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Lots of people posting random feature requests in here, but is HN even developed any more? The last significant changes I remember were two and a half years ago

by _ps6d 8y ago

Lots of people posting random feature requests in here, but is HN even developed any more? The last significant changes I remember were two and a half years ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12073675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12073675) and I think even those were the first ones in a long time.

NicoJuicy 8y ago
Web changed from Google to DuckDuckGo. But which features are missing?
- _ps6d 8y ago
  There's quite a bit that could be added, without even touching the site's overall mechanics at all. The markdown support is extremely minimal and doesn't support a lot of basics like quotes (which causes many people to "quote" by using a code block, which has issues). A basic private messaging system would be really helpful in a lot of cases. Right now people always have to post email addresses publicly. It would be nice to have some built-in visibility into things like title changes, link changes, etc. that mods do, instead of needing them to comment manually about everything they do. They could implement some scraping to automatically add the year to older stories, instead of users needing to flag it and get the mods to do it manually all the time. And so on.
  - NicoJuicy 8y ago
    Some people don't want to be contacted. If they want too, they add their email in their profile. > The markdown support is extremely minimal and doesn't support a lot of basics like quotes (which causes many people to "quote" by using a code block, which has issues). Obvious enough. An extra button: moderated, is with a comment. Scraping is different for each website.
dang 8y ago
It's interesting to see that question show up, because we work so hard on the code. It makes sense that you'd ask it, though, because most of the changes are either not visible (like anti-spam or anti-voting-ring features), or are subtle. For example, you may have noticed more capitalized titles on the front page in the last couple days—but this is an experiment we're going to roll back. One reason we don't do a lot of visible changes is that HN's minimalism is one of its biggest assets. Another is that users don't like things to change, and the internal pressures that cause companies to do arbitrary redesigns are thankfully not in play here.
- Deimorz 8y ago
  Would it be possible to add a public changelog? I wasn't trying to diminish the work being done, but I couldn't find a more recent official update announcement than the one I linked from 2016.
  - themodelplumber 8y ago
    Public changelogs can create their own form of community feedback pressure which easily stretches the sustainability of development resources. Not that I would complain about it if it existed, but I can see how it would be counterproductive when the development goal as expressed seems to prioritize stabilization.
    - krapp 8y ago
      >Public changelogs can create their own form of community feedback pressure which easily stretches the sustainability of development resources They can, but don't have to. There's no business need being served here like there would be with a startup getting feedback from customers, and HN isn't open sourced, so there's no direct way to do pull requests or report issues. They could literally just publish changes and ignore people's opinions on the matter, that would be perfectly valid given their small staff and available commitment. Also, if they wanted to keep feature requests and complaints off of HN proper, having a changelog or request thread might be an effective way to quarantine that content.
- sambroner 8y ago
  What kind of changes to the internals do you all do? And would you do a post on the architecture? I assume there's been lots of work to make the site more efficient/reduce cost. "No [few] internal pressures" sounds like a great recipe for an interesting design.
  - dang 8y ago
    We've done a lot of work on Arc implementations in the last couple years, but the biggest work still hasn't rolled out yet. If it succeeds, it will buy us a lot more performance. But again, visible features wouldn't change, except that hopefully we'll be able to stop paginating large threads.

by _ps6d 8y ago

NicoJuicy 8y ago

Web changed from Google to DuckDuckGo. But which features are missing?

_ps6d 8y ago
There's quite a bit that could be added, without even touching the site's overall mechanics at all. The markdown support is extremely minimal and doesn't support a lot of basics like quotes (which causes many people to "quote" by using a code block, which has issues). A basic private messaging system would be really helpful in a lot of cases. Right now people always have to post email addresses publicly. It would be nice to have some built-in visibility into things like title changes, link changes, etc. that mods do, instead of needing them to comment manually about everything they do. They could implement some scraping to automatically add the year to older stories, instead of users needing to flag it and get the mods to do it manually all the time. And so on.
- NicoJuicy 8y ago
  Some people don't want to be contacted. If they want too, they add their email in their profile. > The markdown support is extremely minimal and doesn't support a lot of basics like quotes (which causes many people to "quote" by using a code block, which has issues). Obvious enough. An extra button: moderated, is with a comment. Scraping is different for each website.

dang 8y ago

It's interesting to see that question show up, because we work so hard on the code. It makes sense that you'd ask it, though, because most of the changes are either not visible (like anti-spam or anti-voting-ring features), or are subtle. For example, you may have noticed more capitalized titles on the front page in the last couple days—but this is an experiment we're going to roll back. One reason we don't do a lot of visible changes is that HN's minimalism is one of its biggest assets. Another is that users don't like things to change, and the internal pressures that cause companies to do arbitrary redesigns are thankfully not in play here.

Deimorz 8y ago
Would it be possible to add a public changelog? I wasn't trying to diminish the work being done, but I couldn't find a more recent official update announcement than the one I linked from 2016.
- themodelplumber 8y ago
  Public changelogs can create their own form of community feedback pressure which easily stretches the sustainability of development resources. Not that I would complain about it if it existed, but I can see how it would be counterproductive when the development goal as expressed seems to prioritize stabilization.
  - krapp 8y ago
    >Public changelogs can create their own form of community feedback pressure which easily stretches the sustainability of development resources They can, but don't have to. There's no business need being served here like there would be with a startup getting feedback from customers, and HN isn't open sourced, so there's no direct way to do pull requests or report issues. They could literally just publish changes and ignore people's opinions on the matter, that would be perfectly valid given their small staff and available commitment. Also, if they wanted to keep feature requests and complaints off of HN proper, having a changelog or request thread might be an effective way to quarantine that content.
sambroner 8y ago
What kind of changes to the internals do you all do? And would you do a post on the architecture? I assume there's been lots of work to make the site more efficient/reduce cost. "No [few] internal pressures" sounds like a great recipe for an interesting design.
- dang 8y ago
  We've done a lot of work on Arc implementations in the last couple years, but the biggest work still hasn't rolled out yet. If it succeeds, it will buy us a lot more performance. But again, visible features wouldn't change, except that hopefully we'll be able to stop paginating large threads.