Hacker News Reader

Comment by dfabulich | Hacker News Reader

"Posts without URLs get penalized." That's strange. Does that include "Ask HN" posts? I would have thought that submissions with no link would be good discussion starters.

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A blog post fills the same purpose for starting discussions except it requires a higher level of commitment by the author. Hacker News is not really a micro-blogging platform in the traditional sense, and because other alternatives exist, the higher bar appears to have some logical rationale. It creates a space somewhere between StackOverflow and Reddit for "I want to talk about X" threads. People who really want to talk about X can write a blog and submit it to HN if Reddit isn't good enough.

My experience is the post without URLs, but say 10 upvotes are generally of lower quality than URL related posts with 10 upvotes. Not sure why this is, but I was forced to speculate, URL post intend tend to be by an expert on a topic and while non-URL post tend to be seeking experts; again, just speculation, might be wrong.

“Tell HN” and “Show HN” are a thing, too. I was recommended to use “Propose HN” once, I think. It’s just text. I assume the ask/show links check title prefix.

Could this be why most Ask HN posts are desaturated? I always wondered why that was the case.

“Desaturated”?

The text color is lighter, as if the post had been downvoted.

On my computer, the default color for visited links is also lighter.

That's the 'visited link' color, which indicates that you've visited a given post's link. Posts do not change color based on votes. For posts without a link, reading the post requires still visiting the post's link, so it works out as expected from there.

No, the actual colour of the text on text-only posts is super light. I read somewhere a while back that it was supposed to discourage people from using it too much.

Here's an example from the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23438930

Ah, thanks for clarifying.

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