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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

This is a stub comment to hold all the replies to the parent. I did not mean to explode an offtopicness charge, and usually turn off replies for these because the same issue comes up every time and the answer is always the same. (When it comes to explaining something, the internet is stateless [1].) Forgot to do so in this case! I'll move them now.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

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I get it that HN is all about minimal design, but the need for the parent post (in this and other threads) is a sign that the UI could be improved in this aspect.

This stuff is for performance reasons:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Maybe for pagination purposes the multiple pages could be enumerated right after the opening header and we could spot right away the prolific set of comments a given post has attracted. That would make things pretty discoverable right off the bat.

Yeah this is the right solution. Just add a link to the page numbers at the top of the thread. It's unintrusive, and still follows the minimalist design tenants of this website.

or put previous/next links in a line at the start of the comments, instead of just 'more' all the way at the bottom.

i wonder if they're constrained because their staff can't maintain the codebase well in the nonstandard arc language, and pg obviously has retired

Didn’t realize this was all running on arc. Ironically this will become a pipeline problem.

If the codebase is the problem then the obvious best solution is to write a bot that automatically posts dang's comment, with links to the various pages. :)

How do we know this isn’t already the solution :)?

Oh no—we love arc and we're good at it.

Edit: reasonably good.

The pagination is only because of performance issues on the server to begin with. Rather than adding extra complexity at the top of the thread, the solution is to improve performance and render the whole page like we used to.

No.

Dang, please do not change the UI.

Meh. It's all just text, why not show everything?

Yea, it'd still be smaller than loading a jira ticket or slack

It is a courtesy, there is no real need for the post; the "More" link is quite discoverable.

I don't think this extremely minor issue warrants cluttering the UI with additional "page 1 2 3 ..." links at the top.

Plus one.

> there is no real need for the post; the "More" link is quite discoverable.

No its not atleast for me. I just miss it and looks like lot of others miss it as well.

the more link is so easy to miss that dang thinks every front page post with multiple pages of comments needs a pinned comment with links to next pages.

Yes, everyone knows that, it just hasn't been done yet.

Here's a thought for UI change for HN, at the top of any page such as this one with a great many posts, that has multiple pages, how about a text-based chooser menu with clickable numbers that looks like:

Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 > End

or similar...

Located directly below the add comment button.

I think everyone knows that the UX is bad. The work just has to be done, and it's not particularly critical.

If I know anything about software, it's been in HN's issue tracker for years.

Considering how awful the unilateral design changes to Facebook and Reddit have been, I for one sincerely hope that Hacker News never changes. Its UX is perfect.

It doesn't have to change the UI much to fix the pagination visibility issue.

This UX may be bad, but the current hackish solution of a parent comment being posted with link to the other pages is the worst.

Compared to most websites I visit during the day, HN is a breath of fresh air.

agreed. Simple, but useful. Not bloated

That's on purpose:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25087113

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25065663

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24042165

If you guys complain enough about these comments at the top of the threads, it might actually get me to finish the damn performance improvements so I guess keep complaining.

Dang, is there a GitHub repo where we can contribute, file a pull request, and see what happens?

I only see the API available, not any of the front-end: https://github.com/HackerNews

It is a black box. An enigma, wrapped in mystery and covered in secret sauce.

And now we know why most of the time dang posts these comments, he more explicitly states that they're working on a better pagination solution, and this is a temporary measure until then...

Who the heck has time to read all these comments???

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