An Update on Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ycombinator.com/an-update-on-hacker-news <comment><USER3> How does HN's moderation staff feel about users who are dead, completely oblivious to it, but who continue to post, sometimes for _years_ after the fact without any kind of warning that they are wasting their time.

Sometimes I check the comment history of these dead posters; 80% of the time it appears like they are a genuine troll who was correctly moderated out of the community, however, a significant portion of the time, there doesn't appear to be anything particularly inappropriate in the comment history, but the user is still doomed to waste a considerable amount of time attempting to contribute to this board.

In the context of internet discussion boards, it seems a little harsh.

Off the top of my head, I feel like something akin to an automatic probationary resurrection period would be an interesting idea. Perhaps it occurs one year after hellbanishment, giving the community a chance to organically reevaluate the user's quality of contributions, and giving a second chance to those who have matured in a years time (or who was simply hellbanned in error).

<comment><USER4> I had this happen to me when I critiqued a YC backed company. Had a few thousand in 'meaningless internet karma points'. You pretty soon realise after a few further comments anyway, so I doubt it's actually effective.

It's pretty mean spirited though - generally a "douchebag" move. It'd be like having a bad employee, but instead of firing him, or discussing his work, just don't bother paying him any more.

After being hellbanned I actually realised that commenting on internet forums is toxic, generally a waste of time, and not productive. So I quit. At the start, you sort of care about "karma". But you end up realising it's a measure of two things. 1. How much time you waste commenting on the internet, and 2. How much you can agree with the groupthink echo-chamber.

But for those that like spending time commenting, I would have thought following a subreddit model would work better here, with the growth. Spread the power out. If I get hellbanned from the "rust is the future!!!" subhackernews, big whoop.

It'd also help with filtering out all the non-interesting (self driving cars) stories.

But then perhaps it'd basically be reddit at that stage which would defeat the point...

<comment><USER5> Ever notice how people who make claims about why they got banned never provide links to the posts in question? That's because their claims are nearly always false. If users could look at the actual record, their perennial sob story of perfectly reasonable behavior struck down by bullying censors would evaporate. So they make new accounts and post linkless statements designed to be unanswerable.

We don't ban people because they "critiqued a YC backed company".

Edit: Some of the replies have made good points, and I realize that I overreacted. Sorry about that. Please shoot us an email at firstname.lastname@example.com if you feel your account was banned unfairly. We're always happy to look into this—there's no question that we make mistakes; the most I can claim is that we're eager to, and do, correct them when they're brought to our attention.

<comment><USER6> * Ever notice how people who make claims about why they got banned never provide links to the posts in question? That's because their claims are nearly always false. If users could look at the actual record, their perennial sob story of perfectly reasonable behavior struck down by bullying censors would evaporate. *

When that kind of response comes from the site's moderator, I really don't see the level of toxicity improving any time soon.

It's likely statistically factual, but in context it's just another of the "mean, stupid things" that Paul Graham called you out as being here to address. And you appear to have done nothing to investigate whether the previous user's post was factually correct before slinging personal accusations.

If this gets me hellbanned too, so be it. Conversation and community on this site is a toxic mess that leaves people afraid to post _anything_. The main good thing is following users like patio11 and tptacek.

[http://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-the-people-taking-over- hack...](http://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-the-people-taking-over-hacker-news)

<comment><USER5> You may be right. I'll look at the comment later and see if I should have written it differently. There's no time to reflect just now.

I try hard not to let personal irritation leak through in my HN comments, but I do fail at it. The most I can claim is a willingness to correct mistakes.

<comment><USER7> It's wildly inappropriate to lob a blanket accusation of fraud against every single person who has ever complained about your moderation.

People have wildly divergent views as to what's appropriate, what's a little rude, and what's over the line. This means that even if you really truly believe that there was NEVER a mistake made during moderation, that some people will truly believe what they said.

Good moderation requires a ton of empathy and kindness.

<comment><USER5> It's probably a lesson to me that the one time I didn't hedge by saying "almost" or something like that, someone objects to my "blanket accusation". Actually, I originally wrote "almost never" (or something similar). But then I realized I couldn't actually remember a case where someone provided a specific link to back up his or her grand claim of why they were banned. So in a fit of impetuousness I lopped off the "almost". I did leave in "nearly always", though.

> Good moderation requires a ton of empathy and kindness.

I try, but don't always succeed. Thanks for the reminder. I appreciate it.

<comment><USER8> Keep in mind that people might not want to link the example to associate their current account with a banned account to avoid getting banned again.

<comment><USER5> I appreciate your willingness to see both sides and think of a good-faith interpretation here. That's the Principle of Charity which HN can use a lot more of. However, the users in question are typically quite accomplished at making throwaway accounts for specific purposes. Several have done so in this very thread.

There's no way, barring some freak outlier, that we banned anyone for criticizing YC or a YC-funded startup. If someone really did feel that way, nothing would be easier to clear up. The real issue, in the overwhelming majority of cases, is repeatedly flouting the HN guidelines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > To prevent abuse, moderators review flagged stories and comments and revoke > flagging privileges from users who flag inappropriately.

This seems like one of the cases where HN's moderation is both draconian and completely opaque. I can't flag comments, and I have no idea why. I certainly don't think of myself as an abusive user.

Maybe I accidentally clicked the "flag" link once. If that gets flagging privileges removed, HN should at least consider creating a way to undo an action!

<comment><USER5> As other users have pointed out, to flag a comment you have to click on 'link' to go to the comment's item page [1]. I don't know why PG designed it this way but have always assumed it was a speed bump to reduce impulsive flagging, since flags are more powerful than downvotes.

We never remove flagging privileges because of just one flag. The concept of a mistake is all too familiar over here.

1\. [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=author%3Adang+flag+link#!/comment/...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=author%3Adang+flag+link#!/comment/sort_by_date/0/author%3Adang%20flag%20link)

<comment><USER10> Is there any way for me to tell if my flags are useful or stupid?

I tend to pre-emptively flag stories which I know will draw out the worst bits of HN. That's probably a bad thing, and I wouldn't be surprised if it caused my flags to be ignored.

<comment><USER11> Same here. I generally flag gender stories, not because I disagree, but because the comments quickly deteriorate.

<comment><USER12> Perhaps flagging those comments would be better, since they are what you claim to be the problem.

<comment><USER11> I have only just become aware of flagging comments. Some of the threads tho' you would need to flag 100 and a lot of bad feeling is generated. Best nip it in the bud early I reckon.m

<comment><USER13> The threads that you are flagging are the ones that need to happen.

I can see why you would flag a whole thread, but I don't think that will ultimately get us anywhere. If you care about the accessibility of this site, then I implore you to upvote those threads^ and flag the bad comments within.

^presuming that they have some techy slant

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If I understand the rules correctly, downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment, and flags are used for inappropriate comments.

But is fading the comment really the correct behaviour. Isn't the position on the page deciding whether the community agrees with the comment?

My suggestion is: remove the fading; let downvoting only move the comments down, since the comment is appropriate yet the community doesn't agree with it; and let flagging remove inappropriate comments.

<comment><USER15> > downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment

I hope downvoting has nothing to do with agreement; I thought it was for comments that aren't valuable to the conversation (e.g., not substantive, poorly reasoned, false, or poorly communicated).

I want to see many more comments that are valuable and challenge the community (and challenge my thinking too). The groupthink is already well known and if not, will certainly be posted by someone.

In practice, I do see downvoting used on comments that are valuable but challenging. It's disappointing.

EDIT: remove embarrassing typo

<comment><USER16> pg has said many times that it's OK to downvote out of disagreement (particularly since it's OK to upvote due to agreement.)

I generally don't unless the disagreement has another value-subtracting component (lack of substance, poor reasoning/phrasing, factual errors, unnecessary incivility.) For disagreeable but worthwhile comments, I prefer responding instead. But I recognize the value in having differences of opinion over the use of downvotes -- comments of marginal quality (which some people disagree with, and others don't find valuable enough to upvote even if they agree) will end up dropping down the page.

<comment><USER15> > pg has said many times that it's OK to downvote out of disagreement > (particularly since it's OK to upvote due to agreement.)

What value does this provide to the reader? Community groupthink is not strongly related to truth, IMHO, and provides little marginal value, because I already know what it is and it's easy to find. In fact, I wouldn't read HN if all I found was the groupthink -- I gain far more from new or challenging ideas.

EDIT: When Amy up/downvotes, it is for the benefit of Bob and other readers. Amy receives little benefit besides maybe a little emotional satisfaction. If the vote mainly was for Amy's benefit, HN wouldn't need her vote to impact anyone else's threads -- we all could have personalized, independent scores for each comment. What benefit do I, Bob, receive if Amy is just voting on what she agrees/disagrees with?

