Since news entries are constantly being juggled/reordered, I think it was a choice that they made. Whenever I get that error I just start on page 1 again.
I absolutely can not stand running into that message. By the time I'm finished browsing the posts and comments on the first page and click the next page link, I run into that error.
Then I click the back button, thinking that will do the trick, and click the next page link. Same error, because I never actually got a refreshed page when I went back.
So then I have to click back again, click refresh, then click the next page, all to go to the next page.
I understand that it may have been intentional, but it really hurts usability.
I sort of find it contradictory that hacker news itself feels a bit clunky, but maybe that's the point. Launch when you have something and eventually you'll know what is needed and what is just an annoyance.
I put it down to a (perhaps unintentional) * anti-procrastination device on HN's part.
Eg I'll load up a page worth of links and go read them. If by the time I finished reading and go back to HN to click on 'Next Page' and I get 'Unknown or expired link', this means that I've probably spent far too long reading already and should probably go and do some actual productive work.
Yeah, I considered that (and you are right), but if this is an attempt at pagination, it's a 'WTF' head scratcher as to why you'd make it so complicated. I'm not saying I know, just giving the coders the benefit of the doubt.
I think the more important thing to worry about here is getting back to work, not the pages on a social news aggregator expiring for being open too long.
This wouldn't be a problem if I could choose the number of articles per page - 30 articles per page isn't enough. I rarely go more than 5 pages deep on HN. If HN was just a single page with 300 entries that I could refresh (or would auto-refresh via Comet/AJAX) I would be a happy camper.
It sucks when you have 20 pages to catch up on and you're forced to open all interesting looking links in new tabs, get to the end before your time runs out, and only then start reading the new tabs.
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[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 46.3 ms ] threadThen I click the back button, thinking that will do the trick, and click the next page link. Same error, because I never actually got a refreshed page when I went back.
So then I have to click back again, click refresh, then click the next page, all to go to the next page.
I understand that it may have been intentional, but it really hurts usability.
I sort of find it contradictory that hacker news itself feels a bit clunky, but maybe that's the point. Launch when you have something and eventually you'll know what is needed and what is just an annoyance.
I put it down to a (perhaps unintentional) * anti-procrastination device on HN's part.
Eg I'll load up a page worth of links and go read them. If by the time I finished reading and go back to HN to click on 'Next Page' and I get 'Unknown or expired link', this means that I've probably spent far too long reading already and should probably go and do some actual productive work.
* This doesn't always work as intended = /
A scraper would move on to the next page almost immediately, real humans take a while to get to the next page.
I think the more important thing to worry about here is getting back to work, not the pages on a social news aggregator expiring for being open too long.