> If a user has 251 Karma, they can set the color of the top bar in their profile settings. The default is #ff6600. Here's the complete set of colors users have set.
This is a really useful list, thanks for putting this together.
I was briefly shadow-banned a month or two ago, due to a few submissions of posts on my personal blog from this account (and not much else).
What was odd was that when I looked at the "newest" page while logged in, I saw my post on HN but when I looked when not logged in, the post didn't show up. I didn't know shadowbanning existed and thought there was some kind of issue with HN, so I emailed [email protected]. dang@ sent back an incredibly thorough and thoughtful reply literally 3 minutes later (this was at 7:15 p.m. on a week night).
So while I find it a little odd to 1) shadowban someone without telling them why and 2) intentionally obfuscate the fact that they've been banned by making it seem to them like their submission was successfully submitted, I was really amazed by the care and efficiency of dang's response. So thanks dang!
If you were a low-effort spammer (Edit: I'm not suggesting you are a spammer btw) you'd never notice and keep on posting spam into the void. Whereas if you were notified you might create new accounts ad infinitum increasing the administrative burden of HN.
I once implemented a similar feature for the comments on my blog along with an embarassingly simple filter to identify the spammers initially. The volume of spam on a no-name nerd's blog and the degree to which this approach resolved it were both surprising to me.
On a later incarnation of the blog I just removed the commenting feature, but I guess that wouldn't be a sensible strategy for HN :)
The entire point of shadowbanning is making the fact that the user is banned non-obvious to that user--otherwise, they'd be liable to immediately create a new account and continue with the activity that warranted the ban in the first place.
Both "telling them why" and "not obfuscating the fact" would defeat the entire purpose of a shadowban (as opposed to a "traditional" ban).
The whole point of shadowbanning is that the spammer/annoying poster doesn't know they're banned and need to create a new account to keep trying to spam/troll the board. If you tell them generally they'll just create a new account, it's especially bad for sites like HN where there's not even an email required for creating an account. As it's gotten easier to create temporary emails shadowbanning becomes increasingly more effective because it increases the amount of spam that gets blocked before the account owner notices to create a new one.
Meanwhile million dollar corporations buy accounts and astroturf with no penalty.
The little guy is silenced from sharing opinions/links that God Mods don't like, but the big corp can write off a marketing expense that looks like a mature organic account to God Mods.
dang - are there any features for making HN more accessible? A vision-impaired colleague of mine wanted to check out HN today and made me aware that the contrasts on HN make it really hard for people with impaired vision to read on HN (webaim.org confirms this: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/?fcolor=919191&...). Using his screen reader (NVDA) didn't help much as the front page doesn't seem to take into account screen reading software. Has someone built a more accessible version of HN? Also, does the HN team plan to make HN more accessible in the future?
It's a problem and yes we plan to fix it. I'm sorry it hasn't been fixed yet; we're just slow at things. Hopefully HN will be around for long enough to justify how slow we are.
This is super neat. Not only for beginners/intermediate to catch up with documented and undocumented features. But also for platforms who are seeking a better moderation approach. For me, HN is a very special place - the way people interact, the way that it is moderated. I still dream that other platforms might follow suit someday.
I wouldn't attribute it solely on moderation though. The HN audience isn't very big and thread discussions never last too long because there's almost always something on the frontpage. Not saying it's a bad thing though.
It makes me unreasonably happy that FFOOFF is far up the top color list. Apparently it seems to be hard to Google, but for those who don't know, prior to wide spread support for alpha channels, FF00FF was one of the colors commonly used for bitmap transparency. Not exactly a commonly used color and exceptionally obvious when working with a sprite sheet.
Edit: You can probably guess what my banner is set to.
I never understood how the vote counts works (the number that is added to your profile). It's certainly not lineair with the submission upvotes and it even seems to slow down over time (i.e. you need more votes to add 100 points to your profile)?
I wish there was a feature that doesn't grey out the comments for a couple of hours until everybody has gotten a chance to vote. As it stands currently, a single person downvoting a new comment from +1 to 0 leads to a slightly grey comment. People here usually see this and form an implicit bias. I've seen comments that are perfectly reasonable, has no opinion, it is on topic, and follows guidelines and yet it gets downvoted. I am conjecturing that it is because of this bandwagoning effect.
Look into this please. Greying out comments is fine. Just let some time pass, even 30 mins would be a huge improvement. Alternatively, allow minimum 2-3 people to vote before greying out comments.
As Jtsummers points out, people can and do give corrective upvotes in such cases. I do that all the time, and I hope people understand that it's part of being a good citizen here.
At the same time, I try to make it a point to vouch/upvote reasonable posts. If I had no indication it'd been downvoted, I'd never upvote it to compensate. I'd read the comments now and if I came back tomorrow to see if there were more discussion I'd be very confused to see many comments grayed out (The great comment massacre?). Based on how other comments move to gray and back I suspect I'm not alone.
