Each comment almost read like a good blog post so that made me wonder why I cannot follow this user.
I assume there are browser plugins that do this but I would really appreciate if it was a part of HN.
And just like upvoted posts/comments, it should stay private.
I've built my own private Chrome plugins, for example, to add to my experience to HN. I keep them private as I find it more respectful. With that said, I use the public Refined Hacker News [1] as well.
The fact that HN is conservative on changing its features is what I like about it. If I want a new feature, I'll build it myself.
There are times I miss public vote counts. While it's nice to assess someone's position just on its merit, it's also useful to factor in how much popular support that opinion has. If I disagree with a position that looks well-endorsed by the community, maybe I should take a second look at the topic and whether my minority position is really correct.
Anecdotally, it also feels like HN has much more prolific hard-line extreme sentiments in the years since hiding comment vote counts. People arguing from a position of ideology rather than constructive pursuit of goals. There could be any number of reasons for that, but I'd bet at least a little of it is that now it's harder to look at an extreme opinion and a moderate one and gauge which (if either) represents broader community sentiment.
The HN community has seemed to broadly support the removal of vote counts; whatever drawbacks the decision has, consensus appears to be that it's a good move.
It also has the negative impact of discouraging people from voicing their opinion.
What I really like about HN is that I could be reading opinions from leaders in the topic field, or someone who is just a hobbyist in the field, without really knowing it. And I get to make my voting decision based on the quality of the content alone.
A possible feature is, per-thread, giving commenters the option of viewing karma for posts, but doing so prevents them from being able to participate in the discussion. I'm not sure how much I like this idea, and it's likely too fiddly for HN's style.
Also, I’m not stalking you gambiting. We just seem to turn up in the same places already. >.>
[1] https://hnrss.github.io/#reply-feeds
[2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/feedbroreader...
If you really want to read a user's comments, you obviously can, as you found out yourself. But let that be a manual exercise, or bookmark their page, or whatever. Keep the focus of HN on content, not personalities, please!
Edit: I did set up a “new response to your comment” email feature that someone posted in the Alan Kay AMA a while back. That’s useful for keeping a discussion going, but I wouldn’t want to see much more.
Rock-star is the antithesis of hacker, imho.
A lot of HN users do have a blog you just need to find it.
No it won't.
That's true, but blogs come and go, whereas HN will be around until the death of the internet.
I think HN is fine the way it is but if anything I wish I could express my gratitude and encouragement to those users.
For example, being able to award/react to comments like Reddit, Facebook and Slashdot have. Sometimes it's good to just get a feel for what others are thinking of a comment, rather than having to read a comment which either basically repeats what the previous commenter said but with different words, or just disagrees without adding much. I think this would improve the information density of the forum by encouraging substantive comments, and replacing the useless padding comments to mere annotations.
(Perhaps this would be a good use of emojis? Keep them blocked from appearing in the comments themselves, but allow them as short annotations to other comments.)
Another example, having a comment thread on each user profile, which could have a mix of public or private comments. Sort of like Reddit's messaging, but with a public aspect too. HN currently has no mechanism for direct messaging for some reason, and it seems a glaring omission, considering the community-building advantages this can inspire. This would fill this gap nicely.
One more suggestion: being able to add a photograph to your own profile. It's great to talk to other people in cyberspace with text, but sometimes it's also nice to get a visual indicator of who you're communicating with. This doesn't have to be a real life photograph of course, any representative avatar would be fine. I think it would add colour and warmth to interactions on HN. Perhaps to make it more interesting for HN clientele, it could be limited to something like monochrome 256x256 for that old school feeling, or you need to upload a LISP program to generate it.
Anyway just some suggestions, would be interested to know other HNers' thoughts.
Secondary reason is I quite enjoyed the irony of writing all that from a newly created account.
I distinctly remember how this played a role with Mrbabyman on Digg c. 2008 or so.
Sometimes threads explode with replies. Revisiting the thread several times while the conversation is still active, I find it cumbersome to read through hundreds of the replies again to find the newest ones.
Does any existing forum do this? Could be interesting if users were only allowed to write mini-essays to each other. Not sure if that would increase the information density by encouraging more thoughtful comments, or decrease it because people would uselessly pad their comments out to hit the threshold.
Maybe this already exists.
That I could easily add the feature to allow follows.
But it seems like at least in this thread there isn't popular support for the feature.
I think I agree it shouldn't be built into HN though
"author:username1 author:un2 .. .. .."
there is a limit on how many users you can search this way, I have split my list of users into 2 lines, and have those 2 lines pinned in my clipboard history.
I like the randomness of things I get to see and do not want to make another bubble for myself.
Anyway not having notifications is by design. It gives the opportunity to other commenters to reply, and it reduces heated discussions.
Instead of an option to follow certain authors there could be an option to follow certain subjects across time, e.g. "free software mobile platforms", "process control systems based on common single-board computers", "decentralisation of internet services", etc. Posts and comments from all authors (no matter their score) can be returned on such a category in chronological order, with links back to their original appearance on the site. Categories could be created through search queries, curated by hand (similar to the way indexes like DMOZ [1] were maintained) or by using ML to track discussion trends.