What's with the black bar? | Hacker News Reader

What's with the black bar?

46 pointsGrangar30 comments

Did someone die?

Chuck Thacker https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14548030

Worked at Xerox PARC, and project leader on the Alto.

I see, thanks.

Also see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14549574

[meta] They should add something else to avoid having this question everytime there is a black bar at the top. It happened to me, it happened to many others and now to Grangar. Is there a repo where to contribute to HN's code? Maybe an admin?

They should have hover over text or a sticky post on the top.

Just sticky the post inside of the black bar like so http://imgur.com/a/Mceqq

Or even just an alt tag.

Now what alt tags are for and won't work on mobile.

+1. title and aria-label attributes would go a long way here.

I even went into the view-source figuring there would at least be an html comment and suggestive css class. I guess in retrospect now it's obvious what the bar is for but I agree a hover or similar would be nice.

Exactly, if people don't know what it's for then what's the point of doing it in the first place.

A tooltip on hover on the header might help.

I would probably at least have added an id tag to the div with something like "rip-chuck". That was the first thing I checked until I asked a colleague.

People could also search about it - I've seen a handful of this question today already - without even looking people are posting and asking (this isn't the first time the bar has been there either lol)

I'm not trying to be snippy, but the answer is generally on the front page. Or you could type "died" into the search box and choose most recent.

Personally I'm glad they resist efforts to "improve" the site. I'm tired of the slippery slope of fast and information-dense sites becoming slow and information-sparse. Just my opinion, don't shoot me.

A thin black bar that occasionally appears with no context is pretty information-sparse imo.

Look at every other venue for black bars... sports, military, flags at half mast... they never have a person's name on them. That just isn't how it's done.

Just making it clickable to link to the relevant post would be enough IMO. I never knew the black bar principle myself. Assuming knowledge is not the way to go.

> I'm not trying to be snippy, but the answer is generally on the front page. Or you could type "died" into the search box and choose most recent.

But that presupposes you know this black bar indicates someone's death, which is not the case of the person asking the question in the first place.

Or you could type "black bar" and find the answer?

I had no idea seeing this black bar meant a death. I thought it meant a rendering error and gave a half second to reload the page, say hunh it's still there, and go on to something else. I came away with the impression somebody got design-y and changed things up for no real reason.

Edit: and for all the talk on this page about the bar, very little is being said about the man. Here's his Wikipedia page for anybody interested:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_P._Thacker

There's a long standing tradition on Hacker News to put up the black bar when a Computer Science/Engineering/Tech pioneer passes away.

I think the implied follow up question there is "who died?".

The answer is apparently Chuck Thacker.

This is also one of the top posts currently.

It's currently number 20 - below this post even.

Ah last I saw the acm post it was around 14ish - meh

Also for what it's worth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14549574

Hmm, the black bar could be a link to the person's wikipedia page or something...

The suggestion that it be a link or something similar has come up... almost every single time there's a black bar. Hasn't happened since I've been here, doubt it's gonna happen anytime soon either.

I just scroll through page one until I see the word "died".

These threads wouldn’t happen if there were enough information carried in the bar itself (e.g. text, linking, hovering, etc.).

I feel weird that this thread is marked "[flagged]”. I’d read the post about Chuck’s passing yesterday, noticed the bar today, and still didn’t realize that’s what it was for. This thread is what answered that question for me.

Flag at half-staff.

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