What would you change on HN if you could?

Some grouping or merging of URLs for major news would be nice, though hard to implement. For example Apple releases a new product, new version of Firefox, new S1 filing of $unicorn. Each leads to 10 different stories being submitted in very short time period. Different websites, sometimes just slightly different URLs (bbc.com vs bbc.co.uk or mobile vs desktop URL) or link to a tweet which then links to bbc.com again. Currently we can only flag and point to the submission with the most traction/upvotes/comments, usually the one that made it to the frontpage first. With an Apple event that leads to a race who can post a URL first (sometimes guessing, thus before the URL exists, or before the URL is availble in parts of the world). I've seen the moderators can merge threads, they can also change the URL of a submission if a better source is available. Maybe users could marks stories as "essentially the same as".

I quite like reddit's meta threads. A threads like "Apple September event" that stays in top position and is created before the event. But reddit is better with long comment threads (500+ comments) and sorting by time, not votes. I'm sure it would be a major project and lead to more moderation work.

Users can hide submissions. Sometimes I wish I could hide users or domains, too.

To dream: Custom submission & comment tags; custom, user-facing, shareable filter design subsystems for submissions & comments with the possibility to spin up ad hoc moderation groups that own specific tags. System for custom karma filtering to develop types of karma. Multiple karmic dimensions. Meta-systems of tag features & filters.

Upvotes? Silly concept, too much effort placed on an emotional dichotomy. I used to do couples coaching and this would be first on my discussion list for relating to each other--we have got to move beyond the dichotomies, relating to things is richer than this. You'll get better results with less hot/cold style interaction. Tell your boss that tomorrow.

Downvotes? More unnecessary pain for everybody. You want to subscribe to a ratings system? Pick your favorite. Pick your favorite anything.

Don't like tags? Easily find others' tags which indicate & link to a high-quality subjective structure zone where tags are irrelevant because concrete hierarchical structure is found here. Enjoy letting others do your organizing for you.

Overall: Intentionally subsetting current HN to a part of HN-world, in favor of a speculative variety of HNs, allowing new experience discovery & new modes of participation. Skate to where the f*** it's going to be, I think Steve Jobs said.

Power to the people Marty, btw I wish the same for Youtube, Facebook, etc. etc. which IMO in the future will be seen as little more than unexciting instruments of unnecessary psychological exposure/damage insofar as their user-facing participation interfaces are concerned.

Notifications to my comments/posts would be great.

1. A home page that is less influenced by votes.

There are often little gems that slip through because they don't get enough votes. Or, some threads can get excessively heated.

The basic idea is to give more weight to the new-ness of a thread, and allow the homepage to be more dynamic across users (a specific logged-in user should get its homepage that doesn't change quite as often to give them time to navigate it).

I was surprised to discover a (popular) social platform that is very good at providing a home page full of interesting threads without being too influenced by the very popular ones. So, I know that it is possible (although, it might be technically harder to implement).

2. Harder idea:

I've noticed that HN users (and social platforms in general) have a tendency to be influenced by the company/product/service/brand being discussed.

As a basic example, a news like "Company X did this good/bad thing" will be commented on differently depending on whether they like/dislike Company X.

So, a feature that would be really cool is the ability to hide that name, and let people discuss purely based on the "facts". Then, after posting, the user can see what that name is... (Of course, there will be more details to iron out)

- Get rid of comment downvotes. They only make people feel bad, aren’t a substitute for moderation, and aren’t necessary for comments to sort by votes.

- Double the number of entries on HN pages.

The ability to filter out whole fields of articles, by options in the profile. Ferinstance, like blocking out all Covid-related articles.

When the title of a submission doesn't do a good job of conveying what the submission is about--which is often--it would be great if a submitter could include a very brief description of the contents that appears just below the title. This would save me as a reader a lot of time when trying to decide what on HN to read.

An easy flag to switch off seeing vote numbers and karma numbers.

Give everyone the ability to downvote. Bring back notifications.

Give the possibility of having comments in chronological order.

Some have been said already, but:

- merging of posts. - longer titles (the limit is infuriating sometimes). - maybe a default font-size that's slightly larger than it is now?

Mandatory comment required when downvoting

Instead of/in addition to downvoting, allowing the community assign a political flair by voting on changing the font color for the posting, with a lower karma threshold to vote for font color.

If you think a post is a just right-wing gambit, then let those with some karma vote to make the post display in a red font…maybe light red leading to bright red if percentages increase.

If the post is just a left-wing gambit, then you can vote for a blue font, light to dark as opinions are tabulated.

Not as strong as a downvote (which should be reserved for abusive, manipulative, poorly reasoned, MLM, etc. posts, not just matters of personal taste or opinion IMHO), but lets the poster and community know that a lot of folks think this veers into political drivel of the red or blue variety. While still keeping the content up to be read. Allowing a very mild form of venting which should increase user engagement. Perhaps some might even find it an easy way to read things that only reinforce their worldview.

Nice way for dang to take the pulse of the community and their take on the editorial vector of HN.

Might add a green font for unbalanced views of long-term climate forecasting, nuclear energy and the other usual suspects. A lot of times, it isn’t worth arguing when the post doesn’t reflect a nuanced view of what is truly known and what isn’t, relative risks, etc…effectively (or ineffectively) an advocacy piece. Sometimes it is worth a short comment that takes 5 minutes, but sometimes it’s not worth the energy to correct, but isn’t worthy of a downvote either. A green font means the content is viewing things through “green-tinted” glasses. A balanced view doesn’t get a green font.

A way to know if a submission is behind a paywalled site so I don't waste time clicking through only to find it's paywalled. It does get frustrating.

btw: when did they ship the last change on HN? Is there some sort of changelog?

I'd make it harder for highly upvoted posts to be killed by flags.

put the "hide" button to a fixed position. Currently it is a moving target

ban dang