HN Explorer

Ask HN: Wouldn't it be great to be able to follow fellow HN users?

56 points by reimertz ↗ HN
I just spent 15 minutes reading posts and comments by a specific user and really appreciated how detailed and humble they all where.

Each comment almost read like a good blog post so that made me wonder why I cannot follow this user.

I assume there are browser plugins that do this but I would really appreciate if it was a part of HN.

And just like upvoted posts/comments, it should stay private.

57 comments

[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 120 ms ] thread
nikivi
In theory, one could build a service on top of HN to do this. Each user feed can be read via RSS that HN provides.

Maybe this already exists.

Jugurtha
Hi, you can use hnrss[0] for this. It's easy to add that feed to your mail client, Thunderbird for example, and receive it as new content particular to that user gets created.

- [0]: https://hnrss.github.io/#user-feeds

taytus
No.
kuroguro
Yes! More Twitter features! /s
suggestionbocks
I wonder what HN would be like if it was the opposite of Twitter - all comments have to be more than 140 (or 280) characters in length.

Does any existing forum do this? Could be interesting if users were only allowed to write mini-essays to each other. Not sure if that would increase the information density by encouraging more thoughtful comments, or decrease it because people would uselessly pad their comments out to hit the threshold.

Yetanfou
Slashdot did this - and possibly still does, no idea since I left that site aeons ago - although the limit was lower than 140 characters. It led to people adding random nonsense to their comments to keep the comment filter satisfied. Since everyone knew there was such a content filter and the added guff was marked as such it did not lead to those comments being down-moderated, i.e. all it did was clutter up the site.
voussoir
/r/TrueFilm has a 180 minimum for top-level comments in threads except for the weekly casual post. Sometimes people have something to say that doesn't need 180 characters so they'll add padding, but it's pretty rare all things considered.
puranjay
Nope. I like HN as simple as possible
scott_s
I maintain a folder with bookmarks of particular users' comments pages.
cassepipe
I think that yes it would be nice but I also fear that the downside is that it may create a fealty effects where followers tend to upvote and back up their "leaders". Twitter already exists, we don't want a another one. I even suspect that it has been thought of and rejected for that very reason. Anyway there are workarounds if you really want that but let's not make it too easy either.
rtdrury
Your point is extremely relevant, whether building the ultimate society, or simply meeting immediate needs. Thinking it through, we find that following the leader has trifle benefits but great potential for harm. Thinking it through further, we find following the leader valuable only to help build, and to never degrade, our personal autonomy.
gambiting
No. This is not twitter. This would only make HN worse, as another user just noticed - you'd get the Twitter-like issue of followers upvoting their leaders and downvoting everyone who has ever disagreed with them. If you find someone interesting, just read through their comments history periodically. No subscription needed.
dijit
I agree.

Also, I’m not stalking you gambiting. We just seem to turn up in the same places already. >.>

gambiting
You see?? The forum works fine, Dijit finds me on every thread without a follow feature anyway :P
anilakar
I've always thought of HN as a minimalistic, completely open platform that you can and should customize as you see fit.
gambiting
Absolutely - and as others have pointed out, there are plugins and RSS feeds that allow you to do this should you want to. It's "hacker" news after all, many people here can set this up without much trouble. I'm just against the site itself adding more features(in fact I'd see a few of them removed before I'd advocate adding more).
spiffytech
This phenomenon is why HN shopped showing comment vote counts publicly some years ago. It used to be you would see HN_Favorite_Person with a +X,XXX comment followed by Someone_Disagrees with +32, and that set the tone for what the whole site thought, or thought it should think.

There are times I miss public vote counts. While it's nice to assess someone's position just on its merit, it's also useful to factor in how much popular support that opinion has. If I disagree with a position that looks well-endorsed by the community, maybe I should take a second look at the topic and whether my minority position is really correct.

Anecdotally, it also feels like HN has much more prolific hard-line extreme sentiments in the years since hiding comment vote counts. People arguing from a position of ideology rather than constructive pursuit of goals. There could be any number of reasons for that, but I'd bet at least a little of it is that now it's harder to look at an extreme opinion and a moderate one and gauge which (if either) represents broader community sentiment.

The HN community has seemed to broadly support the removal of vote counts; whatever drawbacks the decision has, consensus appears to be that it's a good move.

hyder_m29
> There are times I miss public vote counts. While it's nice to assess someone's position just on its merit, it's also useful to factor in how much popular support that opinion has. If I disagree with a position that looks well-endorsed by the community, maybe I should take a second look at the topic and whether my minority position is really correct.

It also has the negative impact of discouraging people from voicing their opinion.

What I really like about HN is that I could be reading opinions from leaders in the topic field, or someone who is just a hobbyist in the field, without really knowing it. And I get to make my voting decision based on the quality of the content alone.

scott_s
I have wondered something similar, even though I also think that eliminating vote counts was a good thing.

A possible feature is, per-thread, giving commenters the option of viewing karma for posts, but doing so prevents them from being able to participate in the discussion. I'm not sure how much I like this idea, and it's likely too fiddly for HN's style.

spiffytech
I've wondered about the viability of showing a comments score only on that comment's permalink page. Then the info would be available if someone wanted it, but it wouldn't be "in your face" when voting and commenting. There are probably big ways than could break down, but it's interesting to think about.
mettamage
HN is a nice place, because you decide how to use it. You can just add HN users to your bookmarks and follow them from time to time. You could also make a simple Chrome plugin.

I've built my own private Chrome plugins, for example, to add to my experience to HN. I keep them private as I find it more respectful. With that said, I use the public Refined Hacker News [1] as well.

The fact that HN is conservative on changing its features is what I like about it. If I want a new feature, I'll build it myself.

