Not a full redesign, but there are quite a few UX issues that really need to be addressed. These 2 stand out most for me:

- mobile issues: text too small, up/down vote not usable

- post text almost unreadable, it should not be lighter than comment text

What phone are you using? It’s perfectly workable on my phone, and a breeze compared to the cancer that is crappy sites and apps like Reddit.

The main issue I notice is that the up/down arrows and other UI elements are too tiny to easily/accurately tap with a touchscreen. Thankfully touchscreens are pretty good at guessing which HTML element my fat fingers are touching, but it still leaves me a bit paranoid about e.g. whether I upvoted or downvoted.

After you vote, look for whether the text next to the timestamp says "unvote" or "undown". That will tell you whether you upvoted or downvoted.

In tiny, gray text, with words that look similar to those with imperfect eyesight. It could easily be improved without breaking the site's entire aesthetic, IMO.

I never noticed "unvote" was exclusively used for upvotes. I had been thinking there was no way to check. Thank you.

It’s so bad on mobile that there’s a market of HN clients.

Myself I am writing this from an app I’ve bought on the App Store.

> text too small

I am acutely nearsighted so I can still read 2mm tall characters unaided and am well past the point when most humans require corrective lenses for reading.

It's sort of a super power right about now.

So it depends. I dislike large text on my phone. old.reddit.com works just fine for me as well.

Text size is perfect for reading, even on my small hi-res device. I do agree with the UI elements though.

Post text is pretty bad, sometimes even on my PC...

That post text is the same color as a downvoted comment is truly baffling to me. What benefit could that possibly have?

For mobile I use GLIDER for Hacker news. It a pretty good experience :)

On iOS, you can set the text size to be larger using the Aa button in safari.

If you are looking for an app, I am the developer of HACK which is available on both iOS/MacOS/iPadOS and Android:

https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/hack-for-hacker-news-developer...

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pranapps.h...

> If you are looking for an app, I am the developer of HACK

A little off-topic, but I'm totally blind (use VoiceOver) and just tried the app on iOS. A few issues:

* Several buttons are unlabelled, so I'm not sure what they do. * Navigating through posts isn't the most efficient (I need to swipe several times to move from post to post). * The relative level of comments within a thread isn't announced (i.e. replies to OP are at level 1, replies to those replies are level 2, etc). Are these indented visually? * Accessibility actions should be added to quickly vote, reply to comments, etc.

Happy to provide additional feedback/model apps that do this well, but I'm not an iOS developer.

Thanks for the feedback. It’s my fault and I apologize because I hadn’t taken accessibility into account while development. I will look into making the app accessible in updates.

Probably not so useful for mobile, but have a look at Refined HN extension: https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news

I discovered it a few days ago. It seems to include a "override CSS" box in the menu, allowing anyone to customize the look of HN.

While I agree that the UX on mobile could be better, it might actually be beneficial to comment quality that HN encourages desktop use.

The first issue, I'd have to disagree. I think it's perfectly usable. Second issue, it doesn't bother me but fair point

I miss two things: inline `typewriter font` and

- bulleted/ordered

- lists without making each entry its own paragraph.

The lack of a redesign I think is a big part why the community remains (if it ain't broken, don't fix it!), plus HN's heavy moderation -- towards these very guidelines.

Does it really have heavy moderation, though? I always feel that the team here has a rather light touch.

HN is more heavily moderated than all the sites people complain about on here. If you browse the front page you’ll frequently find titles which make no sense at all because they’re stripped of the adjective which meant anything.

If you browse any of it chronologically with showdead you'll find tons of completely innocent stuff moderated out from ever showing up before it would’ve ever been visible, quite often on first post for no apparent reason.

Unlike other communities where excess moderation is a concern (a frequent discussion here), you can’t object to a decision publicly. I’m knowingly flouting the abstract version of that fact because I think it objectively contributes to the discussion. But I have every reason to believe even this is going too far.

For sure it’s very carefully moderated, dang works very hard to keep conversations civil and away from flaming, especially around politics. “Heavy” has some negative connotations though. I think the moderation is appropriate.

Yes, perhaps that was a bit strong of a word. On a related note, a good opportunity to repost this article for those that hadn't seen it:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th...

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30374040

Dang tends to be fair in his assessments. The first and last time he called me out he made it clear that I ran afoul of the terms and that I should go read them again if I had not. I stopped posting and went and read them. Like another poster said above this is a place where people get chances and when those are given even multiple times to the same person before getting "heavy" there is a high likelihood that people can turn around for the better and permanently. This is now the only place I come due to it being laid out by dang in the way that he did and my active decision to take the advice and become a better poster. There are a lot of very intelligent people here and sometimes I am in awe with the breadth of knowledge that is shared in the comments. I agree that the moderation has been appropriate and effective at that. Things are changing for the positive in my life all around thanks to that reminder and my choice to be a better person because of it.

The moderation is quiet but very firm. For example, I can't post more than like 8 comments per day without getting blocked by rate-limit errors because dang has decided I get in too many flamewars.

This is actually rather clever. It's the internet equivalent of having a buddy pull you back in a brawl, as opposed to kicking you out.

I think it is like 5 comments in the same hour and then you have to observe for the next 3 hours (or something like that, I don’t know exactly).

I love this feature. I’m of a personality which really easily gets baited into flamewars (which is against the guidelines). Being forced to stop after 5 posts forces me into a cooldown period where I can reflect on my behavior. When the shutdown is over I will probably be demotivated enough to continue this recklessness and the probability of me being yelled at by dang goes down with it.

If I have something important to say, it can wait a couple of hours.

I posted something that got traction and they changed the title considerably and also changed the URL. So yes, they definitely moderate lol.

Because probably dang and company tries to nip the bud when the link is posted. Since that most that pass that filter are relatively uncontroversial (they're things that interests some and silently ignored by others), they only need to actively monitor those with inherently high-level controversy (like partisan politics).

Between actual moderation and community moderation, yes. The way moderation works on HN is somewhat hidden though: dead comments will disappear, post titles and such are edited with no (publicly visible anyway) history, etc.

Inspired by Stalin, I imagine. I'm nervous to say 'it works', since we don't know really know what's being suppressed or changed.

more heavily moderated than the evil non free speech places

HN is somehow the most mobile-friendly social network I use, and I'm not sure how that works. The prev/next/parent links are genius.

Well, HN isn’t a social network. It is a forum.

It’s not directly monetized so the design is meant to serve the user. In contrast social media design principles are about controlling user behavior to maximize revenue. This means HN is fast, simple, and information dense. Those are desirable properties on any device.

> HN isn’t a social network. It is a forum

With all due respect, this isn’t a restaurant it’s a McDonald’s.

Precisely

(Except in this case, it would be the other way around)

I chose this way around deliberately thank you.

Those links are great, I just wish there was a way to get back after clicking parent.

In long threads, it's easy to loose track of which parent a given comment is replying to. So I'll click `parent`, which gives me the context I need. But then I have no way to get back to the reply I was reading previously.

Click on the time stamp of the comment first, then you can use the back button of your browser.