Why isn't there a search on HN?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1886830

by sainib • 16 years ago

2 7 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I would really like to search for whatever I am looking for before asking people and waiting for reply.. is there a way I can search on HN?

elliottcarlson2• 16 years ago

http://searchyc.com fills that need; and Google seems to index new threads on here that are minutes old...

byoung2• 16 years ago

I have a feeling that if someone submitted Hacker News as a Rate My Startup post, lots of people would point out that it lacked search, and that relying on an external search engine was unacceptable.

I think it would be nice to be able to do an advanced search, such as searching for posts with fewer than/more than X number of comments, Karma points, etc., or excluding new users, including an arbitrary list of users, etc. in addition to just keyword searches.

elliottcarlson2• 16 years ago

I somewhat agree and disagree;

I'm not sure how many of those advanced features are worth the effort of developing -

fewer than/more than: I don't see the benefit of this except for threads that are really active, which easily could include slight flame wars and off topic discussions

karma points: perhaps useful

excluding new users: don't see the point - throw away accounts are popular here and tend to come up frequently - I can't think of a single scenario where I would ever want to filter threads like this

including list of users: somewhat useful, if going to a users profile and filtering by a single user wouldn't be good enough

the only thing I could see as a useful advanced search option would be url filter to find posts about certain domains.

Granted these are just opinions on how I would use a HN advanced search feature; so my opinion could be part of the minority.

sainib• 16 years ago

I totally agree that an advance search on HN is definitely needed.. you suggested some good search criterion. I would also add some timeframe related parameters as well. For e.g. this morning I saw an article with list of top 10 bloggers with maximum revenue from their blogs and I just cant find it using google..

weel• 16 years ago

Go to google. Type into the search box:

  site:news.ycombinator.com <whatever-your-query-is>

zoowar• 16 years ago

You could even click on the 'search' item in the footer.

appmylife• 16 years ago

Searchyc is ok, but I wish there was a better display of the links. We won't always know what to search for, and may miss some amazing links after they are lost in the mix.

Why isn't there a search on HN?

Related Stories