What is the deal with HN's unknown or expired links when you take more than a few minutes to browse a list- and horrible urls.
why doesnt somebody repair that?
You will find explanations of why it is what it is, and perhaps dozens of suggestions for how to fix it, followed by explanations of why they won't work given the current way HN operates.
Here's the most immediate fix: Open those lists into new tabs/pages before you browse through them. If you expect to have to restart the browser before you are done doing so, save them off and view them subsequently via the local copy. (There's at least one browser extension that makes this very convenient.)
HN focuses on collecting and organizing posts and comments. It doesn't do a lot of hand-holding beyond that. That's in good part by choice. Comment response notifications, contact sharing, etc. have all been left to users and third parties to organize and implement.
The site focuses on doing what it does do, quite well. It has its own opinion as to what that is and should be (and should not be). So far, this has worked out pretty well.
I don't mean this as criticism of the question. Rather, as a bit of context from someone who's been here a while and has observed the site pretty much since its public launch.
P.S. To be clear, I am not a site moderator. This is just one person's observation and opinion.
P.P.S. The approach I propose as a workaround also implies heavy use of "open link in new tab". Whether via using different clicking to do so, or e.g using a bookmark to add that attribute to all links on the "list" page.
4 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 20.4 ms ] threadIt's been discussed many times before, and for various reasons it doesn't look like it's going to be "repaired" (that word itself being subjective).
https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=title%3A%2...
You will find explanations of why it is what it is, and perhaps dozens of suggestions for how to fix it, followed by explanations of why they won't work given the current way HN operates.
HN focuses on collecting and organizing posts and comments. It doesn't do a lot of hand-holding beyond that. That's in good part by choice. Comment response notifications, contact sharing, etc. have all been left to users and third parties to organize and implement.
The site focuses on doing what it does do, quite well. It has its own opinion as to what that is and should be (and should not be). So far, this has worked out pretty well.
I don't mean this as criticism of the question. Rather, as a bit of context from someone who's been here a while and has observed the site pretty much since its public launch.
P.S. To be clear, I am not a site moderator. This is just one person's observation and opinion.
P.P.S. The approach I propose as a workaround also implies heavy use of "open link in new tab". Whether via using different clicking to do so, or e.g using a bookmark to add that attribute to all links on the "list" page.