<comment><USER17> Downvoting because you disagree provides the exact same benefit to the reader that upvoting because you agree provides. _" Downvotes aren't for disagreeing"_ is an absurd redditism.

> _" Community groupthink is not strongly related to truth"_

In strongly technical discussions, which are common on HN and which HN should be optimized for, "groupthink" and "correct" tend to correlate quite nicely. Whenever there is a concrete notion of "correct", it works well. It is only when "correct" becomes subjective (such as in political discussions) that shit gets messy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I would love to see them lower the threshold for down-voting. I've only got 200+ karma, and it's hard for me to get more. I can't be on here all day commenting, and being the first to submit articles.

If I have something important to say, I comment, otherwise, I mostly consume. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to download a comment I don't agree with or find offensive.

<comment><USER19> As someone who has had downvote powers for a year, you should not be downvoting comments you do not agree with. Downvote trolls or other violations.

If I ever make a site with community comment contributions, and include upvoting, I would just leave downvoting out of the picture entirely. Etiher you do not agree and do nothing, you like a post and upvote it, or you report a comment in violation of the site rules. Downvoting just means dissenting against those you do not agree with rather than having a conversation about it.

You should be replying to the comments you dislike and state why, rather than just think hitting a down arrow is going to right all the wrongs with their statement.

It is the most infuriating thing to make a statement, have it downvoted, but have nobody say or argue why or against your points. The whole point of forums is discussion, and downvoting (especially when it outright removes comments) defeats the purpose.

<comment><USER10> I would modify your system to include a placebo downvote. There is a downvote button, and you can click it. It just doesn't do anything. Or maybe it only has locel effects - that comment is grey on the user's local system but not on anyone elses?

<comment><USER20> the downvote button could simply function as a `hide` button

<comment><USER21> I like this idea, particularly if you communicate the number of hides. The poster is made aware of how the comment has been received, so there's feedback while not affecting other users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "To prevent abuse, moderators review flagged stories and comments and revoke flagging privileges from users who flag inappropriately."

When I first joined HN, I aggressively flagged stories and comments that didn't meet the guidelines. I thought that's what I was supposed to do. However, one day my comment flagging privileges disappeared with no explanation. If someone had contacted me and explained how I was misusing flags, I would have happily self-corrected.

<comment><USER5> > comment flagging privileges disappeared

Comment flagging privileges don't disappear (edit: alone). Please see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585939](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585939).

<comment><USER23> Would you mind clarifying? The blog post (quoted by parent) seems to explicity say that flagging privs can be revoked, which directly contradicts what you are saying in the comments. Or was the quote from the blog post only meant to refer to flagging of articles?

<comment><USER5> My apologies—I wrote that in haste and I see now that it was unclear. What I meant was that you can't lose comment flagging privileges while story flagging privileges remain intact; the software just doesn't do that. Either all the flag links would disappear, or none would. So there must be another explanation for what sciurus described (as I understood it). Does that make sense?

<comment><USER23> Thanks, dang. Your response to sciurus makes more sense now. Though, his description was lacking enough in detail that I suppose he could have also lost story flagging descriptions.

But I am still confused about the apparent contradiction with what you've stated versus what was stated in the blog post, about losing flagging privs. When flagging privs are lost, are _all_ flagging privs lost? Or is minimaxr correct[0], that it works the other way, where you can lose story flagging privs without losing comment flagging privs?

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8586144](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8586144)

<comment><USER5> I need to check that. Could you please email firstname.lastname@example.com if you don't get a reply here soon? I don't intend to forget, but I have a lot of packets dropping at the minute.

Edit: Ok, I checked it. Story and comment flagging privileges are lost or retained as a set. You can't have, or lose, one without the other. It's not clear why minimaxir thought otherwise, since I'm pretty sure the code has always worked this way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Last month, I posted an analysis of all 5.6 million Hacker News comments at the time: [http://minimaxir.com/2014/10/hn-comments-about- comments/](http://minimaxir.com/2014/10/hn-comments-about-comments/)

It should be noted that during the aforementioned six month periods, both the number of new comments made monthly and the average score for a given comment decreased, although this post claims a 30% increase to Hacker News traffic due to changes in the comment system, which is interesting assertion of causality. (in fairness, the decrease in number of new comments could be caused by the increased moderation of bad comments.)

It would be helpful if this article in this submission clarified how to flag _comments_ , as that action is unintuitive (you have to click the comment permalink first) [EDIT: looks like this was added to the submission]

<comment><USER25> How do you see the scores of comments? I only see the points of my own comments.

<comment><USER24> Comment scores are visible to the Algolia API after a period of time. Otherwise, the API returns a "null" for the points field. (example: [https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/items/2921983](https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/items/2921983))

This is apparently unintended, as the official API has no points field. (example: [https://hacker- news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/2921983.json?prin...](https://hacker- news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/2921983.json?print=pretty))

<comment><USER26> Oh, interesting. I stopped indexing HN comments after the points data became unavailable (it was still available through the Octopart guys' api, until Algolia took over). It looks like comment scores start showing up around the 30 day mark.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In my opinion the only real annoyance with HN is when story titles are edited.

Maybe it will take an updated policy to fix the core issue, which is that while linkbait headlines are annoying, some original works are titled very badly and the poster may actually add useful information by customizing the title (often by highlighting what is most interesting/relevant about the linked article).

<comment><USER28> I think this aspect of HN has improved immensely in the past several months; dang in particular has done much to increase the transparency around title editing. I find myself less likely to knee-jerk reject a title change when the rationale is right there in the comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> _A third experiment didn 't go so well: we briefly made the software kill comments that had been sufficiently downvoted. Many users objected, arguing that killing downvoted comments is too harsh a punishment for unpopular opinions, especially since downvoted comments get faded to begin with. We heard that and reversed the change._

Good to hear they decided to roll that back.

PG opened a pandora's box when he said that downvotes were acceptable when you merely disagreed with someone, instead of doing so for civility. There is no end of sadness and bullshit caused by that remark.

It'd be nice to see an official policy statement changing that position, but I don't think it's likely. In the meantime, we will simply have to stop assuming that downvoted comments are actually, you know, _bad_.

<comment><USER30> > In the meantime, we will simply have to stop assuming that downvoted > comments are actually, you know, bad.

I don't think this is true. Given that downvoted comments become faded, I have a strong reason to believe that the intent is to hide them because they are actually _bad_

<comment><USER31> It only takes a single person disagreeing with you to fade your comment.

<comment><USER14> That is also a problem. One downvote later and the comment is immediately biased toward future readers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > The threshold for flagging is low (only 30 karma), so everyone can help > there.

So I guess I am not able to help.

<comment><USER5> An earlier draft of this post that Sam sent me had "nearly everyone can help there". I'll ask him to put it back. But it's not like this is much of a barrier. Even this one comment moved you significantly (as of right now at least).

<comment><USER33> Just curious, but are you saying that because of the relative position of the parent's comment in this thread, or is there a threshold for karma that unlocks seeing the karma on comments other than your own?

<comment><USER34> Just click on his username.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Flagging seems like the solution to toxic comments, and should be more encouraged. At the same time, this means it overlaps with downvoting—but only _one_ use of downvoting. Really, the meaning of downvoting on HN is somewhat confused and muddled: is it a "flag lite"? Is it a way of disagreeing? Is it a way to push worse content to the bottom? Is it just the opposite of an upvote?

Any one of these would be reasonable, but having all at the same time is not great. But that's exactly what we have now, both in the design of the feature and in how it gets used in practice.

Personally, I think downvoting should move away from being an alternate form of flagging (with flagging, perhaps, taking a slightly more prominent role for dealing with actual _abuse_ ) and more towards just being the opposite of an upvote. This still makes it a bit of a hybrid (both for moving bad content down _and_ disagreeing), but one that makes a lot more sense because it works just like upvotes do.

For one, this is what the interface already implies. The downvote button looks just like the upvote button upside down. Seeing the two as exact opposites is entirely natural, and that's how it plays out in terms of karma too. But in terms of social conventions and, importantly, greying out comments, this doesn't quite hold.

I also think that some symmetric way to counterbalance upvotes is actually useful in and of itself: downvotes can offset comments that gain a lot of upvotes before getting a strong rebuttal or comments stuck at the top of a discussion because of other quirks in the system. But people now seem pretty hesitant to use them this way. Which makes sense: if downvotes are, in part, mini-flags, they are too strong just to indicate that you think something has been upvoted too much or is not a particularly good comment (without being _bad_ or _abusive_ ).

