8 ms·
Ask HN: How do you read and follow the discussions on big threads?
I'm trying to read discussion from a thread with 133 comments, on a topic i find interesting, but after a few comments i get overwhelmed. How do you do it?
- oumua_don17 2y agoThis thread itself is now a good source to try all the suggested nav options!!!
- gsich 2y agoTree structures suck for that. Linear style all the way.
- lproven 2y agoTree structures are the only way it remains manageable at all, IMHO. No tree = no structure = no way to skip forwards.
- forgotacc240419 2y agoIt depends on the size of the community in my experience. Old school bulletin board style fitting are great once trolls and manic megaposters are kept under control but if they've too few users they tend to die and if they've too many they become impossible to follow
- gsich 2y agoTrees devolve into a 1on1 discussion, also other branches can have the same discussion, leading to redundant arguments. You can have a tree, but only 1 branch is allowed for efficient discussions. Like every sane forum software does, be it phpbb, vbulletin, xenforo ...
- TeMPOraL 2y agoYou mean insane; every sane discussion place looks more like subreddit (or, often enough, is a subreddit). > Trees devolve into a 1on1 discussion, also other branches can have the same discussion, leading to redundant arguments. 1 on 1 is a feature, as it's never truly 1 on 1 - anyone can jump in instead of just listening to the conversation. As for other branches having the same discussion, the solution is the opposite of what you're proposing: instead of flattening tree structure into a line, embrace the nature of any discussion (or knowledge accumulation effort) and make it a directed graph. I'm yet to see it done in production (outside 4chan maybe), but that's the right way. Or, you can just ignore the problem and let people having their redundant discussion. It's better than what all those flat forums you mention tend to do: closing topics with aggressive admonition to use a search feature (which is near-universally broken anyway).
- gsich 2y ago>You mean insane; every sane discussion place looks more like subreddit (or, often enough, is a subreddit). No I meant sane. Tree style is insane. You can have different topics or categories but all topics should be linear. >1 on 1 is a feature, as it's never truly 1 on 1 - anyone can jump in instead of just listening to the conversation. They could, but rareley do. On Reddit this requires clicking many links.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago> They could, but rareley do. On Reddit this requires clicking many links. It doesn't, unless you're using the new UI, at which point it's kind of your fault anyway, because Reddit is entirely unusable as a discussion place with its new UI. You have to click to load more than 3 anything, and half the time it refreshes and loses your position anyway.
- gsich 2y agoIt's also on old.reddit.
- xigoi 2y agoLinear threads make it pretty much impossible to discuss multiple topics in one thread.
- PaulHoule 2y agoI’m thinking about making a tool to do this, I haven’t quite gotten to loading a comment thread but I have loaded 250k images and also 400 from Evernote. Next in line is to load some unwieldy discussions, particularly from a site with a horrible comment UI such as Arstechnica. I’m particularly thinking about how to make sense of badly organized threads from Mastodon and similar things.
- defrost 2y agoWith timecode metadata and heatmaps to highlight rapidfire back 'n forth and stuff? Semantic scoring to rate quip chains Vs. slower, longer considered interactions? Ways of highlighting high frequency commenters, perhaps rating frequent flyers by degree of interest in what they have to say and weighting threads by "participant rating". There are many ways to go in this space.
- PaulHoule 2y agoThe best idea I have now is to scan HN and make a list of commenters who said something like “I am working on a PhD in this topic”.
- defrost 2y agoIf you're serious you might want to reach out and chat with https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dang https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dang https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jedberg https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jedberg for their thoughts. There are a couple of angles, straight up representation of forum | subreddit threads after the conversation has moved on, "live" tracking comments as conversations progress, and moderation of live threads (including swatting | detecting trolls, spambots, griefers, etc) (oh, and retro sweeps looking for tail end spammers and their puppet networks eg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40800160 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40800160 (with "ShowDead" on)). In post analysis there's the whole ball of wax around decrufting chat threads to pull the meat best served to (various) AI, either for training, company | group intelligence, etc. Oh, and fingerprinting across multiple sources looking for common {group | individual} traits The intrinsic issue with excluding all but those with a current PhD on chat would be the tossing of, say, those with dated PhD in theoretical physics or somesuch. @dang obviously mods here and likely has a slew of lisp-y scripts | tools for giving various views, @jedberg was about for much of the early evolution of reddit and took part in a lot of discussions about presentation and implemented a few. There'll also be useful input from any of those who've moderated | admin various largish forums | channels, etc over the years.
- mathfailure 2y agoThere was an internet meme explaining that: "ain't nobody got time for that".
