Ask HN: What's your perfect Hacker News?

[hnaf]

I am a big lover of HN since 2016. This place is great and the conversation is great (most of the time). I do have some major gripes with HN as of late and I can’t help feel like it’s transforming into a place much different. But that’s just my opinion.

But forget about my thoughts. I’m just looking for yours…

If you could change HN, which features would you love to bring in? Which features would you remove? What is your perfect HN?

I am very aware that this submission is likely to be ‘disappeared’ in minutes. This is why I feel a little scared too scared to attach my main profile with thousands of karma to this post. HN in 2024 is not the HN of 2016 in my view. Eggshells!

[mtmail]

I'd appreciate a changelog page similar to https://news.ycombinator.com/security.html I'm sure the admins are improving things behind the scenes but it's mostly unnoticed and so users might think development has been stale for years. Did they upgrade servers? Fix aspect ratio on mobile?

There must be dozens (hundreds?) of developers on HN who could help implement a dark mode. On the one hand I'd be great if somebody built a prototype that can be easily copy&pasted (HN whole CSS is tiny). On the other hand YCombinator is attached to literal billion dollar company so why do work for free?

Remove: Maybe move the /jobs and even the monthly threads to a separate website. Jobs postings aren't really articles, shouldn't require upvoting/ranking or comments.

[pvg]

I am very aware that this submission is likely to be ‘disappeared’ in minutes.

HN submissions are almost never 'disappeared' so that awareness is probably misplaced. The question itself, in various forms, pops up quite frequently - here's one thread from a few months ago and you can find piles more with the search interface.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38698710

[qwertybopeep]

You are wrong.

[pvg]

I doubt it but maybe you can tell me more about the wrongness.

[illuminant]

I've noticed this phenomenon of disappearing posts as well.

There are "flagged" posts, which say [flagged] and then there are disappearing posts which just, disappear!

I have had such posts open in separate tabs, and when refreshed they and their content show up blank.

[pvg]

They don't, unless the poster deletes them and that only works if there are no comments (for story posts) or replies (for comments).

Go to your profile and check the 'showdead' checkbox. You will see more crappy things but if that's what you want, they'll be visible to you.

[qwertybopeep]

Try logging in as a new account with less than 15K of karma and speak passionately about topics which mean something substantial. It's a different HN world view.

[pvg]

I'm not sure what this has to do with the idea that a generic Ask HN about HN itself is going to be 'disappeared'. HN posts are almost never 'disappeared'.

But maybe you can find some links to examples of the bad things you're describing? There's people commenting on all sorts of topics all the time and the overwhelming majority of their comments appear to be doing fine.

[illuminant]

And separately, some people apparently vote down if they just don't agree with you, even if it is a valid comment.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

What happens after 15K karma?

[krapp]

We don't discuss that openly.

[sgbeal]

> This is why I feel a little scared too scared to attach my main profile with thousands of karma to this post.

If you've got a surplus, there's certainly no harm in risking a few points?

[fragmede]

Yeah. This says more about OP than anything else. This isn't a remotely controversial post, and yet they couldn't attach their main account to it and had to post it from an alt? I've posted some seriously dumb stuff in hindsight and I guess I'm never running for public office because of it, but that level of fear is unwarranted.

[Karrot_Kream]

HN is having a major influx of users. If you're curious look at https://hackernews-insight.vercel.app/overview . It would be strange if it weren't changing into a different place! There's many more lurkers here and that's going to change the dynamic significantly. I suspect a lot of the lowering civility you perceive is coming from a larger userbase that sees less kinship in the other and sees this place more like a text-oriented Twitter to shout at each other. Also larger userbases attract zealots and so you probably (at least I do) see an increase in zealotry.

It's a very different HN now. HN is now a major tech news site with a large userbase and a large lurker population. That's very different to the medium sized, highly engaged userbase of before.

It's nothing you can change. Spaces with large userbases work and feel differently than spaces with smaller userbases. Discord, Bluesky, and Xitter in that order are where I spend my time more these days. On Discord nobody is going to try to dunk on me because they're jaded or angry or whatever, Bluesky has rich enough moderation that I can ignore the haters, and Xitter gives me the breadth that neither Discord nor Bluesky can. HN is a minority of my time. I just treat it as the "angry tech people site."

[pvg]

You'd have to take out spam account creation which is a more likely explanation for much of these spikes. There's no corresponding increase in submissions or comments so these big increases in users don't appear to correspond to matching increases in other visible activity.

I looked at a related metric recently - unique users/N comments (i.e. how many unique users per, say, 100k consecutive comments). This number hasn't changed at all for many years.

[Karrot_Kream]

What makes you think spam account creation is up and what changed in the last 2 years that made spam accounts so much more easily createable?

Comment counts haven't changed but text post creation absolutely has. Given that no more stories are being flagged than usual, in fact if you amortize this over new user counts a lot less per user, I'm going to say that it's genuinely new text accounts that want to engage with HN by making text posts.

[pvg]

I think it's the other way round - what makes you think these vertical temporary spikes of account creation can possibly be organic growth? Even viral growth doesn't look like that and, again, it's not reflected in the normal activity of the site. Creating accounts in bulk has always been trivial, there was a spam post with 600 upvotes just yesterday.

