A list of Hacker News's undocumented features and behaviors

fine, I'll update the list today

Would like to mention Dang here, he is doing an extraordinary job in keeping this place sane and civilised.<p>I really am wondering how he can read and react to so many comments quickly.<p>Dang, care to elaborate? Do you see a flat list of new comments, review them quickly? Do you use a moderation tool that scans the mood &#x2F; tone &#x2F; aggresiveness of a post? How do you do the screening and the replies? Manually?

It&#x27;s missing &quot;highlights&quot; at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;highlights">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;highlights</a><p>... which, anecdotally, I learned about JUST after getting a comment on there. Imagine my surprise at learning about this (in a manner totally unrelated to the post I wrote that made it to the list), and seeing my own writing as the most recent item on the list.<p>Truman show vibes for sure.

Unfortunately it still doesn&#x27;t mention &quot;rate limited&quot; accounts[0], which is extremely confusing when it happens to you. It&#x27;s happened to me on this account, I can&#x27;t comment more than 5 times per some arbitrary period - I&#x27;m guessing 24 hour UTC.<p>No explanation or information is given - you don&#x27;t even know until HN seems broken and you go searching. dang mentioned that&#x27;s something they&#x27;d like to impove, but given the slow movement of HN features, I doubt it will.<p>Note that none of this is meant as a slight on dang - I respect the work he does and really like the site, but it doesn&#x27;t make it less frustrating. The result will be me rolling a new account (against site guidelines), as I have no other privacy preserving way of handling the issue.<p>0. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;minimaxir&#x2F;hacker-news-undocumented&#x2F;issues&#x2F;21#issuecomment-668062012">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;minimaxir&#x2F;hacker-news-undocumented&#x2F;issues...</a>

Guess I need to figure out how to get more Karma! I didn&#x27;t know there were more features to this site since I&#x27;m essentially a lurker.

One undocumented heuristic that I wish was documented better is that repeated submissions to the same domain, especially without discussion activity, leads to an automated shadow ban. This is just from what I’ve observed browsing &#x2F;new with Show Dead turned on. There are lots of people submitting their own blog posts or repeated posts from their favorite news outlets who have been shadow banned. Vouching provides a mechanism for restoring posts of particular quality, but most of these people aren’t trying to spam, they just don’t know this unspoken rule.

I&#x27;m not sure if this is undocumented, but I&#x27;ve noticed that submitted links sometimes have either the pathname or search parameters portion of their URL truncated or stripped entirely. Sometimes the truncation happens after a slight delay.<p>For example, if you try to submit a link to a particular Google Books page, say the one I just tried:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;books&#x2F;edition&#x2F;The_Albert_Einstein_Collection_Volume_On&#x2F;XdTkDAAAQBAJ?hl=en&amp;gbpv=1&amp;pg=PT102" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;books&#x2F;edition&#x2F;The_Albert_Einstein_Col...</a><p>the link will remain intact for a short while before losing its search parameters and turning into a link to the book itself rather than to a page in it.

Thank you for compiling this list. I have been using the site since 2007 and had never looked into the classic page (assumed it was an old stylesheet or something similar). Also had no idea about some of those special URLs such as noobcomments.<p><i>If a user has 31 Karma, they can also vouch for a [dead] submission&#x2F;comment. A vouched submission&#x2F;comment has its rank restored (and potentially improved as the vouch can counteract the effects of flags).</i><p>Is this consistent? I recently vouched for something on the New page and it wasn&#x27;t restored.<p>One other thing I would like to ask: I currently bookmark about 20 users whose comments I find especially insightful across a wide range of subject matter expertise. Is there another way&#x2F;better way to do this?

The list at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;topcolors">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;topcolors</a> is definitely not &quot;the complete set of colors users have set&quot; as claimed. I know this because it doesn&#x27;t include my top color (namely #64BFBD).

Ought the bookmarklet for submitting links[1] be mentioned?<p>Granted not exactly undocumented, as it is linked on the &#x2F;submit page. But I think worth including, as it is not in the Guidelines or FAQ.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;bookmarklet.html">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;bookmarklet.html</a>

The second chance pool blew my mind the first time I got an email to resubmit. You figure if a post gets no traction, that’s just how it is. But I’ll never forget getting that email.

I&#x27;ve noticed a shadowbanned behavior. If you submit a link that is a banned domain, you will notice that the &#x27;discuss&#x27; link is missing and the post doesn&#x27;t show up at all (but you see it).

When did Hacker News start applying <i>topcolor</i> to the YC logo? I just noticed it today but am curious if it’s been there for awhile.

