Ask HN: What features on HN do you use the least? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What features on HN do you use the least?

13 pointsbenkarst37 comments

I've been using HN for about a year off and on. Here are some of the features I never use either because they are hidden or not useful:

1. Search 2. Hide

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The out-of-context thought stream at https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments ("comments" in the top bar)

Agreed. Does any make use of that?

I use it all the time to see which stories have active discussions.

http://news.ycombinator.com/active

I mostly use [comments].

I bet the mods use it.

I use search about 10 times a week. I often remember the title of an article that I didn't have time to read and search for that. I still remember fondly searchyc.com

I used to look at new more often and upvote interesting articles but haven't had time to in a while (or rather I've been procrastinating slightly less).

I guess the only features I never use is the jobs section and the new hide link.

I often use hn.algolia.com to search for articles.

The features I use least are the ones I don't know about. Unfortunately I cannot list them for you because I don't know about them.

I use search constantly, and I am surprised you think it is either hidden or not useful. To me it's extremely useful, and the search box is on nearly every page, which makes it hard to think of as hidden. So I'm confused by your assertion about that - perhaps you could explain further.

"Hide" is new, and I've not played with it much. However, given that it's relatively new, I'm being on-boarded by the facility it provides. I'd be interested to know why you think it's not useful, as it's certainly not hidden.

In truth, I don't know of any features I don't use. Perhaps you could compile a list of them for people to check against. After all, if someone doesn't know about a feature, they won't name it as something they don't use.

Hide is an anti feature. I constantly click it on accident because it's approximately where your thumb touches to sroll or to click on a header.

Edit: Lots of folks apparently missunderstanding me. I'm not talking about comment collapsing which is essential but about story hiding on the front page.

Also it wouldn't be as bad if there was a convenient way to unhide stories.

Could not disagree more strenuously. If HN wanted to do the color thing to indicate depth I would also be ok with it, but the collapse feature is one of the nicest things HN has introduced in years and saves me tons of scrolling.

I couldn't agree more. I had switched over to hn.premii.com for mobile browsing solely for the ability to collapse comments, and only recently discovered its addition here.

I'm not talking about comment collapsing which is essential but about story hiding on the front page.

Ah, apologies. I still like that though :)

Why?

Because there are often stories which sit at the top of the page for extremely long periods which are not interesting, its a was to paginate the information off the front page which I find boring.

Yes, again with the tiny buttons!! Why does it have to be like this?!

The front page. I exclusively use hckrnews as my entry point, and have for years now. It caches articles that make the front page, so I don't need to manually re-scan the front page for new stuff nor worry about missing something that made it to the front page.

http://hckrnews.com

I never knew search existed. It's amazing how blind to things in unusual position I am.

I don't understand why we can't have larger buttons by default though!

I love the hacker news search. It's on every page, so no need to remember where it is. Best part- I would guess that about 3/4 of the time I search, I find what I'm looking for.

I don't use any of the feeds other than /news

I don't use Search, but only because I find the results to be awful. I always end up searching (and succeeding) on Google instead.

The articles about companies instead of ideas.

I use search before submitting something new to make sure something similar was not posted before. And hide is a relatively new feature, I just started using them.

One thing to add, is that I love the [Hacker News Enhancement Suite](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhanc...) and it's no fun using HN without it :)

The weekly Muse hiring post.

Search is pretty much it. I don't use it because I don't submit stories. I use Hide sometimes when I feel an article and/or its comments are terrible. I use flag probably too much because I want to keep the link quality on HN high.

Filtering by 'show' or 'ask' at the top. I used the site for years before I noticed that they existed.

Logout

The upvote button (because I'm a hater and all I do is downvote).

I accidentally click on hide when aiming for the comments link

Search is frustrating, but it works for some stuff. The devs have HN accounts, and I think they're receptive if you have any suggestions.

Flag and hide!

I use flag because I can't downvote.

They say if you use flag often you lose your flagging ability, but I don't care because I'm banned often and I have to keep creating accounts.

You have a lot of karma for being banned often. ha.

That is correct, but as you can see this account is not even two months old.

Congrats. Don't fuck this one up!

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