- RobertJaTomsons 2y agoIt always depends on the community. On Hackernews, for example, I only read the top 5 comments and then check the thread 2-3 times later to see if anything has changed. On reddit, for example, I don't read any comments at all because there are too many bots replying. Otherwise, I try to keep my own thread when I read the comments. For example, when I read an article about a topic, I try to find an extremely positive point of view from the comments, but also an extremely negative point of view and then link this to my own thoughts. As already mentioned in the thread, I would like to have an online tool, for example, which reduces comments to a clear point and thus makes reading easier for me.
- andyjohnson0 2y agoI typically use the "next" links (above each post) to jump to each top-level comment, drilling down if appropriate. Other than that, I try to resist the urge to read everything. Its almost always better to absorb the gist of the conversation than to try to absorb it all.
- pdimitar 2y agoIf the topic is interesting for me I just wait a day or two so the comment activity subsides and then just collapse each comment I read. Works perfect. For threads I am interested in but want to comment immediately, I only collapse those comments that I don't find interesting -- and as above, go back a few days later to read the others without constantly having new ones added in real time.
- lapcat 2y agoIf you want to read every comment in a thread, https://hnrss.org/item?id= https://hnrss.org/item?id= Otherwise, though, HN itself has a terrible format that's nearly impossible to follow.
- CoastalCoder 2y agoI'm not a web developer. Would you mind explaining how I'd use that snippet?
- compressedgas 2y agoFor example for this story one would place the number 40952952 from the URL https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40952952 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40952952 at the end of the given URL such https://hnrss.org/item?id=40952952 https://hnrss.org/item?id=40952952
- wruza 2y agojavascript:(_=>{location.href=location.href.replace("news.ycombinator.com","hnrss.org")})(); This is a bookmarklet for it. Add it to bookmarks and click on it after opening a HN thread.
- xigoi 2y agoWhat’s easier to follow than a tree which naturally groups comments by what they’re replying to?
- lapcat 2y agoIt's a tree with no branches, only leaves. And only a small amount of indentation distinguishes the various levels. Just look at any submission with hundreds of comments and deeply nested replies. It's a total unreadable mess.
- tetris11 2y agoSkim for keywords you're interested in, decide from a glance whether or not a comment chain is just two people passive-aggressively fighting semantics (and whether or not those semantics matter to you), scroll to the bottom to see if the dead comments have anything useful to say and rescue them if they say something interesting (albeit not popular) Don't internalize everything you read here, just a quick dip down for some interesting perspectives, and then you resurface with those endorphins and wait for the next hunt
- throwaway211 2y ago[flagged]
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 2y agoThis is strange to me. Flagging should be reserved for comments that flagrantly break the rules. There's plenty of stuff I disagree with that is formulated in a perfectly polite and serious way. I come here to have my own views challenged as much as anything.
- ryandrake 2y agoI wonder if people who abuse the [flag] function as a “mega-downvote” should eventually lose the ability to flag. I quite often see comments flagged here that are not rule breaking, they’re just unpopular takes.
- CoastalCoder 2y agoThere was a lot to like about Slashdot's moderation and meta-moderation scheme.
- saagarjha 2y agoThey do.
- dijit 2y agoFlagging is for rule breaking, not disapproval. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- new_user_final 2y agoI usually/only read comments with replies to get different opinions and go to next sibling comments if child comments aren't interesting to me anymore.
- Jensson 2y agoI look for comments with responses. Comments with responses are usually more interesting, that filters out like 90% of comments. If those comments were interesting I read more.
- OJFord 2y agoI minimise threads that get more narrow or argumentative than I'm interested in for a particular topic. Sometimes in a particularly large discussion I'll do that even for top-level comments without replies that I've either read (and won't reply to/not interested in replies to) or skimmed/read enough and decided I won't read. Help others by voting (both directions) and flagging/vouching where necessary.
- muzani 2y agoThere's the [-] button on the right which hides a subthread. Then go to the next. On particularly huge ones, just go to the next page. From that, it's like a party. Just go out and talk to someone at random. Past a certain level of discussion, there's going to be repeated conversations on the topic anyway.
- lproven 2y agoI just... read them all?
- GuB-42 2y agoIt took me a while to realize that there is a "prev" and a "next" button next to every comment. It makes navigation much easier when there are long threads. Using [-]/[+] is another option. If the problem is just the sheer amount of data and not navigation, you can simply bookmark the thread and come back later. The algorithm usually does a good job getting the best comments on top after things have settled down, just read these. Plus, if you forget about the topic and don't come back to it, maybe it wasn't that interesting after all, that's a good filter.
- sillysaurusx 2y ago(It’s not entirely an algorithm, it’s also human curation.)
- TeMPOraL 2y agoI wonder if we could train DangGPT that would reliably replicate dang's curation and moderation decisions (as distinct from just talking like him).
- kryogen1c 2y agoAs resident layman and LLM/chatgpt hater, I am offended on behalf of dang. He is not replaceable with a real person; an automated replacement is insulting to even consider.