So what would I do? Well, from the site's perspective, the main tweak is greying out comments after _more_ than one downvote. Still have the votes change the order, but only have a really visible effect after a few have accumulated. More importantly, from a social perspective, it would be good to reach consensus on what a downvote actually entails, namely that it's just the opposite of an upvote, neither more nor less.

Disentangling flags and downvotes like this will improve the utility of _both_ features by making them more focused. Downvotes can be a symmetric force in shaping discussion while flags could be pushed a bit more as means of pruning actively harmful comments.

<comment><USER19> My position is that downvotes should not exist. There are three ways to view posts and comments:

A. you agree with it, and appreciate it, so you upvote it to give it more visibility because that is how this whole system works - popular stuff should rise to the top, and an upvote is a measure of popularity. If you see popular stuff but have something to add, you will usually upvote and comment on it.

B. a comment or post is a violation of site rules, and should be reported. You flag these and leave it up to moderators to deal with it.

C. you disagree with a comment or submission. If you are given a downvote button, people will often just downvote the stuff they do not like and leave it at that. But that is antithesis to discussion, and it is a very real problem on reddit, where users often use downvotes as a substitution to real debate or testing ones beliefs or knowledge. The correct answer is to reply _why_ you dislike a comment, and try to start a discussion on it. If it is not violating site rules (and trolling can be, depending on site, one of those rules) then it is your duty to inform the poster why they are wrong.

Downvoting is a cop out to take the truly controversial topics that make for the better discussions out of consideration, and that is why you get an echo chamber - when you only have upvotes, if there are three opinions, then those three will be ranked by popularity. If you have downvotes, only the most popular opinion will ever show up because not only is it upvoted the most but the other two are downvoted off the site and those with dissenting beliefs just leave. And then you end up with the echo chamber and no real discussion left.

I think that is why HN gets higher quality, in the general case, than most subreddits around technology. They have downvote buttons that naturally turn their communities into hive minds, whereas here you have to actually contribute a bit to get that power. I'd rather see it removed entirely, tbh.

<comment><USER16> One thing we try to discourage on HN is "me too" or "disagree" posts that don't have much more content. The presence of upvote and downvote buttons means that those comments don't get made, because votes serve that purpose instead.

There's still room to start a discussion if you have a specific point to make (and the desire to make it) about the problems with someone's comments. Those discussions do tend to happen when someone makes a disagreeable but thoughtful point. But sometimes it's just better to throw a downvote at an obviously wrong (or stupid or offensive or mean) comment and move on.

<comment><USER36> That only makes sense in case of "me too" comments. You have 4 options of response to somebodies comment:

1\. Agreeing while providing some new information. So you write a comment (actually you'll probably upvote in this case as well, but whatever).

2\. Agreeing without providing any new information. Like, "yeah it's completely right what this guy just wrote". That comment wouldn't be very useful indeed, so that's why upvoting exists. And that's totally normal option, because it's very much possible that some guy just "nailed it" and thus you don't have much to add, yet you want to show your approvement somehow.

3\. Disagreeing providing new information. Like, "no, your statement is false, because _that_ and _that_ , here you have logical mistake and there you just got facts messed up: here some link for you to verify that". Obviously, that would be a comment. And that's what constructive conversation is made of.

4\. Disagreeing without providing any new information, so you have downvo… but hey, wait, what was that? You can agree without providing any new information, but disagreement is meant to have some reasons for it. So if I disagree I'd better clarify _why_ I disagree or just remain silent completely. Basically downvoting here just means "I don't like your comment" and it's quite reasonable that one _shouldn 't be able_ to do that unless he has something more to say. There's just no sense in such a thing as "disagreeing without explanation", unless that guy you disagree with isn't an obvious troll, and, honestly, you can never know if somebody is "an obvious troll" — it's quite likely that you just don't understand his reasoning, so if you don't want to continue discussion you'd better just ignore him.

<comment><USER16> Sometimes I disagree and someone else has already provided the new information I was planning to.

Sometimes I have a problem more with tone than with content -- someone was right, but being a jerk. I'll both downvote them and upvote someone else who was right and more appropriately civil.

Sometimes a comment is simply pointless. Someone posted a meme, a lame joke, or a comment that has nothing to do with the topic at hand (like "this" or "totally correct"). Downvoting is a nice shorthand for "this comment doesn't add anything to the discussion".

<comment><USER37> It's the distinction between "this isn't the content I'd prefer to see at HN" and "this comment is abusive or inappropriate for the venue". Karma doesn't mean much, and getting the occasional off-topic or vacuous comment downvoted is just a soft form of negative reinforcement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Is this a reasonable place to plead with people to stop the practice of meta- commentary on downvotes ?

I am sick and tired of seeing the scoring system injected into the comment thread:

"let the downvotes begin" "EDIT: you can downvote all you want, but ..." "EDIT: not sure why I'm being downvoted, but ..."

... and so on. Just comment and respond, don't add all manner of meta- commentary on voting and the score system into the discussion.

Thanks.

<comment><USER39> Well it insults peoples feelings if they are being downvoted. It seems unrealistic to me to expect that they just accept the humiliation, even if it would be the rational thing to do. (I'm guilty of meta-commenting, too).

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> It seems like early comments on any article generally have a huge advantage in garnering votes.

This appropriately rewards engagement, but also pushes down other worthy comments that come slightly later, often to effective near invisibility when replies to the top comment dominate the discussion.

I wonder if there is any mechanism that could help counter this.

<comment><USER15> I expect that there is a strong correlation between how soon a comment is posted and its points. Two thoughts from a relative noob (sorry if these ideas already have been discussed or tried):

* On threads with many comments, few users have time to read all or even most of them. Perhaps find a way to shorten the list, improve signal-to-noise, and surface newer comments by burying older comments that haven't received votes.

> This appropriately rewards engagement

* It rewards engagement by people who have the time to frequently check HN, read linked stories, and comment throughout the day. My guess is that the smarter someone is, the less availability they have for such things. I would create a system that rewards engagement by busy people.

<comment><USER41> Have a colour scheme for the 15 most recent comments of the thread.

That way we can reload the page and see what's new.

<comment><USER40> That is a cool idea. It would have to be done in a really subtle way to avoid becoming garish, but I hope it gets tried out. Not sure about encouraging reloading the page though.. maybe some kind of AJAX would be better for protecting the server from overload.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'd love to see posts on the rationale between different design decisions, particularly with regards to things that change group dynamics. For instance, putting karma next to someone's name may produce leader-following social behavior, meaning your high-karma users would reinforce general behavior by encouraging other users to behave the same. But that would increase the already prevalent concern of high-karma users overly influencing discussion and getting upvoted based on karma alone. It would be interesting to see all these examples stacked up and then a post about why they went one way or another.

</comment><comment><USER43> Can you mark comments with the score of 1 in some way?

I suspect that I'm not the only one who downvotes the comments he doesn't like or disagrees with, but who'd very rarely want to push a comment into gray. I mean, it's one thing to vote a comment down so that it won't float at the top and another is to punch its author in a face with a negative score.

<comment><USER5> That's a good idea. Like so many of these, it isn't obvious how to do it in a way that doesn't complicate HN's minimal UI. But it's worth noting that you'd get this for free if we implemented vote undo, which is something we're open to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Voting is a dangerous thing. In German newspapers, an extreme right wing minority has taken over most comment forums. In some of these, even belonging to reputable newspapers, it has become extremely difficult to voice dissenting opinion (for example defending human rights for foreigners and homosexuals), mostly because "activists" have begun marking such opinions as spam or inappropriate.

</comment><comment><USER45> Is there any guidance on what _stories_ are appropriate to flag? Is it just spam, or is it looser than that?

I sometimes flag blatant political stories, because I don't think they belong on HN, so I guess if I suddenly can't flag anymore then that was the wrong answer.

<comment><USER46> Lots of us flag politics, or anything else that (subjectively) doesn't fit the guidelines. It's definitely not just for spam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I'm wondering if there's any official policy on linking to articles that are behind pay/register walls. I've flagged two such submissions, and only one got flagkilled.

<comment><USER48> There are a few reasons such articles usually do not get flag killed.

1\. Most of the paywall news sites allow free viewing of a few articles per month and so many here do not hit the paywall.

2\. It is often very easy to get around the paywall if you are over the monthly limit. Sometimes it is as simple as searching for the article by title in Google and clicking Google's link.

3\. If you cannot get around the paywall, it is often the case that you can find coverage of the same event at another site that is not paywalled, which will give you enough information to meaningfully enjoy and participate in the HN discussion.

