HN Explorer

Ask HN Mods: Can we add some extra options to comments?

8 points by hashtag ↗ HN
In large threads where there are hundreds of comments, I find myself frustrated at times with the way comments are displayed.

1. They don't seem to display in order so new comments coming in can appear anywhere making me have to scroll through all the comments again just to find the new ones (even with browser plug-ins that highlight new comments).

2. There is no way to just view top level comments (yes, I have a browser plugin that allows me to collapse comments, which I think HN should do on its own, but I'd have to manually collapse each one just to read the top comments). Ideally I'd like a fast way to view all top level comments by default

Some threads where this immediately becomes applicable are threads like "Who's Hiring" and "Idea Sunday", etc... I'm sure there have been other popular threads where comments just grow out of control and I wish there was a better way to manage this.

7 comments

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dang
I see the problem, and experience it myself to some extent. Yes, we'd be open to fixing it, as long as whatever we did fit well with HN's design style, which is to be minimal and unobtrusive, text-oriented, and so on.

I've written software to help me manage HN threads for moderation purposes. A lot of it might be useful for non-moderation purposes too, i.e. just reading the site. I'd like to open source it eventually.

kevin
I totally hear you.

Collapsing comments is something we'll definitely be implementing. Collapsing all comments does sound useful.

The problem of finding new comments on popular threads is tricky. I'll probably always lean towards the most minimal change possible for a community as active as HN.

A light way to do it would be to have some visual indicator that makes new comments easier to find. Another way to do it would be to have a separate view for each thread that's like /newcomments (an RSS feed wouldn't hurt either) I may play with providing sort options that does this dynamically with JS.

hashtag
Is there a reason HN doesn't put comments in ascending or descending order but make it all over the place, especially with karma hidden.

If I had to guess, this had something to do with karma and trying to show which comments were most popular back in the day (wild stab in the dark here) but when someone returns to a thread to view new comments, that doesn't matter. And if they want to see responses to comments they've made, there is already a link for that. I think at the least allow sorting to show newest comments on top would help on huge comment threads

brudgers
Maybe adding modality to the 'COMMENTS' link would work. From the front page it would work as it does now. From a comments page it would time sort that submission's comments.

[Disclaimer] I have rarely used the 'COMMENTS' link since my early days of karma hunting when I would try to identify active discussions in which to seek commenting opportunities particularly snark injections.

roryokane
If anyone is wondering, this is the browser plugin that allows one to collapse comments on HN:

Hacker News collapsible comments – http://userscripts.org/scripts/reviews/138037

It’s a user script, which means it requires GreaseMonkey or a similar extension to run.

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