I've mentioned this before, and this seems like as good a place as any to say it again: I think HN is a bit too profligate with downvotes, and I've seen it get incrementally worse over time.
My solution to this would be, at 501 karma, a user gets 5 downvotes per 24-hour period, use them or lose them. 1 more downvote per 100 points.
This would gently teach users to downvote a bit more sparingly. Karma isn't that hard to come by, and even when I'm in a really bad mood (or there's some awful thread) I'd be surprised if I hit 30 downvotes in a day. By the time a user had as much downvote ability as they're likely to use, a habit of being less thoughtless about it would be well-established.
Human psychology being what it is, there is a subset of high-karma accounts which never ever downvote, and another subset who basically just come on here and slam the dislike button until their spleen is vented. I don't consider these approaches to be equally beneficial.
It seems down votes are far too easy to make. A down vote can be spent freely and carries no expense.
Expecting humans to be judicious is probably a little too optimistic ( otherwise we wouldn't need laws and governments ). Especially on the anonymous internet.
I am thankful for the upvote people who provide a helping hand when needed.
Since downvotes seem to collect quickly and possibly silence someone early in a conversation does anyone have design thoughts on ways to 'moderate' the down vote?
One of the unintended consequences of domain shadowbanning is that sometimes quality content gets buried. Which is an unfortunate trade-off, given the amout of spam content from such domains.
For example, here are some recent articles from https://dev.to that were submitted multiple times by different users, but were dead because the domain is shadowbanned:
I never knew that there was a second moderator! (sctb)
Their comment history only has some comments from 2019, and is much shorter than dangs. Did they only have a short stint as a moderator on HN, or do they now work from another account/behind the scenes?
Not that long ago, you could very quickly build a decent SEO campaign around "X vs. Y" tutorials and HN - write 5,000 words on e.g. Angular vs. Ember, get some friends to upvote it, and if you made the front page you'd be on the first Google SERP for Angular and Ember the next day.
I personally know a couple of early-ish YC companies who took advantage of that to boost their content marketing ops, and it wouldn't surprise me to learn that they were part of the reason this policy exists.
I believe that explicit banning is also now indicated. I'd requested something like this for long-since-shadowbanned users whose ban event was hidden in the distant mists of time (or who are sockpuppets of banned profiles). This is rare, but does occur.
Also can apply to spammers -- this is usually relevant on submissions / new queue.
The YC-company bias can also apply to negative reporting on YC companies, which is less moderated as something of a counter to charges of favouratism. See:
Can I limit HNs search functionality to only include my favorites?
I often know I favoured something but for the life of me cannot find it via normal search and going through my hundreds of favorites by hand is impractical.
Alas no. It's something Algolia could build, though, if they wanted—in fact there could be an operator for searching through anyone's favorites ("fave:splittingTimes" similar to "by:splittingTimes"), as they're public.
Was the period removed? I remember a few months ago, there would be a `.` after the post age if it was the user's most recent post. Looks like it's not there anymore though.
Certainly some familiar names on the top 100 accounts ranked by karma totals but seeing the username “toomuchtodo” with some 48,000 internet points gave me a pretty good grin.
[+] [-] sammorrowdrums|5 years ago|reply
It's so close, why isn't the required karma 256?
[+] [-] shubik22|5 years ago|reply
I was briefly shadow-banned a month or two ago, due to a few submissions of posts on my personal blog from this account (and not much else).
What was odd was that when I looked at the "newest" page while logged in, I saw my post on HN but when I looked when not logged in, the post didn't show up. I didn't know shadowbanning existed and thought there was some kind of issue with HN, so I emailed [email protected]. dang@ sent back an incredibly thorough and thoughtful reply literally 3 minutes later (this was at 7:15 p.m. on a week night).
So while I find it a little odd to 1) shadowban someone without telling them why and 2) intentionally obfuscate the fact that they've been banned by making it seem to them like their submission was successfully submitted, I was really amazed by the care and efficiency of dang's response. So thanks dang!
[+] [-] dcminter|5 years ago|reply
I once implemented a similar feature for the comments on my blog along with an embarassingly simple filter to identify the spammers initially. The volume of spam on a no-name nerd's blog and the degree to which this approach resolved it were both surprising to me.
On a later incarnation of the blog I just removed the commenting feature, but I guess that wouldn't be a sensible strategy for HN :)
[+] [-] leephillips|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LambdaComplex|5 years ago|reply
Both "telling them why" and "not obfuscating the fact" would defeat the entire purpose of a shadowban (as opposed to a "traditional" ban).
