Hackerwhos
Consumer and social
hacker news client
SHOW HN2022
How HN took it
0 positive, 5 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 6 critical, out of 11 comments about the project. Thread score -0.44.
Idea: 0 for, 6 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Makers's own use of the tool is positive; a commenter says hiding usernames would make threads more readable
From 1 comment
I made a userscript for that once, ages ago. It stopped working after HN updated something and I was too lazy to fix it. It made threads a lot more readable, honestly.
krapp on HN
Objections
Usernames are already discreet and rarely noticed, so bias is minimal
From 2 comments
This isn't really a problem given how discreet the usernames on this site are, as opposed to other sites with profile pics or bold usernames. By default I don't really notice the…
gruez on HNNice concept, but I barely notice the usernames.
kamban on HN
Bot-like accounts posting news would not be helped by the tool
From 1 comment
There’s quite a few HN usernames who have bot-like quality and post nothing but random news all day/all year. This tool would not help us.
egberts1 on HN
Usernames are already cryptic so hiding them is not useful
From 1 comment
This is interesting but not necessarily useful as most usernames are quite cryptic to begin with
alex1212 on HN
Requests
Port it to a userscript to support other browsers without Google services
From 1 comment
When you're so impervious to bias that you don't even know that people have a problem with it. Joking aside, have you thought of porting this into a simple user script that…
adeleine on HN
Also hide points and reorder submissions to reduce bias
From 1 comment
Nice work. I think hiding the points, and maybe reordering should get rid of more bias.
quickthrower2 on HN
Questions
Whether hiding usernames reduces bias or hurts signal to noise
From 2 comments
The flip side is that bias is a heuristic to try and boost signal to noise ratio. Well i'm sure that would reduce bias, i'd worry about the consequences for the signal to noise…
bawolff on HNIf you only show the top (page 1-3) submissions and not /newest, then I think signal to noise should be OK.
quickthrower2 on HN
Alternatives named
Userscripts that hide HN usernames
From 1 comment
I made a userscript for that once, ages ago. It stopped working after HN updated something and I was too lazy to fix it. It made threads a lot more readable, honestly.
krapp on HN
CSS rule hiding usernames
From 1 comment
a.hnuser {display: none;} ?
john-doe on HN