- I wonder what the second order effects of this on the HN karma system will be. It'll create a graph of karmic supernodes perhaps. Say I green-blob someone with a big reputation here, say jacquesm; no doubt lots of other people will do the same. The friends-of-friends icon is going to appear widely but it'll all be a single edge away from Jacques' node. Is that much of a signal? I dunno. That's 30 seconds of thought about it. It's a fun idea though so I'll try it.
Version two: hide foes? Come to think of it, maybe the 'foe' aspect is the fun part...
EDIT: it's like I summoned him.
- Related, there is already an extension that allows selected users to be highlighted, but without the shared server data for computing friend-of-a-friend relationships:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17717598
by jimnotgym
2 subcomments
- I'm interested in peoples thoughts about this. There are people in here that I generally respect, but on certain subjects I have seen comments that are not helpful. If I saw one of them first I might click 'foe' and then ignore them in the future.
And this seems normal. I have a friend in real life who I like talking to, we share some views, and vehemently disagree on other subjects. He likes to bring them up and I tend to divert the discussion because I don't want to lose them as a friend
by nextlevelwizard
1 subcomments
- As kid who grew up on anonymous boards, I never even read user names. Accounts are ephemeral and worthless. Ideas are only things that matter.
- That's a nice project!
I searched a few comments I agreed using the "Ask HN: What are some iconic comments on HN?" thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40719253) and I'm pleased to see some green comments here and there :)
I also made 2 QoL [fire|grease]monkey extensions for hn:
- display favicons of sites next to links: https://gist.github.com/corentinbettiol/6d9dc3a032c17ebcd94d...
- display karma next to usernames: https://gist.github.com/corentinbettiol/289503b4033a788df91f...
by zzo38computer
1 subcomments
- I would prefer to do the opposite, where everything is displayed in chronological order (with an option to display by threads or not; even if not you can still find what each one is a reply to) regardless of voting and regardless of who wrote them.
by ineedasername
14 subcomments
- I’d encourage a change of labels away from “friend/foe”. It may seem minor but the subtle loaded nature of those paired terms encourages an adversarial stance rather than one of productive discourse. It’s not catchy so there’s probably better than this but, just as an example— “engage/ignore” could better signal to the user a neutral “do I want to bother with this person?”
- I created and shared Ethos which is a sentiment and discourse analysis thing for HN and it's been plugging away. You're welcome to use its API if you want. Submit a PR for the CORS to be changed as needed.
Original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46993774
- I just keep a custom stylesheet that annotates usernames with various emoji. Most of the time I update it as I read, but occasionally I’ll peruse the hidden comments to note e.g. uncharitable participation and revealed bigotry.
by istillcantcode
0 subcomment
- I have a text file of commentors I normally disagree with and check in on them from time to time (about weekly). Its good fun and often I find there will be topics I do agree with them on. Reading the same opinions all the time is no fun.
- A question, per your final comment on being available to answer questions:
What do you feel is the benefit to the community for this that isn't offered by native blocking/existing extensions?
I ask not out of malice, I ask because 2 reasons:
1. I imagine spending time on this/it's working well required you to see the value/benefit to it.
2. We must assume all hacker news commenting follows the rules, IE; good faith comment with relevant experience when required. This seems like a way to promote getting around that.
by vivzkestrel
1 subcomments
- - can we get an extension that blocks all of ragebait, racist remarks, hostile comments on twitter
- like it is literally trained on some data set to identify posts that are trying to bait people into commenting on them and simply hide such posts.
- the world would be a far better place if we had such an extension
by brodouevencode
5 subcomments
- 502 Bad Gateway
- I'm color blind, and those colors look very similar to me. I could not tell if it was green or red or something else. Please use something like blue and red.
- This is cool, but for folks concerned about privacy, even if the cached layer is anonymized, in the aggregate I bet you can likely figure out who a person is.
I imagine just looking at the first degree connections of the votes would be a pretty strong signal.
by ZpJuUuNaQ5
4 subcomments
- Interesting. I'd love to have a browser extension that automatically blocks all comment sections on every site I visit, so I wouldn't feel the need to interact with anyone online.
by pavel_lishin
0 subcomment
- Funny; I wrote a greasemonkey script to be able to highlight certain commenters here, but didn't even once consider adding a "networked" element to it.
by mediumsmart
0 subcomment
- Friends come and go, foes accumulate.
- Hey, how about an extension that will hide user names completely when browsing HN comments?
Edit: wait, just a custom CSS will do it.
How about an option in the HN settings to hide user names then?
- https://github.com/samuelclay/hackersmacker/blob/main/web/im...
How old is that icon set? I swear I used that same peppers icon for a Windows app that I published around 2002.
by titaniumtown
0 subcomment
- Installed! Lets see how this goes. I'm going through previous interactions I've had with people.
by cousinbryce
2 subcomments
- Way down on my list of projects to vibe code is tags for HN users. I.e `Elon Stan` , `smart about aeronautics` , `grumpy` , `reasonable` etc etc. I like reading different opinion but if I formed an opinion about a user id like to record that without using my brain
- Neat project, but please increase the contrast between the text and the background on the page in the appendix.
