HN Explorer

Ask HN: Can we add collapsing boxes to comments?

143 points by studentrob ↗ HN
The top of this thread devolved into an off-topic discussion of the Month Hall problem [1]. I'm often on my phone and don't have the ability to use the browser extension that adds collapsing boxes on a desktop. Plus I think this would be a feature that could allow everyone to more easily locate interesting discussion.

My favorite discussions on HN are the ones where comments are primarily on topic and substantive. How can we get more of this?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11389370

47 comments

[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 115 ms ] thread
semisight
+1 from me. My favorite feature for browsing Reddit is the RES collapsing button.

If HN declines to add it, maybe someone can make an `HNES'?

jack_hanford
I use this chrome extension ->

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hn-special-an-addi...

You have to disable their hideous theme, but it adds collapsible comments and infinite scroll on the home page which is pretty neat.

rcthompson
I agree, having a collapse button would help cut down on the tendency of the early top comment to co-opt the original topic.
sikim
I use React HN [1] for this. It does not allow you to vote or make a comment, but it allows you to collapse comments and updates real time without having to refresh (which is sometimes a pain when you are reading a comment and suddenly new comment appears on the top and pushes down the comment you were reading).

[1] http://insin.github.io/react-hn

studentrob
That's a great tool but I doubt everyone will use it. To get better quality discussion, everyone should have access to the same basic toolset.
rubidium
I see no way in which this would discourage good conversation and information sharing. And it would encourage the better comments to float to the top.

However, I put a low bet on it actually happening.

studentrob
Yeah, same here. It's probably been requested before. I thought it could not hurt to float the idea again.
akamaka
I'd prefer to see a higher quality of conversation and fewer pointless comments. The longest comment threads on HN are often the least interesting. The type of thread that comes to mind is one that starts with a comment that's not quite flamebait, but a strong opinion that's just wrong enough that lots of people feel forced to reply to correct a fallacy, and trigger an ensuing argument. [1]

How about putting a lower score weighting on comments with lots of replies?

[1] This thread from yesterday illustrates this perfectly, in my opinion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11374839

studentrob
> The type of thread that comes to mind is one that starts with a comment that's not quite flamebait, but a strong opinion that's just wrong enough that lots of people feel forced to reply to correct a fallacy, and trigger an ensuing argument.

Right. But we can't control what people say without making changes to HN policy on moderation.

What I'm suggesting requires no policy change and would allow you to skip over that entire conversation quite easily with one click.

akamaka
So yeah, I agree with you in principle that the navigation problem is easier to address, but I'm not really happy with reddit's solution of collapsing threads. It kind of stinks, because you might be halfway into a thread when you decide to collapse it, and then you have to scroll back up and try to figure out which nesting level you were at, and so on. I use the thread collapse feature on reddit frequently, but I also hate it just enough to not want to see it copied here.

I was originally going to suggest some alternatives, but thinking about this made me conclude that this is an unsolved UX problem and I don't know the answer.

studentrob
Ohhh I see what you're saying. I think I have an idea here!

Color code the indentation space of comments and make them click able to collapse them. Then as you're reading, you just remember in your head you are reading about "red" right now, and "blue" is sort of interesting but at some point you decide to collapse the current blue in order to skip to the next comment at the blue level. No scrolling required. Make sense?

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wallacoloo
What about shading the top-level comments with a different background color so that it's easier to scroll past the long comment threads?
jobead
I would _really_ love a collapse button that floats down the screen as I scroll, so I can hide an entire reply chain after I'm deep into it already.
studentrob
That's a good idea but how would you recall which one you are collapsing? Color code them? Hover over the button to show the original comment as a tooltip?
akamaka
That sounds like a good idea to me. I find it damn near impossible to tell when a comment thread has ended, because the only indicator of a new top-level comment is the number of blank pixels to the left of it!
FajitaNachos
OP, if you are on an android phone the Hacker News 2 app has this feature. I've often wished for it in the browser. I'll check out that chrome extension in the mean time
studentrob
Thank you for your suggestion.

I just tried it. The collapsing is great and easy to use. Clicking anywhere in a comment to collapse makes sense. Then again, that removes your ability to copy/paste, quote someone, etc.

Also, everyone will not use this or the browser extensions. We all need access to the same basic tools in order for the overall quality of discussion to go up.

Thanks again though, I didn't know about this one. I'd consider using it if it were not so slow and didn't just crash on my N4, doh! =)

vortico
I'm a fan of linear conversations on internet communities. I think the time that a message was posted is important, so the first message I want to look at is the most recent.

Although, adding this feature doesn't really make it better or worse for that goal.

studentrob
Yeah that's separate. A few people are using this thread to request other features.

Traditionally, HN staff have been very reluctant to make changes to the UI for fear it may hurt quality of discussion or promote the number of deep comments where people are talking past each other.

I think there is a strong argument to be made that collapsing boxes will increase quality of discussion by allowing everyone to navigate topics more quickly.

jklp
For those on Safari, I managed to find this extension which also does does collapsable comments

https://hckrnews.com/about.html

studentrob
I mentioned extensions in my original comment.

The point stands that everyone should have access to the same basic tools. If some people do not use an extension, they will not be able to browse topics as quickly. This hurts discussion quality.

esturk
One can also use "Block element" that's easily one of the most useful feature in Safari.
pmoriarty
Here's a vote for less use of javascript, not more.

I use w3m under emacs, and that does not work with Javascript. So HN would break if it required it. Using a Javascript-aware browser would also expose me to a host of Javascript vulnerabilities.

Anyway, I'd be much more interested in comments and articles getting tags, rather than collapsing comments.

