The case for pictures next to usernames on Hacker News
In any case, the cities and ambition thread got me thinking about what it would take to make an online community more like an offline one. I think the bulk of it comes down to conversation, of which there are two parts: content and mechanics. The content side seems OK here (for what I’m looking for at least). The mechanics side falls way behind the offline world, however.
Offline we have 3-d conversations using most of our sensory perceptions. Online, a lot of that obviously goes away. Of course there are benefits of being online too, e.g. asynchronous threads, archiving, etc. But the lack of the senses drastically takes away the emotional feel of the offline community.
Pictures next to usernames I believe would be at least a start in the other direction. We would get more of a visual sense for a person. For me at least, I think I would start associating usernames more with their set of comments. And I think that would greatly increase the sense of community gained from the site. I’m sure there are other (low-impact) things one could do as well, but I just haven’t thought of them.
I get it pg, you don’t want to spend your time working on this site (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=201122), but maybe someone playing around with Arc could make the change and then it could be ported back.
86 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 173 ms ] threadOne thing though, the images would increase the bandwidth to the site, and maybe even hamper performance.
Adding a visually intrusive feature and enabling it by default is not the best thing to do, especially when the understated appearance is the feature of the website.
If you supposed the set of Hacker News commenters didn't change, I think pictures would clearly be a win. What you seem to be suggesting is that by adding pictures, we would attract bad commenters. I just don't think that is true.
I think it's as much the social norms as the user base. For example, we have kind of an unspoken humor armistice here. Normally humor is used to demonstrate intelligence. However, it's mutually understood that everyone here is intelligent enough to make the appropriate joke, but that we should refrain because it doesn't really add anything to the conversation or make anyone else any better off.
I think it should be told somewhere what are the goals of the community and explain that we aim for efficiency, knowledge and insightful conversations more than entertainment. Not because we don't like entertainment but because that's not why we are here.
"Honey you got reaaaaaal ugly."
"Look at that 3 pixel noob..."
You could use the user's top bar preferences!
(I recently joined the elite - that's why I'm smug.)
I'm not sold on the idea of something like this here, but even a very small icon (like 16x16 or smaller--very small) or bullet of color would would make threads easier to keep track of.
Imagine watching the NBA on TV with no names on the jerseys and all the faces blurred out. Writing style without names would be (in some but not all cases) like trying to identify players by their shoes, tattoos or morphology (read: mostly freakish tallness).
That it would be unpleasant to the watcher if the names and faces were blurred out, implies that the celebrity nature of the activity holds much importance.
Haha, just saying, FWIW, because your comment was interesting.
How this relates to the present topic I don't know; hell, I'm not even sure this hypothesis is correct. I just think it's interesting.
I would posit that the celebrity nature of professional sports is the biggest contribution to making them becoming huge money-making enterprises in the last few decades. If you made all players anonymous, I would bet money that the enterprise would shrink and become a more local phenomenon.
Two, getting a username is considered a sunk cost, one many are willing to pay, but setting up a picture is an additional cost; some will pay, but I would wager many of us here won't bother. However, once you set up the option, there will be a "ah, they're the ones who like to update their profile pic!" and "ah, they're among those who simply don't care!" Assume many people don't bother, you still need to make do, which is your current situation.
Third, user-selected pictures carry a lot more information than just the usernames, and this information may simply detract from the core of the site, which is the content and discussion. If you treat usernames just as differentiating handles, they currently serve exactly that purpose.
Of course, you will be right to say that pictographs can be more efficiently retrieved from memory here, but the case doesn't seem strong enough to spur investing time into accommodating the functions in the code. I agree with pg above in this thread.
On the web, focus is a HUGE commodity and we are right to desire it. I would argue that a sense of community and a sense of focus go hand in hand, and given that I think optional images could help maintain a sense of community even as our numbers grow larger.
Hey -- count your blessings.
(Just kidding!)
......
Robert Frost suggested that he could write poem/plays in which all of the characters went unnamed, and that the reader would identify the characters based entirely on tone. This idiosyncratic idea has come true to a degree on the internet: There is an accidental feature in some blogs (I think blogspot [1]) where almost everybody winds up posting as "anonymous". Despite this, you can usually tell in a rough way who is who.
At any rate, I don't think pictures ever add anything.
[1] Because it's a pain, depending on the blogger's settings, to log in.
I would argue for incremental improvements to the interface: iPhone friendly version no more odd page parameters that timeout without a page refresh
Seriously, if I included a pic, it would be of someone else. It's better for everyone like that, trust me.
IRC is another example. People build up personalities and tie nicknames to them pretty easily without graphics.. and IRC can get very emotional at times.
Single threading (as used by MetaFilter) forces / encourages people to take note of nicknames in order to target specific responses, so nicknames become a lot more relevant.
Secondly, discussions tend to roll on and on on MetaFilter, whereas it's uncommon for two people to respond back and forth more than once on HN stories.
If nobody else wants to do it, and there is interest, I could set it up. I have no autofollow script yet, but I would ask Twitter support to enable it.
Edit: I already follow @newsycombinator, so if that would add autofollow it would be great ;-)
I like the fact i can concentrate on the article than on the author or picture or his/her CV (logical trend when you start adding a lot of info about users)
but frankly its the simplicity equation.
The proposed extreme is to encourage community via personalization. I personally disagree with this: web sites are typically too big to be communities in a natural sense. What you will get is increased visibility for a small elite of spam-heavy commentators.
The other extreme is 2ch-style anonymity. This is open to mob abuse, but it also discourages powergaming.
The core issue is how to continue scaling the system to match interests when they reach hundreds or thousands for every front-page story. news.yc is getting there already....
Think of some of the more memorable opinions from the past. Would your opinion of those comments be different if you knew before reading them that the poster was a 15-year-old girl, a 23-year-old transgender, a 55-year-old male? For a very small few of us, the answer is no. For the large majority of us -- myself included -- the answer is yes. The less information I have about the person, the more I can stick to what is being said.
I can certainly appreciate the arguments for having the image. I just don't think they outweigh the reasons against. I'm not listing all the reasons here, either. I'm just bringing up the main point for me specifically.