Ask HN: What is your most wanted HN feature?

None. The lack of feature creep keeps it nice and simple. Sometimes an app really is 'done'.

BTW, there is a 'favorite' link on every post, which isn't exactly bookmarking but might solve the same problem?

My most wanted HN feature would be... a nice catalog of all the features built by third parties. There are some awesome-HN lists, but I have something more elaborate in mind. I'm saying this because, what is the last time HN added a (major) user-side native feature ? (I'm not complaining, just curious)

Native dark mode

Extensions like Stylus work, but the page still flashes white on load

I don't learn as much about commenters over time as I'd like to. I'd like to know comments on the page are from people I have consistently good or consistently bad experiences with. (Diving in some, this is explicitly less about total votes for a person (which is biased by who posts the most) and is more about specific moments where I see something really brilliant and striking or something really bitter and crass.)

I'd also like forgiveness. I get rate limited for some perceived incivility & that's it, years down the road I'm still rate limited. Only the bad things weigh against us. I got told on a previous account there were warnings against me (mainly for defending the web against some really nasty mean people, trying to keep some spark akindle, imo), but 2 out of 3 had been 4+ years ago. And I still felt wronged by the warnings in the first place, that I was fighting monstrous cruel negativity, trying to allow some good in. It feels absurd that the bad is allowed to keep adding up forever but the good counts for nothing; we need some forces beyond just the fall to move us.

notifications of replies would be nice. i've acidentally left so many people hanging over the years.

I hate to evoke the spirit of Todd, but in a lot of ways HN just works. Sure it's a bit rough, but there are all sorts of little extensions or whatever that fill the gaps. I also think there's a value in not having a lot of features, because that tends to draw people who don't know how to make or use existing alternative sources of those features.

Some mechanism for preventing accidental flags and hides. Perhaps a confirmation button or something.

This is not an uncommon problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37208812

The ability to downvote stuff in /newest, but flagging serves that purpose in a way.

A way to add a short description along with favourited submissions/comments. A little bit of context as to why I chose that particular submission or comment can go a long way.

I wish posts I just read wouldn’t disappear completely when I press the back button due to being flagged or whatever, especially if they’re on the front page. Happens enough to annoy me.

You can add posts and comments in "favorte", but I have missed an ability to add people when I have found a guy with some rare skills.

Account/Comment deletion

- reply notifications

- some good way of exploring the comments on a popular post. When a post has hundreds or thousands of comments, there's often interesting and worthwhile comments and discussions. But there are also a lot of the same takes repeated numerous times and long running less interesting tangential discussions.

Maybe minor UI things like making some buttons larger on mobile (voting and collapse) could help. Believe dang has mentioned the modest server infrastructure and updates there may, at times of high traffic, make an impact for Users.

Otherwise I don't have any desire to change the feature set.

I want it to stay relatively unchanged.

If it can handle bigger loads, that'd be great. Otherwise, it's working, and I believe it's near-complete from a user perspective.

Features should be built for the moderation side, IMO, not the user side.

Bigger fonts, especially on mobile.

Everything else is perfect as it is.

Email notifications to replies?

Actually, this is a terrible idea don't do it.

Edit: I think there are bookmarks if you just click a comment timestamp and then click Favorite.

Better APIs for third-party clients, especially support for user authentication so that one can post stories and comments.

HN seriously needs more "social" engagement.

There should be an always on, all user "chat" beside every page. This will allow the finer co-ordination of reactions to WrongThink and deviancy. When "VR" comes around again, the chat can be made into a 3d avatar environment.

There needs to be cryptocurrency integration. Make "karma" a coin. People will fear down votes more when the cost is real. Could help fund the site too: sell the opportunity to repeatedly down vote thing you don't like.

The lack of "AI" is shocking: there should be a pre-trained model for every user already. Engagement will go up if we remove the friction of the intimidating blank "reply" box; by having it already filled in with the model's suggestions for your comment on a article.

Maybe a strict "real names" policy, too. anonymity encourages independence, playful hypothetical arguments, and Nikki Halley doesn't like it. If we wanna keep the blind nature we could replace usernames with social security numbers. Opaque enough to ignore if you want, but still encouraging Responsible Commenting.

After all of these changes, HN should be ready to become the only possible destination for discussion on the net; dominating all other media. At that point, it will be possible to fire dang, and begin the "monetization" phase of the plan.

(edit: screaming sarcasm throughout)

Bookmarking, as opposed to the existing "favorite submissions" feature?

A /bestcomments variation with curating features like following and muting.

a direct messaging system, there've been countless times when I've wanted to ask a poster some (unrelated) questions, but they have no contact details.

An ASK TECH would be nice.

I'm new to programming and would love to ask questions about design/technical decisions. It doesn't need to go the StackOverflow way. But could me more high level.

Tags

ipv6

More than one server please.