Even better would be ditching primitive web browsers for a return to Usenet, which would allow the use of sophisticated news clients with features like kill files, properly threaded and sorted conversations, advanced filtering, and, yes, collapsible comments.

zer01
It should be possible to do all the collapsing and whatnot in pure CSS, which would leave your setup un-affected :)
maratd
It doesn't even have to be hover. You can do click-based stuff using hidden check-boxes. CSS3.
geuis
You don't need to use js for collapsible comments at all. It can be done entirely in css.
simoncion
> HN would break if it required it.

Why would it require it? If JS is turned off, the arrows don't get removed when you vote on an item. If comment thread collapsing were implemented, then thread collapsing just wouldn't work with JS off.

Just because so many "web applications" don't work with JS disabled doesn't mean that one can't make a site that works pretty much just as well with JS off as it does on. :)

wmichelin
If you're afraid of JavaScript vulnerabilities, then why are you on the internet? Pretty much every website nowadays is completely filled with JavaScript.
stephentmcm
Early contender for troll comment of the year?
simoncion
Hear, hear! This would be a valuable function for the second piece of JavaScript on HN.
zer01
My vote is for pure CSS. It's definitely possible, reasonably supported, and has 0% chance of doing something nefarious/malicious or introducing security issues.
simoncion
I'm no web-dev, but if it can be done with just CSS and not run into any wretched browser bugs, then that's clearly the superior way. :)
50CNT
How would you do that? Is that one of those weird things were you exploit toggle button behaviour, or is there some way to actually do onclick toggles in pure CSS?
kough
While we're thinking about mobile CSS enhancements, what about a proper quoting mechanism? Using code-formatting makes wide text impossible to read on narrow screens. I totally agree that thread-collapsing would be a useful enhancement, and I have a browser extension that does it for me on desktop, but the quoting problem is a) really noticeable in every thread and b) probably easy to fix (not sure exactly how the HN text parser works). I'd be happy to donate some time to adding the functionality if you're interested, just shoot me an email.
reustle
I reported this bug to HN a few months ago and they said oh yea that's a bug, and they'll look into it
studentrob
Actually I think of this as a desktop and mobile change. Something to make it easier for everyone to skip past off-topic conversation like yours (haha, only kidding!!!!). :-D -OP
studentrob
This thread appears to have been moderated off the front page and off the "ask" section. 3 hours in, 40 comments and 127 points.

Thanks for the discussion! I guess we won't see this feature in the near term.

brudgers
Generally, meta-discussions are considered off topic on HN. Probably because they tend to generate dull comments such as mine here.
studentrob
Agreed yours is dull ;-)

I wouldn't call this topic meta. I'd call it a critique of HN itself.

This thread contains many interesting comments. The topic was up voted quickly by the HN community. If the thread really was manually removed, I'd like to hear directly from the mods about why. Where in the HN guidelines does it state you cannot critique HN? It doesn't. The only thing it says that is similar is this,

> Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something (e.g. to ask us questions about Y Combinator, or to ask or complain about moderation). If you want to say something to us, please send it to hn@ycombinator.com.

However, this post was a question to the community asking for ideas on how to improve comment navigation and thus discussion quality.

So I think maybe something else happened and I'm just curious what triggered the topic's removal.

brudgers
I suspect that people flagged the submission [story] because they found it did not rise to the level considered intellectually interesting enough for Hacker News. Flagging increases gravity and pulls submissions down.

Why would people do that? I suspect because for many people talking about Hacker News is not the reason that they come to Hacker News. I suspect that many people, like me, classify talking about Hacker News rather than hacker news to fall into the category of meta-discussion much in the same way that talking about StackOverflow is considered meta-discussion and lives on a separate site...if site management seems like an interesting topic, listening to Spolsky and Atwood discusss the building of StackOverflow is a good listen, they made podcasts all the way back to the first weeks of building it.

Don't get me wrong, I think a critique of HN could be interesting. I just think a blog post or essay would probably be more intellectually interesting than a quickly written call to arms...in that vein I suppose an actual implementation would be still more intellectually interesting particularly one of those proposals based on pure CSS. Given the organization of Hacker News markup, pure CSS recursing on .athing would probably be a duct tape (in the highest sense of duct tape) grade hack.

That leaves the question of why some meaningful fraction of the Hacker News community didn't find the question particularly interesting. There I think it bumps up against a bit of tEndless September. Here's a more popular and but no more interesting thread from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11355038 Though in fairness proposing turning HN into Reddit probably gets some extra points for turning the "HN is turning into Reddit" meme on its head.

Anyway, people who follow all this stuff are aware that the moderator, dang, has said that collapsible comments are on the feature backlog. My take is that the feature backlog is filled with items that make the site better but that users don't see [e.g. don't see spammers].

The other problem with meta discussions besides dullness is that trying to be polite and thoughtful and helpful sucks up an asymmetric amount of effort, as this post demonstrates.

studentrob
I asked via email and it turns out it was modded off as a duplicate of a recent post a week ago [1], which I see you cited too

I didn't realize the topic was a dupe, oops! Anyway now we know.

I was told they're considering the feature and will probably implement something. Fingers crossed!

> trying to be polite and thoughtful and helpful sucks up an asymmetric amount of effort, as this post demonstrates.

Not sure what you mean here. Whose time, commenter or HN staff? Either can choose to ignore the topic, whether by closing the tab or through modding. As you said, meta discussions are modded off, but allowed from time to time because, according to the response I got in email, "they get people's juices flowing". I'm fine with that though I do think it'd be more clear if that were noted in the guidelines.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11355038