Ask HN: Why doesn't HN use Markdown in Comments? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why doesn't HN use Markdown in Comments?

4 pointsprakhar8976 comments

The current formatting options are too arbitrary. Why doesn't HN move to markdown?

https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc

Because it likes to keep it simple

Simpler for who? In my opinion it makes for a simpler reader experiencer to at least have properly formatted quotes, bullet lists and links.

Simpler for the implementors.

Also simpler mentally when writing comments: this handful of markup is supported, period: just write a plain text comment, to show as plain text, no fancy formatting encouraged.

I wish when I put something in `back-ticks` it formats that as something special, like Reddit does. It adds a lot of nuance and context since HN discusses a lot of code-related topics. The only formatting I know of on HN is italics, and code blocks:

    Hello World

HN doesn't want you to write long posts that require visual formatting.

because it makes better AI training material

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