What's your perfect Hacker News?

I'd appreciate a changelog page similar to https://news.ycombinator.com/security.html I'm sure the admins are improving things behind the scenes but it's mostly unnoticed and so users might think development has been stale for years. Did they upgrade servers? Fix aspect ratio on mobile?

There must be dozens (hundreds?) of developers on HN who could help implement a dark mode. On the one hand I'd be great if somebody built a prototype that can be easily copy&pasted (HN whole CSS is tiny). On the other hand YCombinator is attached to literal billion dollar company so why do work for free?

Remove: Maybe move the /jobs and even the monthly threads to a separate website. Jobs postings aren't really articles, shouldn't require upvoting/ranking or comments.

I am very aware that this submission is likely to be ‘disappeared’ in minutes.

HN submissions are almost never 'disappeared' so that awareness is probably misplaced. The question itself, in various forms, pops up quite frequently - here's one thread from a few months ago and you can find piles more with the search interface.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38698710

> This is why I feel a little scared too scared to attach my main profile with thousands of karma to this post.

If you've got a surplus, there's certainly no harm in risking a few points?

HN is having a major influx of users. If you're curious look at https://hackernews-insight.vercel.app/overview . It would be strange if it weren't changing into a different place! There's many more lurkers here and that's going to change the dynamic significantly. I suspect a lot of the lowering civility you perceive is coming from a larger userbase that sees less kinship in the other and sees this place more like a text-oriented Twitter to shout at each other. Also larger userbases attract zealots and so you probably (at least I do) see an increase in zealotry.

It's a very different HN now. HN is now a major tech news site with a large userbase and a large lurker population. That's very different to the medium sized, highly engaged userbase of before.

It's nothing you can change. Spaces with large userbases work and feel differently than spaces with smaller userbases. Discord, Bluesky, and Xitter in that order are where I spend my time more these days. On Discord nobody is going to try to dunk on me because they're jaded or angry or whatever, Bluesky has rich enough moderation that I can ignore the haters, and Xitter gives me the breadth that neither Discord nor Bluesky can. HN is a minority of my time. I just treat it as the "angry tech people site."

Giving a down vote costs you 2 (or more?) of your own votes.

As the very least, down votes should require a comment. Even "false", "not true" or "disagree" would help.

My sense is, there's a network of HN users who attempt to manipulate the exposure of ideas by downvoting them (to the point those comments aren't even exposed).

Don't get me wrong, there are comments that deserve DV'ing. Moi? I can't be bothered. I just scroll on. But for those who aspire to be the HN police - especially then it's at the option (not fact) level - they should have to pay for that privilege.

I'd like to add to my other comment about down voting.

Profiles should show up votes given and down votes given. As well as up votes received and down votes received.

The current single "score" is too vague. It lacks context.

At the moment, my "perfect Hacker News" is Mastodon. A curated feed of people sharing interesting things, and that's it. No viputerative snark, no performative cynicism, no wallowing in conspiracy theory, no flame wars, no race wars, no green accounts shouting slurs and death threats. No lectures whenever someone makes a joke or steps on one of an ever increasing and increasingly pedantic set of guidelines. It's everything I wish Hacker News was. It's fun. Hacker News hasn't been fun in a long time.

If I had to change one thing about HN, architecturally (since trying to change the culture is a fool's errand) it would be better curation. This would go against one of the design goals of HN, having a "non-fragmented" community where everyone sees the same site and the same content. But I would argue that the community is already fragmented. The size and diversity of the userbase is such that people already experience completely different versions of Hacker News depending on when they arrive and what they follow.

Being able to whitelist or blacklist accounts, domains, keywords, etc and curate one's account would improve the subjective quality of the forum across the board. People who want Hacker News to only be strictly technical and startup content can have that. People who want rough-and-tumble politics and debate can have that. And never the twain should meet.

I really do think there is an interesting design space between Twitter and traditional threaded forums that might make for an interesting experience.

And if I had to change a second thing about HN it would be getting rid of voting/karma, because it clearly isn't serving its intended purpose.

The "eggshells" comment is, I think, indicative.

HN used to be a place where you could read a post from a position that you disagreed with, and still learn something. Posts had more thought and more interesting points. Users had more tolerance for those who disagreed with them. Those who disagreed had more thoughtful reasons for why they disagreed - it wasn't just "is not".

You can't fix that by changing the code. The problem is the users have changed.

HN has more users now. First, that means that the old users are in the minority, if they stuck around. Second, it means that HN has become a more useful platform for ideological battle, and therefore that more ideological battle gets pushed here, even though it's completely against the intent of the site.

And, maybe, some of the old users have changed, too - become more sharp and less tolerant.

I don't think you can fix HN without first fixing society. I wish I had a more optimistic answer.

I think the 'hide' button should be used more by those who don't wish to see a comment or submission.

I would like to see the statistics of how many 'downvotes' are used on a daily basis in 2024 compared with previous years, as I have a suspicion that it is just being used at the detriment of good conversation (heated or otherwise). And if this is the case, just remove the feature if it no longer works like it used to.

Edit: There we go with people downvoting. Couple more and you can hide away my opinion (which has no place on HN, evidently).