4\. Even if you cannot find free coverage of the thing under discussion, it is often the case that the HN discussion is entertaining and enlightening. HN discussion often goes off on tangents inspired by the article, and those tangents can be appreciated without having read the article.

5\. Many people here don't see the paywalls because they subscribe to the paywalled sites.

6\. Most here do not have such big egos or senses of entitlement that they are bothered by others reading and discussing something that they have not been able to read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> > To prevent abuse, moderators review flagged stories and comments and revoke > flagging privileges from users who flag inappropriately.

That seems like a lot of manual work, but maybe it needs to be. Perhaps it could be part automated by revoking flagging privileges when others upvoted the post? If it really are post nobody wants on the site, surely very few people (if anyone) would upvote it. So if it gets both flagged and upvoted, it are probably flags from users that disagree and you can pretty consistently revoke their permissions.

Just an idea, I don't have the data to test this.

Thanks a lot for all the work you are doing and have done so far on the site. I agree that the quality has increased!

</comment><comment><USER50> "... I'd also like to thank dang and sctb for all the work they've done as moderators and with software to increase story and comment quality. ..."

This is a good point and should be acknowledged. I was personally contacted on how to improve HN. I've yet to get back to you @dang, replies are more fully formed.

</comment><comment><USER51> > First, we lowered the threshold for flags to kill inappropriate comments.

Excellent.

> Second, we've started indicating in the UI which comments/stories have been > killed by user flags.

What does this look like in the UI? I haven't seen any examples of it yet, and I'd expect to see at least a few on a regular basis.

<comment><USER52> The string [flagkilled] is put before the title.

<comment><USER51> Ah, so this is only for stories actually _killed_ by flagging, rather than just for stories demoted by flagging?

<comment> squeaky-clean I've only seen it for comments, but it appears just like a [deleted] comment, except the text says [flagkilled].

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I, for one, am very glad that I found this website. I migrated here from slashdot and arstechnica, and the community is much less toxic here. I also find that the level of discussion is higher and that the comments are often more insightful.

I very much hope that it can improve even further.

</comment><comment><USER39> A lot of effort to get rid of people, not so much effort to attract them. Maybe it's not needed because the site is so popular. But it seems to contradict the other messages where they try to encourage everybody to apply to YC, especially the people who feel like they are not suited to it.

It's a bit funny if you consider these algorithms might be part of the selection process for YC (consciously or unconsciously) - have they really nailed the detection of trolls? Maybe eventually the algorithms will align so well with the spirit of YC that they can eliminate the interview process :-)

I for one feel unwanted (it's not my first account - some got banned, one I somehow retired after a couple of years). I long for another news source, and also for open discussion.

In general discussion does not seem to be welcome, as there are mechanisms to prevent deep threads. That's maybe OK, they want to be a news site, not a discussion site. But it leaves a void to be filled.

</comment><comment><USER10> I hope that flagging is used to consider when a user is shadow-banned and that down-votes just remove points.

> third experiment didn't go so well: we briefly made the software kill > comments that had been sufficiently downvoted. Many users objected, arguing > that killing downvoted comments is too harsh a punishment for unpopular > opinions, especially since downvoted comments get faded to begin with. We > heard that and reversed the change.

I recently lost over 70 points across two posts. The first post was rightly down voted. (I would have preferred it to have been killed to stop losing votes) but the second post IMO was suffering from pile-on downvotes. Killing the first post would have prevented some of those follow-on downvotes. Without the context of the first postthe second post would have received some mix of votes.

Killing unpopular opinions might be too harsh, but people need to start applyimg corrective upvotes if they feel that strongly about minority opinions.

<comment><USER54> I always thought that downvoting was to be used for comments that were off- topic, not when you disagreed with someone, but I've learned otherwise I guess. I really wish I could read dissenting opinions or when someone says something wrong, instead of downvoting, I'd prefer someone explain why it's wrong. Downvoting because you disagree with someone always seems off-putting to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I very much dislike how the flagging system works currently (for posts) - <USER2> stories that bubble to the top seem to become more uninteresting, and some of the more interesting ones, & sometimes certainly relevant, get flagged pre- emptively, which effectively only serves to squelch discussion at the cost a perceived sense of avoiding conflict for the sake of avoiding conflict.

The point of view parroted out as justification for flagging stories though appear to suffer from one thing: an avoidance of taking responsibility for the results of the actions in full, and only accepting responsibility for the perceived gatekeeping of "conflict" & not for the flipside of accepting responsibility of intentionally barring any discussion on [insert topic].

The current flagging system for posts is not the solution, and it really decreases the interesting content present on this site.

</comment><comment><USER56> > best source of news and discussion about technology and startups

'News that hackers would be interested in reading' still applies, right? That's a bit clunky to put in a press release, I will admit, but I would be sad to see the range of HN reduced to merely startups and technology.

</comment><comment><USER57> > To prevent abuse, moderators review flagged stories and comments and revoke > flagging privileges from users who flag inappropriately.

You need to tell us what "flag inappropriately" means immediately. How do I know if I've been flagging stories inappropriately this entire time?!

<comment><USER58> The flag button would disappear.

If you look at flagging links as (mostly) a chore, losing that ability isn't really severe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> What about the announced update to the rendering engine ([http://blog.ycombinator.com/hacker-news- api](http://blog.ycombinator.com/hacker-news-api))?

<comment><USER5> It's coming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I'm cautiously optimistic about this, but the reference to "inappropriate comments" gives me pause. I'm reminded of this analysis [1]:

 _We have such labels [for heresy] today, of course, quite a lot of them, from the all-purpose "inappropriate" to the dreaded "divisive." In any period, it should be easy to figure out what such labels are, simply by looking at what people call ideas they disagree with besides untrue. When a politician says his opponent is mistaken, that's a straightforward criticism, but when he attacks a statement as "divisive" or "racially insensitive" instead of arguing that it's false, we should start paying attention._

Especially when paired with coded language like "historically marginalized users" (I'm pretty sure Sam isn't talking about Republicans here [2]), targeting "inappropriate comments" suggests that Hacker News it at risk of becoming a progressive echo-chamber. (Of course, there are those [3] who fret that HN is insufficiently progressive, but the same people probably think Harvard and the New York Times aren't progressive enough, either.) I can understand flagging _uncivil_ comments, but "inappropriate" comments? I'm not even sure what that means. Please proceed with caution.

[1]: [http://paulgraham.com/say.html](http://paulgraham.com/say.html)

[2]: If you don't think tech is hostile to Republicans, you've probably never been a Republican in tech. Indeed, who's more underrepresented in tech: women, or Romney voters? ( _Note_ : I didn't vote for Romney, and I am not now nor have I ever been a member of the Republican party.)

[2]: See, e.g., [https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says](https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says).

</comment><comment><USER61> I applaud experimentation, especially when done with copious transparency and user engagement, as was the case here.

</comment><comment><USER62> Flagging posts and downvoting are important pieces to improving the content here on hacker news. Interestingly, I think this one of the few forums where "trolls" appear to be relatively absent.

One problem I have noticed is innapropriate downvoting. For example, if a voter downvotes a comment simply because he/she disagrees with the opinion of a commenter. How do we encourage a diversity of opinion on a site of like- minded people?

And similarly, how do we prevent "downvote conformity" (I apologize for my invented phraseology, but I'm creating a name for the concept that our community upvotes posts that are generally agreeable and downvotes posts that may be less mainstream, thus imposing a conformity of opinion?)

</comment><comment><USER63> What constitutes flag abuse? I only do it for stories which I know will only produce flamewars.

<comment><USER25> I wish there were something between "do nothing" and "remove this story." Like a downvote button. But this is an experiment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I would be interested in a combined content and comments link. I am often more interested in the HN commentary than the article itself, so I am always opening the comments as well. This would mirror a feature in the Reddit Enhancement Suite that I enjoy.

</comment><comment><USER65> There are many classes of topic. Many posts are considered 'on topic' for HN, some are considered 'off topic' and flagged away, and then there is a lot of grey territory which seems to be tolerated but can't exactly be labeled as 'hacker news'. Politics is the most obvious example. Should downvoting work the same way in political threads as in technology threads? It really isn't serving the same function.

Perhaps political or otherwise 'semi-topic' submissions can be flagged as such and thereby disable voting within them. People can visit them if they want to, but they do so knowing there is a different ettiquette.