Discussion from 5 years ago: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=16437973">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=16437973</a><p>Nice to see that some of the suggestions from there, like listing the hidden URLS (&#x2F;leaders, etc.) seem to have been implemented.

I&#x27;m curious about the full list of automatic headline changes. They seem reasonable, but it&#x27;s worth knowing that if they change a headline for the worse, you can immediately edit the submission and restore the original headline (or an &quot;in the spirit of&quot; edit that fits within HN&#x27;s character limit).

I just learned that a username in green means it’s a new account. I’d noticed green usernames before but always kinda assumed they were some kind of “higher status” accounts. Like verified accounts on Xitter.

There is another hidden feature, a &quot;weak shadowban&quot; which places your comment lower on the page than default. I think it is a manual flag set by some unknown heuristic, basically a &quot;we don&#x27;t like you but not enough to ban you&quot; signal. This happened to me several months ago after a heated political debate and still is in effect (I&#x27;m sure it will happen to this comment, for example).

A lot of these backend features&#x2F;behaviors are super interesting to read through, especially in regards to the &quot;flame war detector&quot; section. I&#x27;ve only ever seen link aggregator websites such as Reddit relying on community moderation &amp; spam detectors rather than anything to improve the quality of the discourse.

Are there any browser extensions that provide a user tag feature, similar to Reddit Enhancement Suite?<p>There are so many notable tech people on HN, it would be useful to be able to recognize their posts and comments.

I don&#x27;t see anything related to IP protection. For example, if I log out and log in with another user, can I upvote a comment? If so, this can lead to vote manipulation. Browser fingerprints are useless if the user is using Adblockers or an extension stripping that information while submitting data.<p>What is preventing vote manipulation here? Signing up is so easy without email so I think there should be something.

<i>Hidden Reply Links<p>If the comment depth is 3 or more, reply links are withheld until the comments age a while. The amount of aging is a function of the depth. You can get around it by clicking on the comment&#x27;s timestamp to go to its own page.</i><p>Is there a reason for the workaround? Like, it&#x27;s a super secret way for gurus to avoid the friction?

&gt;Hacker News allows people to use the old front page ranking algorithm, which only counts votes from early users. Early users are defined as being created before Feb 13, 2008.<p>anybody remember the significance of that date? i apparently joined five days later, and i&#x27;m guessing i was part of some wave of new signups triggered by some event.

HN also has rate limits on making comments for certain users. The limit is easy to hit and takes hours to go away. This results in having to ignore people&#x27;s questions because it will waste a comment contributing to one&#x27;s rate limit. One can also respond to people by editing one&#x27;s comment, but that has poor ux.

The &#x27;over&#x27; url parameter is a great feature and I&#x27;m surprised I haven&#x27;t heard about it until now

Your ability to download or upvote comments and stories can also be shadowbanned, rendering these actions ineffective.

Wait, so you&#x27;re telling me that after 501 karma points it&#x27;s all just as meaningless as before 501?

Is the 501 karma level true? I heard 801?

Here are a few things that could be corrected or added.<p>Corrections:<p>* These URLs aren&#x27;t public - you can only see them if you&#x27;re logged in as $name:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;vouched?id=[name]">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;vouched?id=[name]</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;flagged?id=[name]">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;flagged?id=[name]</a><p>* &gt; <i>Moderators occasionally unkill such threads if they see it in time, although it rarely sticks</i><p>Moderators sometimes turn off the flags on posts like this, in which case the thread will usually stay on the front page.<p>* &gt; <i>Hacker News allows users to see what the front page looks like at any point in time</i><p>This wording makes me squeamish because the &#x2F;front pages don&#x27;t show what the front page looked like at any point in time - they&#x27;re a blended average of the frontpage stories from a particular day. At no point did the front page actually <i>look</i> like that, but that&#x27;s because you can&#x27;t get a 24 hour view from any particular snapshot.<p>Additions:<p>* &#x2F;next (or &#x2F;prev) link on comments jumps to the next (or previous) comment at the same nesting level<p>* &#x2F;root links (on item pages) jump to the top-level GP comment (this may be renamed to &#x2F;top in the future)<p>* &#x2F;context on a comment (when not on the original &#x2F;item page) links to the comment in its place on the original &#x2F;item page<p>* in the RSS section, could include: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;bigrss">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;bigrss</a> maps the frontpage and up to 9 pages after that<p>* HN&#x27;s software auto-edits titles to make them less linkbaity, but if it gets the edit wrong, you can change it after you submit (per <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38775366">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38775366</a>)<p>* the bookmarklet could probably be added, per <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38778787">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38778787</a><p>Also, see <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38779156">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38779156</a> because that&#x27;s another undocumented aspect. How to sum it up in a sentence? Maybe: &quot;If you only use HN to submit your own stuff, the software will eventually start filtering your submissions.&quot; But then I need a second sentence: &quot;It&#x27;s fine to submit your own stuff, but it should be part of a diverse mix of unrelated&#x2F;interesting things.&quot;

Assuming one has full vouch privileges, why do some flagged comments have vouch links but others can not. Perhaps one can check the source code to answer questions like this, or perhaps the code is constantly changing.

