I've been an avid Hacker News reader for the past 6 months. I like the content and the discussions that spawn here. But I'll put it straight: usability sucks. And it's ugly. How did such a badly designed website became so wildly popular? I know that the content is responsible for a lot of traffic, but why didn't anyone just build a better alternative in the last 2-3 years?<p>This is not a rant or anything, I'm just trying to understand how Hacker News became what it is today, with such a simple implementation.
Forums, like social networks, are networks effects businesses. HN grew from a seed set among YC people, applicants, pg's essay audience, likeminded individuals. After there is a community and conversations, they pull in other people. (I randomly got drawn in when someone referenced my blog some years ago, and I just happened to stay. etc, etc)<p>Assume you have the magic wand of product design. You wave it and create The Best Forum Ever. That's great. I don't use it because I use HN and you have no reason for me to switch. People who want to read what I have to say can't find what I have to say on your forum, because I'm not on it. Sum up that interaction over the entire space of possible users and it leads to a forum with 0 users and no content.<p>If you (hypothetically) want to create a competitor, your big problem is not creating a better designed website. It is, instead, convincing a seed set of users to use your new website even in the absence of much content on it, and having those users be such wonderful/connected/popular/thought-provoking/etc people such that people will join your site just to hang out with them.
> Usability sucks<p>Could you be a little more specific? What actions are difficult to do with the current interface? What specific modifications would make them easier?<p>I think the design of HN is really tight and focused. My one complaint is that it's difficult to go back and find ancient comments I've made for later citation.<p>> And it's ugly.<p>It doesn't load hundreds of images and enormous JavaScript libraries. It doesn't leak memory and cause my system to swap. It doesn't spam obnoxious ads with sound everywhere. This makes it beautiful to me -- almost a nod to what the Web was like in the early days, back when completely unstyled content was still good enough for a lot of sites.<p>The color scheme doesn't matter to me as long as I can read the text.
HN is better looking than Reddit, which is much more popular. Both sites tend to give lie to popular (among us nerds) theories of how well-designed a site needs to be to serve its audience.
I disagree that it's ugly. Usability has been fine for me on the desktop, where I use it most. Mobile usability is weak, but I'm usually not trying to participate in forums on my phone.<p>That said, I would probably use a forum that I did find ugly if the content was interesting enough.
The more time you spend on HN, you'll discover and become more paranoid how large the iceberg is supporting its simple visible surface. Vast lisp AI kraken and spermaceti entangle down in its knotty and murky abyss. Are you prepared to go down this rabbit hole?
How exactly does "usability suck"? It looks great to me - all content, no bullshit. Only thing I'd change are those bizarre "expired link" errors, which I can only explain as a deliberately perverse incentive against discussing yesterday's news.
Aside from the weird link expiration issues, I wouldn't call HN a bad design.<p>It's simple, efficient, and information dense. Page load times are quick because it's not having to load CSS and JS frameworks. Simplicity isn't a bad thing.
Because we took the red pill as we want to see how far the rabbit hole goes.<p>Fancy graphics are for the mainstream crowd who took the blue pill, want to wake up and believe what they want to believe.