Show HN: HNBlocker – Chrome extension that lets you block other HN users | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: HNBlocker – Chrome extension that lets you block other HN users

chrome.google.com

38 pointsFinbarr39 comments

User blocking doesn't appeal to me, I just ignore and move on. But maybe I'm just not that sensitive.

The only HN extension that has withstood the test of time for me is a thread folding one, https://userscripts.org/scripts/show/130027. I imagine there are other variants. It let's you quickly ignore those giant flame-war or off-topic threads.

Nice tip. It looks like it doesn't persist which comments you have closed. Might be worth a few minutes to get that working, assuming that Chrome extensions let you use local storage or similar.

To add to that, I recommend this extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-mark-a....

Not only does it give you collapsable comments, but it also ads the ability to mark comments and submissions as "read," so you can easily see what's new.

Interesting, Fark has this built-in and it is sometimes really useful, but it does cause problems in some threads.

I've been thinking about something that would allow you take notes about other users and have those notes pop up when you hover over their name[1]. It is sometimes hard to remember who is who. It would probably be helpful to have a way to save comments that you thought were pretty cool.

1) I also thought this would be a great Google Glass app for older users (note about person or place appears when seen / there), but without facial recognition it wouldn't work.

[edit: with -> without]

>something that would allow you take notes about other users and have those notes pop up when you hover over their name

On Reddit, you can do this via the Reddit Enhancement Suite.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-enhancement...

I don't really pay attention to names and have never felt a desire to block or even ignore anyone.

Now that I think about HN extensions, I could really use something that correlates articles and HN discussions in both directions.

More than once I've read something sourced elsewhere and ended up doing a site:news.ycombinator.com search to look find discussion for the same.

You mean like http://see-reaction.appspot.com/index.html ?

ISTR once reading about a HN-specific tool like that. (The URL above points to a tool that returns results for Reddit and Twitter as well as HN.) Anyone know of anything like that?

One solution would be to save the HN bookmarklet, and click that to submit the story to HN. If it's already been submitted, you'll be directed to the existing discussion. If not, you can start the discussion.

I hereby christen this extension, "Weenie Ware."

Why?

Only a true weenie would feel the need to block someone on a global scale.

More reasonable users simply ignore what they don't wish to read.

So the more reasonable thing is to block mentally instead of letting the computer do it?

Yep, until a strong enough AI exists to discern the useful information out of the flaming.

The problem with people who you'd want to block is that a good amount of the time they say something that gets you to think things through in a different light. It sucks to get flamed, but boy is it a good tool to force a reassessment of what you've said. Sometimes you realize you were dead right, and sometimes you realize the guy you want to block has a good point.

There are too many assholes to introspect with each one of them. I'd rather lose some insight.

Sometimes, even assholes such as myself have something worthy to say.

Even before I looked up your profile information, I knew that you were over 35, because "weenie" hasn't really been a popular pejorative in a long time.

You were around in the Usenet days (or at least are old enough to have been), haven't you heard of kill files?

I've been working on the same thing for firefox as a userscript. It's certainly more equitable then hellbanning, and inane threads about how subject x is turning hn into reddit.

Pardon me, but is blocking people on HN a big issue?

I wouldn't say it's a big issue, per se. Rather, I'm tired of seeing comments denigrating other comments. If you don't like what people have to say, better to ignore them silently than respond antagonistically.

people would block without having a really good reason..

an example, i would block you just because you're using "per se" :)

And what's wrong with that?

I find it pretty easy to ignore people here and I don't tend to remember who makes comments on my comments. But I can certainly see how blocking someone would help cut down the flame wars.

I'd like an extension like this.

It'd be amazing if it had a time limit. "Block Bob for 2 hours" or 2 days. That would give me time to calm down and respond to Bob in a sensible way, or to ignore Bob. Other people have discipline.

awesome. so how about the ability to add regexps(?) so that we filter people based on content? mentioning no names, but some users are great when they're talking about technical issues, but not so great on the social / political side...

also, have you consider trying to unify user ids across websites? http://www.acooke.org/cute/Automatemy0.html

oh - and another feature (now i open the site on my laptop) - sharing across computers!

Reminds me of the a scene from the '50 first dates' movie where Adam Sandler asked Alexa a question, and replied, "Then again, there are always ways around such things, for example, if I promised a woman's father I would not see her, I would simply shut my eyes while she serviced my manhood.".

Those people are real people not bots and spammers, blocking them are simply an absurd way to do it, or 'shutting your eyes to get around with it'. A quick solution, but you are not solving the root of the problem.

Finally, I don't have to see this "pg" guy everywhere ;-)

I fear now we'll be having a lot more inflammatory, useless, space-filling remarks like "I can't see what he just said I have him on ignore".

My philosophy is to simply ignore trolls without any extension (since fortunately there aren't many on this site, it's not hard), so I'm not really sure if this extension is so necessary.

That's why you don't tell people when you block them, and if you want to see what someone said, you just unblock them for a second.

I fully support this addon, I think it's the best way to do blocking, on the client. That said, I am not looking forward to comments that consist of nothing more than "blocked" "added to killfile" "plonk" etc. These are nothing more than implied calls for others to block someone. It encourages groupthink imo.

I kind of think hellbanning and the karma system encourage groupthink as well. That would be annoying though.

Should I just peak at their posts individually in case each one might have useful content as well? I like the Hyde Park approach, see a crazy dude? Keep on walking, and sometimes, as you walk by, you will hear something enchanting and then you have a happy hour in front of you.

That's why I have showdead on, and frankly I almost never regret it.

You're already not the kind of user this is meant for.

Also, chances are anyone who uses it is going to get bored with it in a week and ignore it anyway.

it would've been unfortunate if i had missed this post by Finbarr, because i was already using a chrome extension to block other HN users ...

For those of you wondering why someone might use something like this, I had someone who made a fake account to follow me around on HN and insult me for a while. They got shadowbanned, but I like to keep showdead on, because it's interesting, so I still had to read it.

Woulda been nice to be able to just block them, but luckily with no responses they moved on to twitter (!) to harass me instead.

I'm glad you spent your time making an extension so I can block people on this superficial website. Are you going to pitch it to investors? If it doesn't work are you going to publish an article name: "Here's how not to start a startup."

Oh boy! my first chance to test out this plugin!

No I have no intention of raising any money. You need to set your sights a bit higher if you think this is a startup.

I can't tell if no one got your sarcasm or if they're admonishing you for it. I think it's spot on and great though.

Can you explain it to me? All I see is a really whiny post attempting to mock the extension for not being useful enough. What is 'spot on and great'?

Mostly the stuff after that. I appreciate:

- mocking the stupid shit that is sold to VCs here (and the stupid shit VCs invest in)

- mocking the "holier than thou" attitude that people often have about HN/community/content

- mocking the need to have an extension to prevent yourself from reading something from someone you don't like

- mocking how worked up people get over this "superficial website"

I wouldn't want to knock the dev, I think that's tacky. I find the usefulness of the extension to be something of a reflection on the person who needs to use it. Anyway, I liked the bits of the comment that are self-mocking of HN, not the extension.

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