Idea: on the Show page, remove 'Show HN' from the titles | Hacker News Reader

Idea: on the Show page, remove 'Show HN' from the titles

7 pointsjoelanman9 comments

All the links on the Show page start with "Show HN", which is superfluous and the repetition hinders reading of the page. Suggest hiding/removing that text on this page.

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You could turn this little JavaScript snippet into a Chrome extension that runs only on https://news.ycombinator.com/show pretty easily.

First inject jQuery (or similar):

  var s = document.createElement("script");
  s.src = "//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.4/jquery.min.js";
  document.head.appendChild(s);

Then remove Show HN from titles:

  $("td.title > a").each(function(){ this.text = this.text.replace("Show HN: ", "") });

Based upon the rules [0] I suspect that the title is parsed and that "Show HN" is what moves a submission to that page. Items from |show| can show up on the front page. I believe having the information in the title gives the community the appropriate context for evaluating and commenting on the item.

Then again, my experience is that titles are a poor proxy for content often enough that I try to click on links before commenting on a submission or evaluating it. Often the awesomeness is inversely proportional to the quality of the title. My heuristic is, when in doubt click.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

I may be completely wrong about this, but I read this as suggesting that the words "Show HN" be hidden from the titles after they have already been moved to show. The words would still be visible elsewhere on the site.

I somewhat agree. It is repetitious, but I've never really felt that it particularly hinders my ability to read the titles.

I don't believe the threads actually get moved. "Show HN" is simply a filtered view, so the same thread could be on top of Show HN and on the first page of HN. However, it would be possible to hide the "Show HN" when the thread is shown in that view, although I don't know if it's all that useful.

I suppose anyone with a strong opinion could write a client side script and test for improved experience.

I see what you mean. I guess I didn't parse "hiding/removing" the same way initially. Had I, I doubt that I would feel differently about the reinforcement of context given the social risk that posting to "Show HN" can entail. The presentation didn't sell me on the idea.

To be clear, the logic I'm suggesting is to hide the text on the Show page only. The text would still be in the title in the database, and shown everywhere else.

The Show HN prefix is useful in the list of top stories to distinguish from regular links

using show hn in search helps a lot. i say write to every one of them :)

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