</comment><comment><USER66> > First, I want to thank the community for all the work people have done over > the past six months to downvote, flag, and comment on content that doesn't > fit the site guidelines

Sam & co, great job on experimenting and improving quality, it shows. I find this statement to be really confusing considering there is no guidelines[1] for downvoting and, in my experience, it is highly used to put opinions you don't personally agree with out of reach for the majority of users to read.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment><comment><USER67> Problem I have is that there is no way of knowing why posts are down-voted. Quality? Politics? Just wrong? No idea. Sometime I see posts which are factually correct, but clearly unpopular and voted down. And to be utterly fair, I'm not even sure why I've down-voted or flagged in the past. Cant even remember if I've flagged.

Now Im actually thinking about it, I think I'll only up-vote in the future, and I think that would be if I think I've learned something from a top notch post. Anything else feels like some sort of censorship, vanity or whatever.

<comment><USER68> This is actually why I (sort of) prefer the slashdot voting system. It's not just flat voting, it's voting with a purpose and explanation.

At least that way if someone downvotes for not agreeing with a statement, they have to think about that reason and admit it to themselves, even if they don't admit it to the website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Sam, thanks for the update. I feel that the quality of news has improved greatly as of late and the comments are getting better.

Does anybody know what the downvote threshold is? Or any other thresholds for that matter?

</comment><comment><USER70> > To prevent abuse, moderators review flagged stories and comments and revoke > flagging privileges from users who flag inappropriately.

At first I was appalled at hearing this until I realized I misunderstood the change. I was mistaking down voting for flagging.

Flagging and down voting are two different things. Also, most everyone can [now] flag comments but you have to take one additional step (extra friction, perhaps for the better and to also prevent accidental flagging) which is you first must click on 'link' next the the comment and then 'flag'.

</comment><comment><USER71> > _" To prevent abuse, moderators review flagged stories and comments and > revoke flagging privileges from users who flag inappropriately."_

I generally flag articles that are overly political, articles that look too much like advertising and anything behind a paywall. I haven't lost flagging abilities, but I do have some concern that moderators might not agree with me, particularly about paywalls.

</comment><comment><USER72> Rather than lower the threshold, which is just lowering the bar, how about adding a time parameter to the points? (Older points are worth more, but not visibly so)

Someone that has been using the site for a few years but only commented in a positive way is surely more valid a moderator than a new account that has submitted 10 articles in the last month. The time parameter adds continuity to the quality of flagging.

</comment><comment><USER73> Offtopic here, but i noticed a huge relay since recently on HN...

My initial loading time is 13 seconds (didn't realize it was that huge) since a couple of days.

Note: didn't realize the lag was that high, i load some other tabs during the waiting... Note 2: I'm from Belgium, so perhaps it helps to debug the issue. Github account didn't seem to contain any items to report bugs/issues

</comment><comment><USER74> I wonder how many moderators are needed to be able to keep up with all the comments and traffic here? It must be a tedious job ...

</comment><comment><USER75> Comments are what gets me here, for discovery. Love when topics and links are the subject of comments.

I think my CPS degree received when having to use IBM 129 and 3 runs per day afford a great HN following.

I really don't get the down up karma thing. Just glad smart people with lots of time on their hands post interesting stuff

</comment><comment><USER76> I haven't noticed that many "toxic comments" and it doesn't seem like a huge problem.

Automating removal of flagged content seems like bad practice. The majority of users treat it like a "super downvote button" and a way to censor controversial things.

</comment><comment><USER77> Any chance we'll get some better text formatting options?

Here's what is currently offered:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc](https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc)

Basically italics and code blocks only. No lists or no bolding.

<comment><USER78> It would be cool to see markdown support, but I totally understand that any addition to the formatting spec is risky, because any new change means older posts could be awkwardly rendered.

On that historical HN note, it would be great if someone made an app that dug up really awesome older stories from the HN archives. I'd use that a ton!

<comment><USER77> They could do something like a BOM. Any comment without the wchar in position [0] is rendered historically. Anything with it is rendered using markdown (or another renderer).

It adds no new columns, and better still if you pick a symbol which is nuked by TRIM() e.g. \x0B [U+000B] (vertical tab) then it might be ignored by existing infrastructure/trimmed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> When will I be able to collapse comments on HN threads?

</comment><comment><USER80> What is the status of making HN more mobile friendly?

<comment><USER5> In progress. Sorry that I don't have more specifics, but it's coming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> So they're going to do to Hacker News what they did to Reddit.

</comment><comment><USER82> I still read HN. There's a good article or two per day. That said, the moderation needs work. (Or, more accurately, to be put out of work.)

I've been under "rankban" for at least a year, if not longer. This means that my posts, even if they get a lot of upvotes, fall to or near the bottom. I don't really care, and while I could use sock puppets to get around that, I'm too old for that shit and I don't really care. Still, it's irritating.

I've used HN Search ([https://hn.algolia.com/](https://hn.algolia.com/)) to verify comment karma and validate my suspicion.

I'm also on "slowban", as Hacker News performs worse when I use it while logged in than when I do so in incognito, logged-out mode.

It's dishonest bullshit. My main reason for continuing to comment is (a) to spite the moderators and (b) because there's a certain joy in getting +10 karma even when your post falls to the bottom.

<comment><USER58> An alternate explanation would be that your comments are frequently marked as off topic.

(dang has commented about marking his own comments off topic, so the support for that is in there, but I'm speculating about how it might be used.)

<comment><USER83> Even if this is true, I doubt his comments are undesirable enough to passive- aggressively try to get him to stop using the site by silently slowing it down (if his claim to be on slowban is true). This kind of behavior seems like it should be reserved for trolls and other highly noxious personages.

<comment><USER84> I obviously can't speak to whether MOC is experiencing it, but I can say that with my first HN account, before I understood the context and spirit of HN, I made a very Reddit-esque comment that got me banned. The first part of that was the so-called _slowban_ , as the site was all but unusable when I was logged in.

This was years ago and I have no idea if the mods still use this tactic, but I imagine so in certain cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> Can anyone comment on the reasoning behind the lack of a mobile style sheet?

<comment><USER86> Until the redesign goes live, there are a few viable alternatives on mobile.

I have been using a mobile-friendly version of Hacker News called HackerWeb on my phone and tablet: [http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/](http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/)

A handful of browser add-ons exist that will update the visual design and generally make the site more pleasurable to use. Here's one for Chrome: [http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/hn- special/](http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/hn-special/)

<comment><USER87> Yeah I thought that new HTML was supposed to be coming online a couple of weeks ago?

<comment><USER88> October 28.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reading this made me sick as I realized that optimizing the echo chamber to remove dissenting opinions is the apparent goal. "removing comments we don't want" is horrifying. Why don't we all just sit in a corner and pat ourselves on the back about how intelligent and enlightened we are now that we don't have to deal with unpopular opinions?</comment>


The 1950's Jet Launching Tiny Satellites - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160826-the-1950s-jet-launching-tiny-satellites <comment><USER2> The company: [http://cubecab.com/technologies.html](http://cubecab.com/technologies.html) Also check out [http://generationorbit.com](http://generationorbit.com) and of course pegasus [https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Pegasus_(rocket)#/Launch_profile](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Pegasus_\(rocket\)#/Launch_profile) Are there others pursuing air-launch?

<comment><USER3> One more link here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12415755](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12415755)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very cool. Would be nice to know how much they charge for one cubesat, and how high orbit they can shoot one to (and how long the cubesat stays there)

<comment><USER5> My recollection is that normal cubesats generally don't have any propellant (as they're usually hitchhiking on larger payloads) so that combined with their tiny size, the orbit is not going to be sustainable for long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Less than a decade after test pilot Chuck Yeager first broke the speed of > sound, it became the first jet to fly more than twice the speed of sound.

Flying faster than the speed of sound has physical significance, because there are major changes in the way the air and the plane interact as you pass the speed of sound.

If there anything physically significant about twice the speed of sound, or is that just special psychologically?

</comment><comment><USER7> Aside from the acres of hyperbole in this article: getting to the bottom of this article, this approach seems strange to me. Why bother with the F104? Feels like you'd want to maximize speed-at-cieling and weight-to-ceiling for an air based rocket launch. Something like a MiG-25 could take a heavier rocket much faster at the same altitude (Mach 3.2 vs 2.0 for the F104).

<comment><USER8> I would be willing to bet an economic externality such as the cost and availability of Starfighters and crews. Especially for what appears to be a US based company.

<comment><USER7> that's probably true. I see 4 in the FAA registry. I don't see any MiG 25s but I see 5 MiG 29s in the FAA's US registry.

Even the MiG 29 would get you marginally better Mach numbers (2.2 vs 2.0) and better payload. Plus they were produced in similar numbers as the F104.