[+] [-] rtkwe|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] b1gtech|5 years ago|reply
The little guy is silenced from sharing opinions/links that God Mods don't like, but the big corp can write off a marketing expense that looks like a mature organic account to God Mods.
[+] [-] dang|5 years ago|reply
A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439437 - June 2020 (266 comments)
A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20292361 - June 2019 (25 comments)
A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822 - Feb 2019 (183 comments)
Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16437973 - Feb 2018 (391 comments)
[+] [-] marshmallow_12|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JulianRaphael|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DoreenMichele|5 years ago|reply
Presumably, he's able to navigate HN since that's how we met.
I'm visually impaired but not blind. I have no problems navigating HN.
You are welcome to join the group and ask how other members navigate HN. Most of them joined via links found on HN.
https://groups.google.com/g/blind-dev-works
[+] [-] greggturkington|5 years ago|reply
The text is mostly illegible, but there are LOTS of other issues too, tap target sizing for example.
[+] [-] seumars|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shoto_io|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seumars|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mey|5 years ago|reply
Edit: You can probably guess what my banner is set to.
[+] [-] janvdberg|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] systemvoltage|5 years ago|reply
Look into this please. Greying out comments is fine. Just let some time pass, even 30 mins would be a huge improvement. Alternatively, allow minimum 2-3 people to vote before greying out comments.
[+] [-] dang|5 years ago|reply
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
[+] [-] Jtsummers|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samatman|5 years ago|reply
My solution to this would be, at 501 karma, a user gets 5 downvotes per 24-hour period, use them or lose them. 1 more downvote per 100 points.
This would gently teach users to downvote a bit more sparingly. Karma isn't that hard to come by, and even when I'm in a really bad mood (or there's some awful thread) I'd be surprised if I hit 30 downvotes in a day. By the time a user had as much downvote ability as they're likely to use, a habit of being less thoughtless about it would be well-established.
Human psychology being what it is, there is a subset of high-karma accounts which never ever downvote, and another subset who basically just come on here and slam the dislike button until their spleen is vented. I don't consider these approaches to be equally beneficial.
[+] [-] kokanator|5 years ago|reply
It seems down votes are far too easy to make. A down vote can be spent freely and carries no expense.
Expecting humans to be judicious is probably a little too optimistic ( otherwise we wouldn't need laws and governments ). Especially on the anonymous internet.
I am thankful for the upvote people who provide a helping hand when needed.
Since downvotes seem to collect quickly and possibly silence someone early in a conversation does anyone have design thoughts on ways to 'moderate' the down vote?
[+] [-] wruza|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yamrzou|5 years ago|reply
For example, here are some recent articles from https://dev.to that were submitted multiple times by different users, but were dead because the domain is shadowbanned:
https://dev.to/kprotty/understanding-atomics-and-memory-orde...
https://dev.to/yyx990803/announcing-vite-2-0-2f0a
https://dev.to/jaredcwhite/why-tailwind-isn-t-for-me-5c90
https://dev.to/lazerwalker/using-game-design-to-make-virtual...
https://dev.to/nwtgck/the-power-of-pure-http-screen-share-re...
https://dev.to/bkolobara/writing-rust-the-elixir-way-2lm8
[+] [-] joshmanders|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diplodocusaur|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ro_bit|5 years ago|reply
Their comment history only has some comments from 2019, and is much shorter than dangs. Did they only have a short stint as a moderator on HN, or do they now work from another account/behind the scenes?
[+] [-] Shoop|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minimaxir|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ehershey|5 years ago|reply
> Downranking of Tutorials
> HN submissions which are tutorials are downranked by moderators, as they gratify intellectual curiosity less.
[+] [-] culturestate|5 years ago|reply
I personally know a couple of early-ish YC companies who took advantage of that to boost their content marketing ops, and it wouldn't surprise me to learn that they were part of the reason this policy exists.
[+] [-] dredmorbius|5 years ago|reply
Also can apply to spammers -- this is usually relevant on submissions / new queue.
The YC-company bias can also apply to negative reporting on YC companies, which is less moderated as something of a counter to charges of favouratism. See:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Including from this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26868116
[+] [-] thinkingemote|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] splittingTimes|5 years ago|reply
Can I limit HNs search functionality to only include my favorites?
I often know I favoured something but for the life of me cannot find it via normal search and going through my hundreds of favorites by hand is impractical.
[+] [-] dang|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisArchitect|5 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822
and discussion less than a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439437
[+] [-] canada_dry|5 years ago|reply
I'm guessing they are documented, but I'm too lazy to find/read. ;)
[+] [-] qw3rty01|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codyb|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nextaccountic|5 years ago|reply
I ask because I don't have 501 karma and I can flag a comment (but not downvote).
[+] [-] theturn|5 years ago|reply
I thought they were "approved" users.
[+] [-] AlwaysRock|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] detaro|5 years ago|reply