- Putting aside questions of the second order effects this might have, I do like how it has that classic Newsblur styling.
- I don’t think this should be implemented but I would be really curious to know who the most disliked commenter on the site is
- I've been testing it out for a bit, unfortunately the layout shift when all the icons load in is very distracting.
- I wish there was a way for HN to sponsor scale up so that sites have more availability for the HN hug of death
by logicprog
1 subcomments
- Hmm, I installed this in Waterfox for Android, and I don't appear to be able to tap on the bubbles next to people's usernames
- 1. Create an app (possibly HN related)
2. Deploy it on cloud
3. Post it on HN
4. Sell your house to pay cloud debts
(I mean the page is down already)
- It sounds great, except I am getting 502 Bad Gateway when following the URL. I think the site went down.
- Thanks for actually providing a Safari extension, this is rare!
- Getting a 502 bad gateway error when I try to access the main website as an FYI.
by ImPostingOnHN
1 subcomments
- this seems like it would increase tribalism and polarization
- It'd be interesting to run pagerank over the trust graph
by swaminarayan
1 subcomments
- Nice, so it shows green/white/red badge above commentors. I would suggest HN team to integrate this feature. It looks really cool.
by thinkingemote
0 subcomment
- I used https://github.com/ToneyAlexander/HackerTagger for a bit almost a decade ago. Data locally stored, good but didn't transfer across machines, not so great.
It had a little text label next to names so you could manually add whatever you want. Recently I've thought about this extension and using it to tag the LLM users, or the humans who tend to pop up to fan the flames or who regularly post thought terminating comments - little tags to remind me to ignore the bots and trolls.
by indigodaddy
0 subcomment
- Hacker got the smackdown
- Is the friend of friend limited to one deep?
What happens if friends conflict?
Personally I like hn because there is karma, but it's an afterthought. Although I'll it a try. I suspect the problems of reputation and the internet are unsolvable, that doesn't mean we can't try and improve it.
- Oh no… hugged to death!
- Getting a 502!
by sickofparadox
1 subcomments
- Another step towards the Redditification of hackernews. This is the exact opposite kind of functionality pages like HN need, we need ways to get people to engage with others' ideas more substantively rather than literally put someone on the "bad guy I won't talk to list".
- Comments from your "preferred commenter" are like songs from your favorite band, sometimes they disappoint you.
by jonathanstrange
3 subcomments
- That's weird, I'm reading HN every day and never felt a need for something like that. In my experience, the quality of comments is very high and really bad ones tend to be downvoted or flagged fast. Could this be a time zone issue such that people in certain time zones are less fortunate than others?
by goodpoint
2 subcomments
- what about privacy?
by SV_BubbleTime
2 subcomments
- I would suggest categorizing the quality of comments by its content and not its creator. Oh, nevermind, that’s a silly thought.
Challenge my core belief? Well… I could rationally evaluate that, or, I could just use a tool to block it from my vision! Bubble thickener.
- What’s the purpose? More echo chambers and circle jerking parties?! Why some people are so inclined to label others? I might dislike someone’s comment on something or disagree with their opinion about it, but absolutely love their comments on another topic. And if that is an “overall” score for a person’s comments, then who are you to hijack my personality and tell me this person is good or not to engage with? Unless it’s just a joke, the concept is stupid.
- Everyone is going to get this extension just to see how it classifies their own comments. This is like the virtual equivalent of scratching your ass and sniffing the finger.
by ffsickempire
0 subcomment
- [dead]
by elcapitan
1 subcomments
- Finally someone brings this place the explicit toxicity it had been missing all those years. /s
by rambambram
0 subcomment
- Yeah, polarizing! /s
I have a better idea. Why not distinguish quality from non-quality by reading a series of characters and then deciding for yourself if you like the subject and tone of voice? People themselves can choose how many characters they use. Let's call these characters the alphabet.
by slopinthebag
0 subcomment
- [flagged]
- A lot of discussion on the labels. I agree friend/foe is counter to what most of us would like HN to be about. How about align/diverge or similar, suggesting whether a commenters position usually reinforces or challenges your viewpoint?
by sadeshmukh
0 subcomment
- How would two neutral labels sound? There's something somewhat confrontational about "friend/foe" and those dynamics seem to worsen discussion. At the least, it should auto hide "foes", since predisposing people to be against a comment before reading it isn't ideal. Neutral labels, like "apple/orange", with slight connotations could be interesting. Of course, this kills networks, but I'd question if that's even a good idea in the first place.
- Thanks to the HN moderators for re-posting this after I posted this a few days ago. I only notice now that it's on the front page.
Happy to answer any questions. Let me tell you, I've really enjoyed having those writers that I like highlighted on this comment thread because it makes it very easy to scan it.
I think it's important to remember that this is not about hiding writers you disagree with. It's simply about making it so that you can read more Hacker News threads and quickly scanning the comments, teasing out those writers that you agree with. It's also fun to read the writers you disagree with, if anything, to reinforce your opinion of them.
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