Missing “Classic”<p>It’s missing the relatively recent new list called “Classic”.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;classic">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;classic</a><p>Classic: <i>Frontpage as voted by ancient accounts</i>

Another little discussed feature is that the &#x27;active&#x27; list shows flagged submissions. For this reason I almost exclusively use this list.

How to search for the best HN stories with two different search terms in one search query, e.g. `webkit OR blink`?

Another undocumented feature is that flagging posts&#x2F;submissions very likely is weighted differently for different users.

I accidentally hit “hide” on an item I want to see. Where’s the documentation on how to unhide?

There&#x27;s other moderators than daang and some users help out with site stuff sometimes.

Idea: 1000 karma should get custom CSS as a setting.

This list is pretty nice, I learned a lot from it.

Any hidden feature to get past shadow moderation? I know I am not entitled to anything and no one cares unless they are affected directly but it would be nice if &quot;you&#x27;re posting too fast&quot; restrictions (could mean 3 or 4 times in one day) showed up before I spend like half an hour composing a reply to someone, not after. But alas, not owed anything, hn is a social engagement site for a VC at the end of the day. But the non-transparent moderation stuff speaks volumes about the culture and all.<p>Will try to post non-FUD, high quality comments and posts (read between the lines lol).

Minor nit: I&#x27;ve posted about this before, but I wish folks would not refer to dang as a &quot;moderator&quot; or say stuff about &quot;the HN moderators&quot;. If anything, I think it&#x27;s more appropriate to refer to dang as the site admin.<p>The reason this is a pet peeve of mine is I often see people complaining about &quot;the HN moderators&quot; (e.g. &quot;the HN mods are on a power trip and keep flagging my submissions!&quot; or some such), where they are clearly taking this conceptual model from Reddit, and they seem to think there is a shadowy cabal of &quot;mods&quot; who control what gets downvoted&#x2F;flagged (and, in fairness, this does and can happen in subreddits). In other words, when you see your submissions being flagged or comments being downvoted or flagged, 99.9% of the time it&#x27;s not &quot;the HN mods&quot; who are downvoting you. It&#x27;s just other, normal HN users (who have earned 501+ karma as TFA explains) who simply don&#x27;t like what you have to say.<p>Not saying dang <i>never</i> blocks users&#x2F;comments, but it&#x27;s exceedingly rare and I&#x27;ve only seen it for the most obnoxiously egregious behavior after (usually multiple) warnings.

1) I enjoy figuring out how HN works over time by noticing certain patterns. Still haven&#x27;t figured out (please don&#x27;t spoil) why I can&#x27;t downvote certain comments in threads where I see both arrows on other comments. HN feels like games in the past - you&#x27;re given some docs but over time you&#x27;d go &quot;ooooh&quot; about something undocumented. Good stuff.<p>2) voting system works well for just users but HN is infested with corporate voting manipulation. It seems that an entity monitoring eg. brand&#x27;s name is able to use just a few 501+ karma accounts to bury, or a few more to strongly boost, any post<p>3) based on what I learned about posts&#x27; scores (more than a grain of salt - as I mentioned - I&#x27;m still figuring things out) it seems a little out of place that sometimes a few hours-old posts (not as old to qualify for the &quot;second chance&quot; thing) with barely any comments and points are positioned higher on the top page than younger posts with more activity (higher score and more comments). I&#x27;ve noticed it more than once with substack and my assumption is that HN may be boosting YC-backed products

H

&gt; Inclusivity […] Unfortunately. (Moderators occasionally unkill such threads if they see it in time, although it rarely sticks).<p>Why would this be described as “unfortunate”? For example tings like LLM:s being trained on flawed&#x2F;biased data is a known real and unfortunate thing which can hurt already marginalised groups in society if used for eg. policy derisions.

My favorite is &#x2F;leaders.<p>Shame I&#x27;m not in the top 50 anymore, but there just ain&#x27;t a lot of good content to submit anymore and karma whoring seems like a waste of time.

Seems to be missing comment vote manipulation. Users can see the number of votes their own comments get but can&#x27;t see the number of votes other comments get, or even if their vote changes the vote count on a comment, which allows shadowbanning of unwanted comments by vote count alteration by mods&#x2F;admins.