As to the text posts, I'm not sure I understand its relationship to your original claim, that is an odd jump but it doesn't sound all that difficult to look into, without that we'd both be mostly guessing (my guess is still likely spam but I have no idea). Unless you already have?

Edit: I tweaked the query slightly and I haven't looked into the content but that kinda looks like spam to me? I.e. the number of nondead text stories hasn't changed in years. Spamdetection kills a lot of stuff as you can check for yourself by browsing /newest

https://play.clickhouse.com/play?user=play#U0VMRUNUCiAgICBDT...

[pvg]

And an example of a current text posting spammer: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=lilysmith3311

[chiefalchemist]

Giving a down vote costs you 2 (or more?) of your own votes.

As the very least, down votes should require a comment. Even "false", "not true" or "disagree" would help.

My sense is, there's a network of HN users who attempt to manipulate the exposure of ideas by downvoting them (to the point those comments aren't even exposed).

Don't get me wrong, there are comments that deserve DV'ing. Moi? I can't be bothered. I just scroll on. But for those who aspire to be the HN police - especially then it's at the option (not fact) level - they should have to pay for that privilege.

[AnimalMuppet]

> As the very least, down votes should require a comment. Even "false", "not true" or "disagree" would help.

This may be a bad idea. Think about the recursive effect: Someone downvotes, and gives an explanation. Someone downvotes the downvote, and gives an explanation. That's a worse discussion, because it has no more real comments, but all these downvote comments (or worse, comment chains).

[chiefalchemist]

Maybe. But I'll take my chances.

Down voting and not adding context because you simply don't like an idea (which on HN happens more than it should). That is, a very subjective DV.

Is not the same as an objective DV. That is, the statement is false and that should be known.

Again, the current system is too easy to manipulate. See an idea that doesn't fit your (narrow?) sociopolitical lens and you can make it disappear. Not because it's objectively incorrect, but simply because you don't agree with it. That's childish, at best.

[fragmede]

We're explicitly not supposed to say why we've flagged an article, which I find confusing, but is in a similar vein.

[stop50]

I would like this feature.

[beardyw]

Down voted. What a surprise.

[chiefalchemist]

I'd like to add to my other comment about down voting.

Profiles should show up votes given and down votes given. As well as up votes received and down votes received.

The current single "score" is too vague. It lacks context.

[krapp]

At the moment, my "perfect Hacker News" is Mastodon. A curated feed of people sharing interesting things, and that's it. No viputerative snark, no performative cynicism, no wallowing in conspiracy theory, no flame wars, no race wars, no green accounts shouting slurs and death threats. No lectures whenever someone makes a joke or steps on one of an ever increasing and increasingly pedantic set of guidelines. It's everything I wish Hacker News was. It's fun. Hacker News hasn't been fun in a long time.

If I had to change one thing about HN, architecturally (since trying to change the culture is a fool's errand) it would be better curation. This would go against one of the design goals of HN, having a "non-fragmented" community where everyone sees the same site and the same content. But I would argue that the community is already fragmented. The size and diversity of the userbase is such that people already experience completely different versions of Hacker News depending on when they arrive and what they follow.

Being able to whitelist or blacklist accounts, domains, keywords, etc and curate one's account would improve the subjective quality of the forum across the board. People who want Hacker News to only be strictly technical and startup content can have that. People who want rough-and-tumble politics and debate can have that. And never the twain should meet.

I really do think there is an interesting design space between Twitter and traditional threaded forums that might make for an interesting experience.

And if I had to change a second thing about HN it would be getting rid of voting/karma, because it clearly isn't serving its intended purpose.

[fragmede]

> since trying to change the culture is a fool's errand

No it's not. If that were true, cultures would never change. Except they do, so clearly something is happening in that area.

[AnimalMuppet]

The "eggshells" comment is, I think, indicative.

HN used to be a place where you could read a post from a position that you disagreed with, and still learn something. Posts had more thought and more interesting points. Users had more tolerance for those who disagreed with them. Those who disagreed had more thoughtful reasons for why they disagreed - it wasn't just "is not".

You can't fix that by changing the code. The problem is the users have changed.

HN has more users now. First, that means that the old users are in the minority, if they stuck around. Second, it means that HN has become a more useful platform for ideological battle, and therefore that more ideological battle gets pushed here, even though it's completely against the intent of the site.

And, maybe, some of the old users have changed, too - become more sharp and less tolerant.

I don't think you can fix HN without first fixing society. I wish I had a more optimistic answer.

[fragmede]

What do you see as wrong with society and how would you fix it?

[qwertybopeep]

I think the parent has the right idea. Partly at least. I mean, there's no denying that since covid in 2020 the web has changed and there's a lot more anger out around. It's not just Hacker News which has changed, it's other platforms too. For example, have you tried to add a comment to a youtube video in 2024? Shadow banning and misuse of downvoting / reporting isn't just limited to HN.

[qwertybopeep]

I think the 'hide' button should be used more by those who don't wish to see a comment or submission.

I would like to see the statistics of how many 'downvotes' are used on a daily basis in 2024 compared with previous years, as I have a suspicion that it is just being used at the detriment of good conversation (heated or otherwise). And if this is the case, just remove the feature if it no longer works like it used to.

Edit: There we go with people downvoting. Couple more and you can hide away my opinion (which has no place on HN, evidently).