All they really need to do for that is make URLs into links in the "about" section. They already do this for comments; I'm not sure why they don't do that for profiles.
OTOH, the avatars sounds like a horrible idea to me.
I'm neutral on the markdown one, it wouldn't be too bad but it might end up making comments look like mini-articles rather than just comments.
code trick.
- this is sufficient for bullets
- since people don't bullet whole paragraphs
1. this works for numbers
2. for the same reason
> And this is just fine for pseudo-blockquotes, which can be much longer.
And the lack of embedded links encourages human-readable URLs that are either sources[1], or inline links to a page people might want to visit after reading the comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown
It's a bit arbitrary what's supported, but HN has always felt to me like a display of how working within constraints can improve quality.
Definitely in the same boat. When I started reading through this rare opportunity for legitimate meta discussion I was about to advertise the missing vote direction indication on the unvote button. Because it's so easy to hit the wrong direction on mobile and that would be an elegant way to fix it.
But now I think that even this might be more feature than bug: knowing that there is a chance that it might have been just clumsy upvoters makes it easier to do the right thing when getting downvoted.
I prefer userflairs over avatars. Ability to tag certain users would be convenient as well, incase I want to follow certain opinions.
I feel mixed about inbox system in hackernews. I prefer not having it actually. Because I don't feel like I have to read anything replied back to me, I do it of my own volition
I actually like hackernews as is, less features is better.
I think extraneous formatting would just create more incentives to write long, pretentious, streams of consciousness comments where someone just screams from their soap box instead of actually engaging anyone.
- Bullet list - Item 2
And preformatting which you DON'T want for quotes because they are very annoying to read on mobile6. Responsive design so the site doesn't suck on mobile
What else?
Honestly there's probably a _ton_ of stuff that could be improved, but given how change-averse the typical HN user seems to be perhaps just leaving it as it is _is_ the best idea.
You have to pop out to comment though.
It's responsive on my end, I think they changed it this year.
I'd like to remove technical posts from my front page, since I'm not technical. Either I'd like to follow certain tags and only see content related to them, or at least be able to mark tags I don't want to see.
I just implemented this, drinking the hnrss post firehose and archiving each link at archive.is. Great idea!
Not sure how it could be improved?
The main purpose of avatars is to track you. Please, HN, do not add avatars.
Maybe you're referring to Gravatars?
- cap karma at 1000 points
- get rid of the leaderboard
Other than that I wouldn't change a thing.
Why?
> get rid of the leaderboard
Why?
Sometimes someone other than the original commentator replies and unless you're paying attention to the user names you may make a presumption based on assuming they're the same person.
This should be pretty easy to do with a greasemonkey script.
It's also a throwback to the old internet where pseudonymity was normal. It's refreshing to see usernames like AdmiralAsshat and TooMuchToDo.
1. Markdown support
2. More profile capabilities. e.g. avatars, vanity URLs, link to your GitHub, Twitter, Stack Overflow, blog, etc.
3. Automatically create cache link for articles in case their hosts go down after being linked from HN.
4. Revision history for comments.