- TeMPOraL 2y agoI didn't say replace. I said replicate. Or, put another way, capture the essence of his moderation style. This could be useful for the rest of the world that's impoverished in dangs.
- boomboomsubban 2y ago>It took me a while to realize that there is a "prev" and a "next" button next to every comment. That feature is relatively new, Oct ~28th 2021 apparently https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29023087 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29023087 so it mat not have been you missing it.
- dsr_ 2y agoIt's quite easy, as long as you have threading, quoting and read/unread flags equivalent to 1990 Usenet.
- michaelmior 2y agoHN doesn't have read/unread flags for comments AFAIK.
- corobo 2y agoI use the collapse thingy as a read flag - if I'm fully sated on a to and fro for a topic I might come back to I'll collapse the thread. Future me will often un-collapse the thread through curiosity of course, but will quickly realise I was right
- jarule 2y agonnhackernew.el presents HN as a 90s era Usenet forum.
- dsr_ 2y agoThat was, in fact, my point. Most discussion systems are inferior to 1990 Usenet, 34 years later. At this point it is traditional to shout about Usenet not having good moderation. In fact, it is possible for either individual news groups or specific news servers (that only carry a limited number of groups) to have good moderation. It is, of course, expensive: you need to get enough trustworthy people to run it to cover the time and volume. Then someone will sniff about not wanting to use a TUI, which can be rebutted by pointing at all the GUI newsreaders -- having a standard protocol for talking to a server is quite valuable. "Isn't Usenet a huge space and bandwidth hog?" Yes, Usenet was a huge space and bandwidth hog -- in 1990, and 2000. If you don't carry the warez groups, it can be adequately handled on a high-end server from 2000 -- which today is equivalent to a Raspberry Pi. (1994: 7 x 2 GB SCSI disks, 1.5Mb/s Internet connection) HN approximates the activity level and content size of 1 very active Usenet newsgroup.
- jszymborski 2y agoI begin by reading the top comment, if it's interesting I'll read its replies, if it's not I'll collapse it's replies and move down until bored. Most big threads have many replies and far fewer top comments so 133 can become much smaller this way. I also have no problem quitting as I scroll down. On big threads that have been up for a while, the insight tends to fall off with the number of votes as you keep scrolling.
- paulnpace 2y agoAfter getting bored, I begin randomly reading comments as I scroll. I'm surprised at how I find nuggets this way, though mostly it becomes more of the same.
- ColinWright 2y agoI do this: https://www.solipsys.co.uk/Chartodon/112750744215259093.svg https://www.solipsys.co.uk/Chartodon/112750744215259093.svg And this: https://www.solipsys.co.uk/QL/Cricket.html https://www.solipsys.co.uk/QL/Cricket.html
- est 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- aendruk 2y agoI use a short userscript to “mark as read” comments on hover. They just get a different color so I can hop around and know where to resume. It’s particularly helpful with active threads where new comments appear in the middle.
- wruza 2y agoOne can also search for “minutes ago” etc.
- Jare 2y agoI skim top -> bottom, read what catches my eye, skip the reply tree to posts I'm not interested in, and when I am not getting value I stop and move out, regardless of reason for not getting value (direction the discussion takes, posting quality, my mood or attention, etc). I almost never revisit later, I don't use any navigation helpers like [-] or prev/next.
- uzername 2y agoI use the HACK app, a hacker news reader app, for android. It has collapsing sections and jump to next top level comment. Between these two functions reading long threads even with deeply nested comments isn't too bad.
- codingdave 2y agoHN has those features built-in - at the end of every comment's top line, click 'next', or '[-]'
- adamomada 2y agoI use HACK on iOS and I didn’t even know there was a version for Android. It really is a more streamlined interface to HN comments, but I was used to it by using 3rd party apps on Reddit 100% of the time.
- bsnnkv 2y agoThese days I plug the article into https://kulli.sh https://kulli.sh which aggregates all the comments across HN, Lemmy, Lobsters, Reddit etc. into a single feed which I can quickly filter by source, discussions or order reverse chronologically. When I've had enough of a particular comment thread or source, I click/tap to minimize it and continue with the next one. I like having all the comments on an article in one place, not just for the convenience factor, but also because it gives me regular glimpses outside of my bubble and shows me how different communities, including ones I don't necessarily agree with, are discussing the same topics.
- smiley1437 2y agoSounds like a great aggregator but the poor site is getting slammed
- bsnnkv 2y agoThe service-side rate limiters for requests made to the various aggregation sources are global across all user requests so it can slow down a little bit sometimes. I've been thinking of offering dedicated instances for a fixed monthly cost if people are interested, but so far I haven't had any takers and I'm happy enough using the global instance for now.
- jarule 2y agoSkip anything with more than three sentences. Long-windedness needs to be punished.
