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Comment by reinier_s4g | Hacker News Reader

> "Then write your own style sheets and GreaseMonkey script (or equivalent) to fix your rendered"

Have you seen the HN HTML layout and CSS code?

I'm doing some research on previous posts regarding the HN interface, but judging by some answers i'm getting in this post i can imagine their fate, why plainly criticize instead of brainstorming about the proposed ideas and trying to get to a common ground? Maybe even some sketches done? (I'm working on mine as i write btw) ... according to you what are the aims and audience? I think you are implying you know the aims and audience better? can you please share? I'm part of the audience as well...

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Yes, I've written scraper code that deconstructs the existing pages and inserts the data into a database. Your point?

I've also seen this question many, many time, looked at the proposed "improvements," and read the many discussions about the whole issue. Broadly speaking, lots of people have preferred the existing version to those proposed, often by a substantial margin. Regularly people say that it looks horrible, never have a seen something I prefer.

Feel free to try. Good luck.

Right, we all have done crawling and scraping, I even have my own framework build for it, man do I love that stuff... but if you think that's the right way to go about it we are just not in the same page.

I understand you like HN as it is, and i guess an idea would be to have optional themes, that will be more democratic.

    I have made this letter longer than usual,
        because I lack the time to make it short.

        -- Blaise Pascal
           Lettres Provinciales (1656-1657), no. 16.
           (According to WikiPedia[1])

I've replied at considerable length - despite its blunt tone and clear disagreement I hope you accept it in the constructive spirit in which I intend it. It's too long to include here, so I've posted it elsewhere[0].

[0] http://www.solipsys.co.uk/Writings/HN_7617061.txt

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Too_long;_didn%27t_re...

The weird thing is, at a certain karma level, you can change the top bar color.

And that's it, as far as I know. You can't even change the top bar text color as well. It's like the one user-editable part of this site is also the least useful feature imaginable.

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