Building more powerful clients for desktop and mobile. Think user tagging, comment filtering, custom sort order, interface improvements.

I really like that HN still has such an old, simple interface. It's one of the reasons I haven't left yet.

About a decade ago I noticed this phenomena.

Worthwhile communities need to be maintained by barriers. The kind of barrier that I personally enjoy most is, "Crappy enough interface that only people who really like the content will be motivated to show up."

I think it just correlates with the presence if images. Also StackExchanges have excellent UIs, APIs and still very good content. StackOverflow itself could also be worse.

That is a good comparison. StackOverflow has a good API, but maintains itself with carefully thought through and zealously enforced moderation rules.

I grant the existence of useful content there and a good API. However after one too many brushes with how differently moderators think about stuff than the people who I liked talking to did, I have demonstrated the truth of my comment by choosing to leave.

StackOverflow works for a lot of people. But for me, personally, a stripped down interface and less moderation is a better experience.

Yep. No magic tricks. Just substance.

Amen to that.

Or just create one themselves: http://harpb.com/static/news/news.html#/featured/p1/100

Presentation, along with content, is a better experience than just having good content.

Never really thought of it like that, a statement worth exploring for sure

> I really like that HN still has such an old, simple interface.

You having the interface you want shouldn't impact my having the interface I want.

An API allows everyone to have the interface they want.

I guess something like the possibility to have a mobile application (either web based or native app) which would be usable (the tiny up- and down-vote arrows of HN are not easy to use using a finger on a touchscreen) and which would actually work by not relying on html-parsing or search kludge.

The best reading experience I've seen (by far in my opinion) for iPhone/iPad is http://cheeaun.github.com/hnmobile/

If you have an iPhone, there's news:yc. Great reader. Not perfect, but the best I found so far.

>> I guess something like the possibility to have a mobile application

See http://ihackernews.com/

That's a website not a mobile application.

>> mobile application (either web based or native app)