[1] https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news

behnamoh
How about when one wants to use mobile instead of desktop? Plugins don't work there anymore. FF has some, but they're limited.
the_only_law
I imagine a custom client would be a solution , albeit a bit involved.
justin66
A killfile would be a nice feature.
Scaevolus
we don't even have an inbox to see comment replies, why would they implement this
onion2k
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Scaevolus is pretty much exactly that. It doesn't highlight new responses but no one replies after more than a couple of days so it's not really necessary.
noname120
That's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nobody replies after a few days because there is no inbox for replies (and proportionally very few people use hnreplies[1]).

Anyway not having notifications is by design. It gives the opportunity to other commenters to reply, and it reduces heated discussions.

[1] https://hnreplies.com

germinalphrase
Pass. Keep the social media incentives as minimal as possible.

Edit: I did set up a “new response to your comment” email feature that someone posted in the Alan Kay AMA a while back. That’s useful for keeping a discussion going, but I wouldn’t want to see much more.

robjan
This will lead to people posting lower quality comments and one liners to increase their engagement, reach and therefore following. Let's keep it simple.

A lot of HN users do have a blog you just need to find it.

onion2k
This will lead to people posting lower quality comments and one liners to increase their engagement, reach and therefore following.

No it won't.

suggestionbocks
> A lot of HN users do have a blog you just need to find it.

That's true, but blogs come and go, whereas HN will be around until the death of the internet.

quickthrower2
Only if like twitter you know the number of followers and have likes for comments etc. But what if you didn’t? I think that would be more like an RSS feed. People don’t blog more because they have one.
no-dr-onboard
Sorry folks, I'm gonna hard pass on that one.

I distinctly remember how this played a role with Mrbabyman on Digg c. 2008 or so.

suggestionbocks
I was also thinking about this recently, it could be useful if HN borrowed some features from mainstream social media forums, in terms of community cohesion.

For example, being able to award/react to comments like Reddit, Facebook and Slashdot have. Sometimes it's good to just get a feel for what others are thinking of a comment, rather than having to read a comment which either basically repeats what the previous commenter said but with different words, or just disagrees without adding much. I think this would improve the information density of the forum by encouraging substantive comments, and replacing the useless padding comments to mere annotations.

(Perhaps this would be a good use of emojis? Keep them blocked from appearing in the comments themselves, but allow them as short annotations to other comments.)

Another example, having a comment thread on each user profile, which could have a mix of public or private comments. Sort of like Reddit's messaging, but with a public aspect too. HN currently has no mechanism for direct messaging for some reason, and it seems a glaring omission, considering the community-building advantages this can inspire. This would fill this gap nicely.

One more suggestion: being able to add a photograph to your own profile. It's great to talk to other people in cyberspace with text, but sometimes it's also nice to get a visual indicator of who you're communicating with. This doesn't have to be a real life photograph of course, any representative avatar would be fine. I think it would add colour and warmth to interactions on HN. Perhaps to make it more interesting for HN clientele, it could be limited to something like monochrome 256x256 for that old school feeling, or you need to upload a LISP program to generate it.

Anyway just some suggestions, would be interested to know other HNers' thoughts.

nkurz
Your suggestions are good, but I have to wonder why you are making them under a newly created account. Ironically, several of your suggestions depend on persistent user identity. Why not use one? Or rather, if you have one, why not use it to make these suggestions?
suggestionbocks
Thanks, well the main reason is that I'm on a different, isolated computer to usual and don't remember my password to my usual account off the top of my head, but still felt a burning desire to comment.

Secondary reason is I quite enjoyed the irony of writing all that from a newly created account.

s9w
People already follow others to downvote. I suggest the opposite: Remove all usernames and points, making it more like 4chan. I think that could be quite valuable.
pwinnski
Please no. We'd be better off hiding usernames by default than this.

If you really want to read a user's comments, you obviously can, as you found out yourself. But let that be a manual exercise, or bookmark their page, or whatever. Keep the focus of HN on content, not personalities, please!

guidovranken
There are some users here who frequently share great insights and “binging” their histories has been a delightful experience.

I think HN is fine the way it is but if anything I wish I could express my gratitude and encouragement to those users.

FreshFries
For me not.

I like the randomness of things I get to see and do not want to make another bubble for myself.

syats
This would incentivize the rock-star attitude, leading to a large number of posts created by people to have followers. This, in turn, will lead to the exclusion of stories and comments from people who don't want to spend time gaining followers.

Rock-star is the antithesis of hacker, imho.

cvhashim
Interesting idea but we already have twitter and blogs. I really like how simple and boring HN presents itself. If that user who’s providing interesting insight really wanted the attention, they’d go build their brand on those platforms.
Yetanfou
No, it would not be great. It would only add to the already rampant collection of information bubbles created by the producer-follower model used by so many social networking sites. Instead of a producer-follower model I'd like to see a subject-discussant centred model where you "tune in" to a field of interest instead of a single voice. I do not follow any single author nor have I ever done so, instead I rely on search facilities to find things of interest. I use RSS feeds to "follow" publications and discussion sites - like this one - which are authored by a multitude of authors and discussants in part to avoid getting trapped in an information bubble.

Instead of an option to follow certain authors there could be an option to follow certain subjects across time, e.g. "free software mobile platforms", "process control systems based on common single-board computers", "decentralisation of internet services", etc. Posts and comments from all authors (no matter their score) can be returned on such a category in chronological order, with links back to their original appearance on the site. Categories could be created through search queries, curated by hand (similar to the way indexes like DMOZ [1] were maintained) or by using ML to track discussion trends.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMOZ

vijay_nair
I have a private HN client that does this and more but I don't want to release it and destroy what we have here. I've gone a step further and removed username display next to comments so I make judgements based solely on the content of the message.