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Comment by bisceglie | Hacker News Reader

i like the idea of exponential delays for deeply nested comments. i wonder if there is a more direct way to force people to take their time in writing replies. maybe a timer on how long a reply textfield is active (i know, full of flaws, but a start, at least).

if it doesn't inhibit thoughtless replies/comments, at least it will destroy the excuses of "oh, i should have thought about my response a bit more", and "that's not what i meant, i should have clarified that point."

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It also might simply cause people to work around the feature, by adding new top-level comments (that are actually replies to nested comments). I will be interested to see how well it works.

Opening "link" in another tab is a better workaround.

Hopefully the delay is enforced at the server. Have you checked to see if opening 'link' in another tab defeats the restriction?

As you guys have discovered, the restriction is in the code that generates the reply links, not the code that receives the replies. I'm hoping this will suffice.

Reminds me of when Reddit removed the vote count on anything less than an hour old. You could still view the vote by clicking details on the link.

May I inquire about your thought process with respect to security implications when you wrote this code?

A. "I know this is sloppy and will be found out sooner or later, but I hope people will respect the restriction anyway."

B. "I know this is sloppy, but I hope nobody will find out."

C. "This isn't really sloppy, as I know full well the security implications and don't care about them at all."

D. Didn't really think about the implications.

C is the closest, but this is not even a question of security.

I'm doing it right here. (I should clarify that you don't need to actually use another tab.)

It looks a little strange to have no replies on the comment at the bottom of the screen (especially given the 'link' feature).

Perhaps we could keep the 'link' exception, but just incorporate its use into the flagging algorithm (e.g. people who use it a lot get treated as if every comment they made has been flagged X times).

That's an easy workaround.

Indeed.

Neat.

Right on.

Yes, it works. Click on link, open in new tab and you can reply just fine.

true. but i would love to see the community work with this, to keep the quality up. but at the same time, i'd consider myself anti-over-moderation, and optimistic enough to wish for self-government (through social interaction). though not to appear too much the commie-pinko-leftist...

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