- joey_spaztard 2y agoA mouse with a scroll wheel and all the comments fully expanded on one page and a high-resolution monitor showing lots of lines of text at once. The page-down button is a distant second. I find using a laptop without a scroll-wheel mouse mildly displeasing. A laptop with a screen that can show a quarter of the amount of text that my desktop PC can do is infuriating. Are you trying to read long threads on a smartphone or tablet, pawing at the touchscreen with your finger?
- Barbara230 2y ago[dead]
- smitty1e 2y agoThe little minus sign to collapse the comments is key.
- kawera 2y agoThis extension marks new comments with an orange vertical bar, plus some niceties: https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news
- gabrielsroka 2y agoThe "Highlight new, unread" future already exists, but you have to email the mods to have them enable it. I've had it on for years. I'm not sure why it's not a GA feature. Even still, it's not super useful.
- impure 2y agohttps://andrewzuo.com/summarizing-comment-sections-22e00c34c260?sk=98f6d01cfdf3ad99efc431cd23bbf905 https://andrewzuo.com/summarizing-comment-sections-22e00c34c...
- saagarjha 2y agoYou’ve got to enter the thread with the expectation that there are idiots posting drivel that you can leap in to correct, obviously. Seriously, though, reading 133 comments usually takes like two to three minutes total. You need to decide whether you want to spend that much on this site doing that or not. I expect for most people the answer is “no” and I commend them for their self-control. For topics you actually really care about, you’ll find it a lot easier to read through the comments. You will learn which comments to skip (nobody wants to read a rehash of “does anyone else think all developers are lazy and software is so slow now”) and which ones are actually interesting to read.
- solardev 2y agoYou can use a different frontend (like Harmonic on Android) too.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y agoI sometimes see HN commments that suggest readers prefer nesting. I do not. I dislike indentation; it is distracting. I prefer left justification. I use a text-only browser that presents threads as flat when tables are disabled. I can search through threads of max length using vi mode keystrokes. Much faster than using a graphical browser. Also, I do not use colors so, e.g., "greying out" comments has no effect. All comments appear in the same color textmode font. I decide what comments to read without unsolicited "curation" from voters or flaggers.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y agoNo need for hnrss.org. For me, it's not the site that one uses that changes the "user experience", it's the client. Using a non-graphical client I see all comments in a thread in a single page, all at once. Up the maximum that HN will display at one time. Nothing is hidden.
- krapp 2y agoI don't bother trying to keep up with everything. I'll follow /newcomments and I have a browser plugin that shows when a thread has new comments but beyond a certain point it isn't worth it. 90% of comments aren't worth reading anyway,
- paulcole 2y agoI just look for somebody who’s a know it all and start to troll them. Don’t really care about any comments other than that.
- Leftium 2y agoTry viewing this thread via my HN web app: https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/40952952 https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/40952952 It does a few things to make viewing big threads easier: - Collapses large threads into a toggle button showing the number of replies in that thread. - Highlights the OP - Follow any timestamp link to "focus" on that sub-thread, like this: https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/40953431 https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/40953431 - The author of the parent comment becomes the highlighted "OP." I have a bookmarklet that toggles between viewing on HN and my web app. My app was heavily modified, but original credit goes to https://hackerweb.app/ https://hackerweb.app/. The original author had an idea to make HN threads more like Reddit threads, which he may have implemented in the mobile app rewrite: - iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hackerweb-hacker-news-client/id1084209377 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hackerweb-hacker-news-client/i... - Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cheeaun.hackerweb https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cheeaun.hacker...
- unraveller 2y agojavascript: (() => { const id = window.location.href.match(/\d+$/g)[0]; window.open(`https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=story:${id}&sort=byDate&type=comment`)%20%20%20})(); bookmarklet shows you the latest story comments and you can usually tell where they belong or dig in to find out eg: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=story:40952952&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... reddit style comment threads: https://hacker-read-it.netlify.app/item/40965892 https://hacker-read-it.netlify.app/item/40965892 there is also chan style: https://hnchan.netlify.app/thread/40937119 https://hnchan.netlify.app/thread/40937119 cleaner hackerdaily tree style: https://hackerdaily.io/40955693/comments https://hackerdaily.io/40955693/comments flat style: https://ditzes.com/item/40937119 https://ditzes.com/item/40937119 There is also one I cannot find at the moment which let you click and open each comment thread in the right side of screen, that was very good. edit: found it: https://hzn.jero.zone https://hzn.jero.zone
- gabrielsroka 2y agonice. here's a slightly shorter version: javascript:open(`https://hn.algolia.com?dateRange=all&prefix=false&query=story:${location.href.match(/\d+$/)[0]}&sort=byDate&type=comment`)
- vasili111 2y agoIf the discussion is about the interesting topic I will start from top and go to bottom while collapsing discussions which I have read with “-”.