aggregator sites have a ui that is focused on the articles not the comments. If i had a way to check a week in review hn one a weekend (or some other time) that would be amazing for my productivity;-)

[throwamon]

I don't feel in control at all. In fact I realized I tend to engage in this mindless refreshing when I'm exceptionally stressed out, which I know is pretty much the opposite of helpful.

And I wish it was as easy as just having fewer links on HN. I'd just go to Reddit instead.

[piou]

"have a roommate or live-in significant other" - life's killer app.

[_y5hn]

rss solves this nicely + train your willpower

The imoortant stories tend to resurface and lurk on reddit too.