Tell HN: Is the HN frontpage boring? Use the 'hide' links to remove dull things. | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: Is the HN frontpage boring? Use the 'hide' links to remove dull things.

11 pointstpmx9 comments

My personal progression:

1. Hmm, I guess I can use this to hide posts that I would just get really angry about and just want to get out of my sight. I suppose it must be a mental health feature, the Californians are really into that that these days.

2. Hmm, I guess I can use this to hide uninteresting stuff and then also get new, potentially interesting stuff on the front page.

Presumably people smarter than myself went to #2 immediately...

I find that I skip things I'm not interested in on the front page. If they're still there after some time, I dig in and read them despite my initial lack of interest, and I've learned quite a few interesting things as a result.

Some days it is and some days it isn't. Same for the comments. I read what interests me and scroll past the stuff that doesn't.

What is different about this versus navigating to the next page? It's this like a down vote?

There's a '/snip-story?id=...' request sent to HN when you do it. The response is the metadata about the story that is slipped in at the end of the page.

So maybe?

No, it's not a downvote, it literally just hides the story and comments.

Dang added it a while ago. It was supposed to help quell some of the rancor around here, and complaints about certain stories not being "HN worthy," etc. But this place is also subject to heavy feature-blindness so maybe not a lot of people noticed it.

So it's useful if your homepage doesn't cycle itself fast enough for your tastes?

Yes, but just reading the other pages would be more useful. HN isn't meant to provide a constant endorphine drip of distractions like other sites, because the average quality here tends to be inversely proportional to posting velocity.

What 'hide' link you are talking about Willis? The hide link it kinds blends with the other links. Why don't just and 'x' next to the link in the front page? So far HN has an okay blend between lobste.rs and gizmodo. Keep the good work.

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