[pajju]

Additional feedback:

5. Use of better colors: For following keywords or topics & colors for users by active | top | influencers etc.

6. Verified accounts.

7. Use of on Demand Badges like: Trustworthy User Badge, Looking for(Badge), Looking for co-founder, Hiring, Remote jobs etc.

All these can be grouped under a Paid plan? I would definitely pay for value & additionals, even a good mobile app experience is missing.

8. There is lack of networking and peer discovery in HN.

They should add community managers & make this evolve. Take it to the next level.

9. Follow options: Follow this discussion, Alert-me's, Follow Posts by keywords.

10. Finally, there is lot of scope to Improve.

HN team & YC should Rise up to the expectations and deliver richer experiences. What are they doing?

11. Add a separate Top Link: Voice-UP your concern.

This is for: Alerting, finding loopholes in the system(gaming the system etc), User Site feedback, new interface ideas.

Creating a vibrant HN ecosystem is the way looking forward. Lets do it.

[Gustomaximus]

With 5. I'd be inclined not to colour influencers or other user accounts. I'd be concerned it would exacerbate hivemind as 'these are the opinions I should upvote and follow'. I like in HN that I typically read a comment before I note someones username on this vs reddit type interface where the username is highlighted.

[cantankerous]

Agree with you. HN has been (seems to be) moving away from indicators that can influence upvoting (for example, folks upvoting a comment already substantially upvoted because its upvoted while downvoting dissenting views). Coloring influencers could assign undue heft to persons of a particular color over others and influence conversations in ways orthogonal to the dialogue.

Also I'm told that YC-Alums can see each other's user name on HN as a particular color and non-YC-Alums don't see this. So I guess that's already a thing.

[pajju]

overall reputation he/she has earned in the HN ecosystem.

A light (grey shade)color underline can shown up as his overall reputation, function of his contributions, activity in HN etc.

[galfarragem]

I don't agree with you but I upvoted your comment (that was already being downvoted) - it adds value to the discussion.

The simplicity of HN is something innegociable IMHO. As I understand you are proposing to evolve HN into a mix of Reddit-social network for hackers/entrepreneurs.

[pajju]

Thanks.

It was an open opinion & you understood it well. Others simply downvoted it.

I don't feel anything for downvotes, but opinionated things gets often misunderstood and the whole discussion stops there.

The Idea that someone brings a new conscious(new topic) open for discussion is also gone down by downvoting. The essence of further discussion is thus diluted, because of first few downvotes or no enough upvotes.

This is still a persistent problem in HN, if there is a downvote, there can be fair explanation too(as you did) or don't push it so down, so others might re-consider this topic to be validated.

Nice, these kind of open discussions is the way looking forward.