<comment><USER9> A MiG 29 is still on the trailing edge of what's considered state of the art for fighter aircraft. It's essentially Russia's version of the F-16/ F-18. I would imagine that mid-century F-104's would be much more affordable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> These planes seem like they would be good candidates for a fly-by-wire conversion, or at least a redesigned Starfighter II.

Probably not practical, since they don't bank-n-yank well, but they would sure look cool :-)</comment>


The Google News Initiative: Building a Stronger Future for News - <AUTHOR> https://www.blog.google/topics/google-news-initiative/announcing-google-news-initiative/ <comment><USER2> Looks like the "app store" business model for news subscriptions... interesting. Very often I feel like I would be interested in subscribing to a media outlet but I don't want to go through a cumbersome payment process, possible issues with cancellations later on etc

<comment><USER3> Been there with The Times in the UK; boy they really don't want to make it easy to leave.</comment></comment>


Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome - github-cat https://www.pulltech.net/article/1566007822-Google-plans-to-deprecate-FTP-URL-support-in-Chrome <comment><AUTHOR> Considering that Google (search) still lists plenty of FTP results, many of which have been _extremely_ useful to me, this seems like another move to bully the Internet into what Google wants it to be. Will it start removing those results, effectively censoring another huge chunk of the Internet? It's already hard enough to find older/more obscure information, and FTP sites are more likely to be in that category.

Also, I can't be the only one who's absolutely sick of hearing that bloody "security" argument again. Yes, everyone knows FTP is plaintext, and so is HTTP. But drivers, which I'd say are a significant part of FTP use, are almost always themselves signed anyway, and I don't think malware is widely distributed via FTP either (I'm curious why FTPS/SFTP doesn't see to be indexed, or why they didn't decide to add that to the browser instead --- or at least I've never come across a search result that links to one.)

<comment><USER2> > everyone knows FTP is plaintext

You mean _no one_ knows that FTP is plaintext except a minority of users which happens to be on HN.

Google is optimizing its browser for the majority, chrome is not a power-user browser. Maybe they'll add an option to enable ftp or something.

> drivers, which I'd say are a significant part of FTP use

I'm not sure how that's true. Every time I used FTP, it was not for drivers. All the drivers I downloaded were over http(s), from constructor websites.

<comment><USER3> > _Google is optimizing its browser for the majority, chrome is not a power- > user browser._

That is a problem. We have browser engine duopoly, and really everyone is doing whatever Google wants anyway. So as they're optimizing against power users, they're making the whole web much worse.

<comment><USER4> Can you please explain to me why you believe optimising against power users is making the internet worse.

I tend to agree with you, but would you mind fleshing this out a bit. Or, if you've written this before please point to it.

<comment><USER5> I think the term "power users" is not appropriate. I believe we're encountering some kind of "curse of multidimensionality" problem here: every time Google adds a feature, they add one dimension to the space of utility of their product. And every time they remove a feature, they reduce the relative volume of people who still find the product useful. So it's not "power users" in general, but "power users of feature X". There are not the power users who use all the advanced features on one side, and the regular users who use none on the other. The more features you add or cut, the more each of those categories tend to zero. Actual users are somewhere in between, and if you optimize against "power users" you in fact optimize against your users in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are 100,000s of resources on publicly accessible FTP servers and the removal of direct access to these files via one of the worlds most used browsers is major blow for information storage and retrieval on the internet.

It is obvious that the next FTP related headline we see from Google is when (not, if) they drop FTP links from all Google search results. There's no point them listing FTP urls in the results if their own browser can't connect to them.

(I don't understand why they can't just keep FTP support in, but with a security dialog that warns users the connection and data will be non- encrypted)

So much is going to be lost when this happens, it's really sad. All because Google want to recreate the internet as the Googlenet, with HTTPS URLs only, most of which link to their own walled garden servers (AMP etc.)

The internet started off as a wonderful limitless information sharing platform, now it's just a shopping mall controlled by corporates. The worse thing is... the general public _just don 't care_.

<comment><USER7> Nah. Average consumers almost never touch ftp anymore. I'm a tech pro and even I haven't used ftp in years. Having ftp servers accessible from a browser is a fairly useless luxury at this point. Dedicated ftp clients are very easy to come by for anyone.

<comment><USER8> Do dedicated ftp clients include crawling and indexing?

<comment> T-hawk Neither does the browser. The search engine does that. What should happen here is the search engine still crawls and indexes resources accessible by ftp, and the ftp:// url gets passed to the operating system to launch an appropriate native program. This happens for protocols like magnet:// and discord:// .

Whether Google's search engine will continue to do so for ftp:// resources once Google's web browser no longer handles them remains to be seen.

<comment><USER9> Worth noting here, if you open an FTP url in Safari on Mac, it will open the Finder and connect to the server there.

Since we're talking about utilities built into the OS, I've never had a problem with this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm personally fine with this. FTP is a different protocol, just like BitTorrent. It's not part of the modern web, so it's just another loose end to tie up. Even though it will be around for a while, it's not relevant to Chrome's user audience/usecase.

<comment><USER11> I'm not fine with this.

I'm of the mindset that code written 20 years ago should run today. This is a breaking change on a critical piece of internet infrastructure. Google, by nature of operating the most popular web browser, has a moral obligation to the community to provide a stable environment.

There are something like 10^9 webpages out there. How many of these will become less accessible because of this change? Many well maintained webpages will have to expend resources to migrate off ftp. Less maintained webpages with FTP links will not be updated and put the burden of installing an FTP client on the user, reducing accessibility.

This is Google externalizing the cost of updating their software by forcing everyone else to update their webpages to following Google's specification.

<comment><USER12> The same could have been said of Gopher. FTP is typically insecure and painful to use with it's varying port maps. Transferring files over HTTP or more modern protocols is the future.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Transferring files over HTTP or more modern protocols is the future_

My direct and blunt rebuttal is "I don't care". The future is worthless without the present, and more importantly, the past. The continued effective destruction of history that these big tech companies are doing with their actions is a disturbing trend.

<comment><USER13> Why doesn't HN support http login then? It's part of the spec.

<comment><USER11> A platform should support the entire spec. An app should correctly implement the parts of the spec it chooses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A lot of Google hate in this thread. Normally I'm on board, but I think you guys are making a big deal out of nothing.

When I click magnet:// links, my bittorrent client opens. When I click slack:// links, my slack client opens. With this change, when I click ftp:// my ftp client will open. Chrome has simply decided it only wants to spend resources focusing on [http://](http://) and make the unrelated protocols separate. I see 0 problem with this, it's not like they're killing the only or even the most popular ftp client out there. We should all be using sftp anyways...

<comment><USER15> Do they index magnet and slack links?

<comment><USER14> No, but they currently index ftp links.

<comment><USER15> that's too bad... they should index all of it

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've always felt browsers are gimped FTP clients and found it weird they had support for the protocol in the first place. In fact the first time I used an FTP url in Netscape I was surprised it actually worked.

That said, I find the viewpoint "users should not be impacted by this deprecation" the height of arrogance. Note that phrase is lifted from the article, and is not present in the dev team's post.

</comment><comment><USER17> I know for a fact that HP distributes software and drivers over FTP files that they link to on their website.

FTP isn't used much anymore, but IMO/IME, it's still nice to have for those rare times when you come across a file that you need to download and it's served over FTP.

<comment><USER18> The FTP link can still use xdg-open or whatever the local equivalent is to spawn the user's FTP app and connect to that URL. I think that's how most URLs with unsupported (by the browser) protocols are handled nowadays anyway.

<comment><USER19> What average user has a ftp app installed?

<comment><USER20> On desktop, almost everyone. Windows Explorer speaks FTP, MacOS finder speaks FTP, I think all major Linux desktop file managers do.

(Of course there's no guarantee they'll keep support for it, based on similar arguments)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not bothered by this.

No one should be running FTP in 2019. It sends passwords in plain text for christ's sake.

<comment><USER22> No one really uses FTP to transmit anything secret or confidential. Most of the time the password to that FTP server is just "guest" and the same file can also be retrieved by HTTP without authentication.

<comment><USER23> I work at a bank (opinions my own) and nearly everything we do (including modernization, but especially partnership communications) is FTP-based. It's just about the only real standard available when the code is older than most of the devs. We do use modern encryption and mutual TLS to authenticate and encrypt everything, including before password transmission when that's even an option, but FTP is still the backbone of a ton of big older businesses.

<comment><USER24> I too work at a company/in an industry where FTP (incl. sftp/ftps) is still crucial, for both inbound and outbound transfers. A great many of our partners would find using other protocols more cumbersome. Automating the download/upload of entire directories of arbitrarily named files seems considerably easier/to require less code than any solution over HTTP might (log in, perhaps change directory, `prompt`, then `mget/mput *`). Albeit I've not done much research into alternative means recently, but a dedicated protocol beats a hand rolled solution and anyway inertia is strong - especially as (for us) nothing is transferred in either direction that isn't destined to be made public by one party.

