A Theory on Hacker News | Hacker News Reader

A Theory on Hacker News

blog.cubbyscott.com

26 pointsscreeley26 comments

"It's pretty easy to follow user behavior on Hacker News, they click the first link, read the content go back to Hacker News comment if they found the link interesting"

I think you're wrong here. I'd wager most people check the comments before reading the link (if there are comments).

I started out by reading the sites directly, but the comments here are so good that I frequently go to the comments first and read them. I also tend to not read stories that have been upvoted but received no comments.

Those are often the most though-provoking ones.

I disagree. Frequently the articles which don't have any comments are the ones that either only apply to a niche field or that don't have any particular stance. The only example currently on the front page is something about pubsubhubbub (something I've never heard of, and thus less likely to click on and read), and going to the article it seems to be rather short and a gripe about it not working.

That is not what I would call "thought-provoking" its a post of limited scope which, while it may be interesting to someone who knows about the topic, does not leave much to be discussed.

It is the discussions that bring me to HN and keep me coming back. I frequently don't even read the articles, because I find the commenters here are of a much closer mind-set to myself, and often know as much or more about the subject than the blogger making the post. A heavily commented article is one I am most likely to read, because it means there is likely something I can add to the conversation.

I click on the comments link, and then the link to the article. That way, if I think the content warrants reading commentary, I just hit back instead of having to search the page again for the link.

There are headlines in which I'm only interested in the comments (usually because I've seen the article or already know a lot about the subject and don't expect to learn anything from the article), but on headlines where I am interested in both, I usually open both the comments and the article in different tabs, and read each while the other is open, but in an order that depends strongly on the day and the content.

If, for example, I find something surprising or incredible in the article, I'll often switch to the comments to see if it was mentioned or debunked, before continuing.

I would of loved to add comments in there, but there is no way of getting them barring html scrapping.

HN Feature Request: RSS feed for comments of an item.

I'd like to add to that: an RSS feed for replies to your own comments.

Indeed. I use the hnsort greasemonkey script to sort by # of comments (and often by # of points), and look first at those new items that seem to have provoked notable discussion.

I then read the comments, and use that to decide if the article itself is worth looking at.

There's a lot to read out there, so some triaging is needed.

I do just the opposite of this: I click links from the bottom up on the front page, and often only look at the comments.

Well I must be a weirdo then, I prefer to at the very least glance at the source before seeing opinions on the source. I do check the comments immediately afterwards because some of them are pure gold! :)

You're not alone. I scan the list of top stories, open new tabs in my browser alternating between source and comments, as many as 10 at a time. I always scan the source first for context but, like others here, generally find that the comments are more interesting.

This is _exactly_ how I browse too! :D

In fact, I wish the link in my google gadget went to the comments page first and not the submitted link.

There have been a few people who have created Yahoo pipes which do just that; this is the only link I can seem to come up with, but should do what you want:

http://pipes.yahoo.com/andrewducker/hackernews

sweet, upvoted.

I tend to visit the comments on HN before clicking through to the link. Especially from link bait sounding titles. Depending on the comments reaction, actual discussion vs bashing the article, I'll click through the link.

I think seeing the top comment, rather than the first x characters of an article, would be far more descriptive of an article.

* Bias articles

* Link bait

* Blog spam

* Click-able links

etc.

The implementation here is nice and I like the GUI, but you might piss off content creators. Scraping the content and displaying it on your own site is worse than the DiggBar.

Yeah, instead of the content rendering in the user's browser, it will render in the user's browser.

Wait, what?

Don't get me wrong - this is really cool, and looks great. But...

The problem I think is that this stagnates Hacker News in many ways. I don't see an easy way from that page to upvote something.

One thing I note is the lack of a downvote makes me actually think about giving a bump to something. But if I am required to click through something 3 or 4 times I'm not going to bother doing so.

Without a clear way for people to upvote articles, but with a simpler interface to see articles, you're going to change the dynamics of articles moving up and down on the actual feed. Which is probably not what you're aiming for...

At times I feel my "behaviour" is limited by the interface - I'd like to read both comments and the article side by side so I can reference comments to particular sections in the article / site.

At other times I wished a side-by-side option was available on the front page - think of the front page as a table-of-contents, then have a frame on the right where the article (or comments) can be displayed - would save a lot of reloads, as I tend to do a session of (look at items -> look at article 1 -> back to items -> article 4 etc etc)

When i click a link I would love to see a digg style frame or bar on top (for voting) and another one at the bottom with the comments (for reading and commenting). And the website in the middle. This way you can prevent going back and forth or trying to vote on a story and seeing the noprocrast page because you left the tab open for too long.

Maybe i should just do a gresemonkey script or something that behaves this way ...

sWeet, it's like HN without the pesky users...

sorry, it's not a terrible idea in another context, but HN is its users.

decent plug for cubbyscott though.

A better way to implement this would be to append the comments page of HN to the linked article. Should take very little JS Kung Fu.

What I like about Hacker News is that its 100% abstracted from the actual websites - and also that it's verrrry minimalist.

Can't quite put my finger on it, but for some reason it just doesn't feel right to couple the content with the feed (IMHO)

Also, I like HN just the way it is!

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