This is tangential to whether support for FTP is still worth keeping in a web browser, mind.

<comment><USER25> SFTP is different from FTP, though. As far as I know, it's a fine protocol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Sensible move. I'm sure they have data showing it's used by an absolutely tiny number of users, and getting rid of it removes a source of potential security issues down the line.

<comment><USER27> That's how I switched to Firefox years ago. Chrome's data had showed them a particular feature I liked wasn't used by a ton of people so they removed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Using Chrome these days is like Internet Explorer in 1999. You are at the mercy of a giant corporation.

<comment><AUTHOR> The difference is that IE in 1999 was made by a giant corporation that profited from selling software, and not from monetising/tracking/advertising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Google don't want users, they want pliant consumers.

The idea that young people know more about tech than their parents will become less and less true in the future.

<comment><USER30> Why do we need a separate legacy protocol for file transfers?

What's the benefit in keeping protocols for the sake of it?

<comment><USER31> We need a protocol for file transfers because having a protocol makes it more standardized and interoperable than if everyone rolls their own solution.

Do we need browser support for it? It still happens now and then that a link will have an ftp target. That could be handled in the browser or it could open a separate url-handling application, as e.g. email or magnet urls do.

<comment><USER25> Yes, but as someone who's been around when FTP was a big thing, and HTTP only just came into fruition... what, really, is the benefit of FTP? In fact, FTP is actually a horrible protocol, that caused me much pain even back then:

It uses separate "command" and "data" channels. The data channel is usually in the other direction, i.e. the _client_ listens to a connection from the _server_ when downloading a file. Passive mode, and an extra command for that, had to be implemented, and if the stars don't align right, it still ends up being a pain.

FTP also used to default to 7bit. If you did not explicitly switch to 8bit mode, you got corrupted downloads. This maybe made sense in a world with fundamentally different encodings, line endings, and where connection speeds were slow enough that downloading text files was a big task, but now?

Then, if I remember correctly, the file listing you got was not actually standardized, it could just be the output of the "ls" command on the server! FTP clients used to be dumb and just passed that output through to you, so it did not matter much. For smarter clients later, it did start to matter.

Finally, what does FTP actually offer that, in most cases, HTTP, and, in niche cases, rsync, scp or sftp do not offer?

<comment><USER32> > It uses separate "command" and "data" channels

This is not a bad thing in itself. It could enable you to download each file from a different, potentially better endpoint, while talking to the same server for coordination. It's just not the way we do it these days anymore - 3xx and anycast/CDNs solve that one to some extent. And NATs destroyed that idea being usable years ago. It's still fine in protocols like sip.

<comment><USER25> Yes. Just like the text conversion thing, or the non-standardizes file listing thing (not everything was UNIX-ish, VMS was still around), at the time it made sense. Today it's just clunky hindrances, and the protocol has lost its benefits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Correct me if I'm wrong, but Windows and most Linux distros both come with usable ftp clients in general. So an ftp link will result in the OS handling it, right? And so it opens in IE or Filezilla or whatever.

That's fine... Except on a Chromebook or Android, where it will be a pain.

<comment><USER34> Windows comes with an ftp client? Not that I know of. Unless you mean MS Edge? Oh or I guess there's a command line one. It's not integrated into Windows Explorer, though.

<comment><USER35> Windows Explorer can navigate (and transfer files) on FTPs. Type "ftp://ip.addr.of.ftp" in explorer and you're in. :-)

<comment><USER36> That's because it shares code base with IE, a web browser.

Here we are talking about removing FTP from a browser.

<comment><USER37> No, actually the Explorer FTP support doesn't come from a browser at all. It's actually the other way around - IE handed off FTP handling to Explorer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Wouldn't this just make a ftp:// url fallthrough to the ftp client in Dolphin/Finder/Explorer/xdg?

Like, worst-case ChromeOS loses ftp?

</comment><comment><USER39> Will FTP links prompt to open another program? I'm for the change if Google provides an extension/recommends a viewer.

If suddenly the links stop working and there isn't a way view the contents, it will be a frustrating transition

</comment><comment><USER40> Good. Honestly it was always weird to me that browsers ever supported FTP in the first place, it seemed so arbitrary. (Why not gopher and telnet too?)

You'll still be able to download an ftp: link by your browser opening your local FTP client, same as a magnet: opening your local torrenting client -- as it should be.

And honestly, if you're one of the few people who actually need to regularly download files with FTP, don't you want a better standalone client anyways?

<comment><USER41> Early browsers did in fact support gopher. (some still do)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> FTP isn't such a good protocol anyways (and there are better programs for accessing FTP than most web browsers); there is Gopher, HTTP(S), Plan9, TFTP, SSH, and other protocols.

(I also invented a httpdirlist format (I have been told that httpdirlist is like WebDAV but not as bad; but I don't know WebDAV so I cannot say if it is or not). But, sometimes, the other protocols is better than HTTP(S) anyways.)

I think it is fine to have them implemented in separate programs, although sometimes you might want to display the result in the browser; one possibility is that the user can configure a program to execute and can configure it to treat the data that program writes to stdout as a HTTP response (possibly with different permissions than normal; it might allow some things that are normally disallowed, and some things that are normally allowed might not work). You might then also want to support other MIME types. You can do this also with external programs; so one configuration option could be to allow treating the program as a filter to convert it into a format the browser understands (e.g. plain text, HTML, PNG, etc; perhaps farbfeld should be supported too, even only for the purpose of these external filters).

</comment><comment><USER43> My take is that they didn't want to invest resources into making the FTP client secure in Chrome because it's usage is low, so they just decided that it'd be better to just remove it entirely. Whatever.

Anyway, it's not like Chrome couldn't send the URL to a dedicated FTP client. Hell, it could even be another browser like Firefox. It's not going to be the end of the world -- just not as seamless of an experience and one would like.

</comment><comment><USER44> I've used FTP for many years, and I still use it to manage the file system of my blog, which is running on a cheap VPS. I doubt, though, that even 1 in 100 non-technical Internet users knows what it is. There are several good clients available. I think you can even still use Windows Explorer. I can't think of a strong argument for Google to maintain support in Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER45> Referenced post: [https://chromestatus.com/feature/6246151319715840](https://chromestatus.com/feature/6246151319715840)

</comment><comment><USER46> I always liked FTP support as a part of the browser platform. Of course, it would not have the capabilities of a standalone FTP client. And for those who needed those capabilities, lots of tools exist.

The web is not just HTTP. FTP has been the binary companion to the text-based HTTP protocol, and I think that for the sake of the browser being a platform and not just a viewing tool, it should stay.

</comment><comment><USER47> Not for this reason alone (mostly because I can never sign out of the browser and it's trying to auto-sign-me-in to sites I don't want tracking me) I uninstalled chrome yesterday.

End of an era. I imagine it would take the better part of a decade to earn my loyalty back if they ever pulled a 180, but seeing their direction the writing has been on the wall for a while.

</comment><comment><USER48> Why don't they remove the bloat in source code, reducing its compile time from 2/3 hours to roughly minutes?

</comment><comment><USER49> Second best reason to move away from Chrome.

<comment><USER50> Ridiculous, Firefox removed support for FTP far before chrome.

<comment><USER51> Firefox has not removed support for ftp. I just browsed to ftp://ftp.osuosl.org/ in Firefox 68 just before submitting this comment.

Mozilla stopped running ftp://ftp.mozilla.org quite a while ago. Maybe that is what you were remembering?

<comment><USER50> What I said was erroneous! This is what I remembered badly, [https://www.fxsitecompat.dev/en-CA/docs/2018/loading-ftp- res...](https://www.fxsitecompat.dev/en-CA/docs/2018/loading-ftp-resources- within-web-page-is-no-longer-allowed/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> FTP as a protocol doesn't have interesting metadata to collect (which would be technically challenging in the first place, without redirection and JavaScript tricks) and doesn't allow advertisement, while FTP as content is hard to index and promote in ways that generate "value".

</comment><comment><USER53> After this change, will Chrome still be able to support FTP through extensions?

<comment><USER36> Given that extensions are just JavaScript code and they constantly restrict what they can do, I doubt it.

<comment><USER54> Extensions can communicate with a native helper app actually. This looks like an FTP capable extension.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sftp- client/jajcol...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sftp- client/jajcoljhdglkjpfefjkgiohbhnkkmipm?hl=en-GB)

Not sure if it uses a proprietary proxy though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Unicorn startup idea: Build a FTP search engine!

</comment><comment><USER56> Takes me back to the shitty ISP I had which decided to block port 21 to reduce traffic and increase security.

</comment><comment><USER57> Good. An easy feature for competitor browsers to implement.

<comment><USER50> Firefox used to support FTP too and removed support for it far before chrome.

<comment><USER54> Source?

I just opened ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ in firefox 68.

<comment><USER50> I was mostly wrong. [https://www.fxsitecompat.dev/en-CA/docs/2018/loading-ftp- res...](https://www.fxsitecompat.dev/en-CA/docs/2018/loading-ftp-resources- within-web-page-is-no-longer-allowed/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Just as a reminder, Firefox did this (a year ago?).

<comment><USER27> Is that true? I just opened an FTP URL in Firefox 68 just fine.

<comment><USER50> No what I said was in fact erroneous!

[https://www.fxsitecompat.dev/en-CA/docs/2018/loading-ftp- res...](https://www.fxsitecompat.dev/en-CA/docs/2018/loading-ftp-resources- within-web-page-is-no-longer-allowed/) But FTP still is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> First they came for Gopher ...

</comment><comment><USER59> What alternatives to Chrome are people here using other than Firefox or safari?

</comment><comment><USER60> What can I say except "fuck Google"? I don't think there's anything constructive to be said here because this is so obviously a bad move (for users).

I feel like Google is quickly moving in the footsteps of IE; embrace, extend, extinguish and all that. I don't like how Google now has so much market share in the browser space that they can essentially unilaterally make decisions that are user-unfriendly and have a real impact. I switched (back) to Firefox for this reason. I switched away from them when they essentially purged Brendan Eich for political reasons, but they're the lesser of two evils now.

I guess in summary, all browsers suck and we're all fucked.

</comment><comment><USER61> Isn't it clear to everyone now that HTTP is the new IP and TCP? That all future protocols will subsist on a web tech substrate? Is that such a bad thing? The vocabulary of URLs and cookies is much richer and less centralized than the vocabulary of port numbers and connection tuples.

Why _should_ we keep FTP or other legacy non-HTTP protocols around? What are we buying? Slightly lower connection setup byte counts?

<comment><USER62> That's a naive statement. Take streaming protocols, as an example, and that alone is reason enough for why you shouldn't it over HTTP. HTTP is inherently stateless. There are many use-cases that are stateful. This leads to high latencies for HTTP streaming since the full state (HTTP headers to tell me who you are and what you want) is sent for every request.

<comment><USER61> HTTP these days (via WebSockets) allows for the creation of stateful connections. My idea is that HTTP will just expand to encompass any remaining non-HTTP use cases. HTTP isn't even coupled to TCO anymore!

<comment><USER62> Websockets use HTTP only for the initial handshake. The rest of the channel uses the Websocket protocol.

<comment><USER61> Yes. That protocol is effectively _part_ of HTTP now.

<comment><USER63>
      The WebSocket Protocol is an independent TCP-based protocol.  Its only relationship to HTTP is that its handshake is interpreted by HTTP servers as an Upgrade request.

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6455#section-1.7](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6455#section-1.7)

<comment><USER61> _Effectively_.

If you do connection setup, service disambiguation, redirects, and so on with HTTP and switch to a non-HTTP interactive protocol, what you've effectively done is create an HTTP sub-protocol, and I don't care what the document you quoted says.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rel="nofollow" in Real Life - <AUTHOR> http://www.startuphustle.com/2008/04/25/relnofollow-in-real-life/ <comment><USER2> I can see that you've been here longer, and you have a lot more karma than me (I can't even downvote stories yet). But, I just recently switched from reddit to HN and I am very hopeful that it will not end up like reddit. So, with all due respect, I'm thinking this submission is more appropriate in this subreddit: <http://reddit.com/r/pics/>

<comment><USER3> funny links are allowed in moderation, but typically if they are somewhat related. Oh, users cannot downmod stories, just comments. The community has been pretty good so far though with complaining when the amount of noise got too high (I remember someone autosubmitting all XKCD stories for a while but later stopped when people pointed out it wasn't a good thing to do).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Too bad only robots will comply.

<comment><AUTHOR> lol...very true</comment></comment>


A Practical Guide to Lasers for Experimenters and Hobbyists - <AUTHOR> http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/laserfaq.htm#faqtoc <comment><USER2> Laser Sam! He's amazing and has been part of Internet history since the beginning. Everything I love about the web in simple, no-frills HTML.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely! It's so good to see real HTML used to organize substantial information, instead of the high-glitz low-content stuff we see so often these days...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> something that I can't find much info on is the safety of laser line generators, eg: [https://hackaday.com/2016/04/04/smartphone-and-ir-line- laser...](https://hackaday.com/2016/04/04/smartphone-and-ir-line-laser- measure-distance/)

intuitively the beam spread should make it much safer, but I'm still a bit uncomfortable with the idea of a 100mW IR laser, which is what those guys used.

<comment><USER5> Its all about how much energy hits the eye, and for infrared lasers you can't assume someone will blink, so you cant use short exposure times.

From the paper, they are pulsing the laser, so the laser is hazardous out to ~1.5m. Pg 5 of their paper goes into detail on the calculations one needs for laser safety.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sam's Laser FAQ! Ah, the hours I spent reading through this when I was younger.

<comment><USER7> Lasers and the "Holography Handbook: Making Holograms the easy way". It had xkcd style drawings back in the 80s.

<comment><USER8> Except we called them "Forrest M. Mims" style drawings back then.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=forrest+m+mims&source=lnms&t...](https://www.google.com/search?q=forrest+m+mims&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, that's a lot of different resources, and nicely organized. Speaking as a responsible hobbyist who loves to learn about these things, this is a gift, thank you.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ctrl+F _Real Genius_ : 0

Awww.

Kidding aside, I'm a huge fan of the text/link layout used. So effective. Thanks for showing this.

<comment><USER11> Everything except the edge-to-edge text. Put that in a container!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love Laser Sam. I acquired some parts from the NOVA project a few years back and sent an email to Sam with some questions I had about what I had purchased. He got back to me within minutes, and was super helpful.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is great! All I could think about was this clip from Parks and Recreation

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVq10zG0UdY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVq10zG0UdY)

</comment><comment><USER14> Do not look at laser with remaining eye.</comment>


Modern Tech Education Isn't Addressing An Important Audience - <AUTHOR> http://www.kapilkale.com/blog/technology-education/

<comment><USER2> I think for that middle market you have to look within your organization. At my last job I ran an intro to procedural literacy (i.e. coding) tutorial for PMs, artists, and even accountants who wanted to learn a little bit about how to program (or even what kinds of problems you can use a little scripting to solve). I used Processing and ruby, and people generally seemed to enjoy a quick dive into it.

</comment><comment><USER3> So this is aimed at more at "coding literacy" than being able to actually use code to accomplish something. Perhaps the answer is less focus on syntax and more on how the pieces fit together. eg. what is an API? Why would your app want one? Here are some real world examples of how it is used in a simple web app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. Most business folks don't know the answer to that. And given the booming tech industry, many of them are switching in from non-tech roles. Suddenly they find themselves needing to ramp up fast.

Unfortunately, none of the online courses I've seen teach this.</comment></comment>


Visualization of #code2009 by programming language - <AUTHOR> http://www.ioncannon.net/projects/code2009/ <comment><AUTHOR> #code2009 is an interesting Twitter hashtag that I discovered in my Twitter stream this afternoon. It was originally started by @deadprogram

@deadprogram : "Everyone tweet what languages you programmed in over the last year using the #code2009 hashtag. Please RT, and also do it!" (<http://twitter.com/deadprogram/status/7202223766>)

The visualization link above is via @casron

@casron : "For anyone who wants to see where the different languages stack up <http://bit.ly/8lBhmG> #code2009" (<http://twitter.com/casron/status/7211188519>)

</comment><comment><USER2> Can I make a request to see these as a bar graph? It's a bit hard to compare the size of some of the slices visually.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is going to be very skewed, as only the people using twitter can vote.

<comment><USER4> I didn't see any claims of accuracy. It looks like a fun thing to see what people _who happen to have tweeted_ are working with, nothing more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> javascripts</comment>


Design Patterns: The Builder Pattern - <AUTHOR> https://dzone.com/articles/design-patterns-the-builder-pattern?oid=hn <comment><USER2> or in C#:

var account = new BankAccount { AccountNumber = 1, Owner = "Marge", Branch = "Springfield", Balance = 100, InterestRate = 2.5 }</comment>