Ask HN: How do you read and follow the discussions on big threads?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40952952

by L0in • 2 years ago

56 74 2 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm trying to read discussion from a thread with 133 comments, on a topic i find interesting, but after a few comments i get overwhelmed. How do you do it?

PaulHoule3• 2 years ago

I’m thinking about making a tool to do this, I haven’t quite gotten to loading a comment thread but I have loaded 250k images and also 400 from Evernote. Next in line is to load some unwieldy discussions, particularly from a site with a horrible comment UI such as Arstechnica.

I’m particularly thinking about how to make sense of badly organized threads from Mastodon and similar things.

defrost2• 2 years ago

With timecode metadata and heatmaps to highlight rapidfire back 'n forth and stuff?

Semantic scoring to rate quip chains Vs. slower, longer considered interactions?

Ways of highlighting high frequency commenters, perhaps rating frequent flyers by degree of interest in what they have to say and weighting threads by "participant rating".

There are many ways to go in this space.

PaulHoule3• 2 years ago

The best idea I have now is to scan HN and make a list of commenters who said something like “I am working on a PhD in this topic”.

mathfailure• 2 years ago

There was an internet meme explaining that: "ain't nobody got time for that".

RobertJaTomsons• 2 years ago

It always depends on the community. On Hackernews, for example, I only read the top 5 comments and then check the thread 2-3 times later to see if anything has changed. On reddit, for example, I don't read any comments at all because there are too many bots replying.

Otherwise, I try to keep my own thread when I read the comments. For example, when I read an article about a topic, I try to find an extremely positive point of view from the comments, but also an extremely negative point of view and then link this to my own thoughts.

As already mentioned in the thread, I would like to have an online tool, for example, which reduces comments to a clear point and thus makes reading easier for me.

andyjohnson0• 2 years ago

I typically use the "next" links (above each post) to jump to each top-level comment, drilling down if appropriate.

Other than that, I try to resist the urge to read everything. Its almost always better to absorb the gist of the conversation than to try to absorb it all.

pdimitar• 2 years ago

If the topic is interesting for me I just wait a day or two so the comment activity subsides and then just collapse each comment I read. Works perfect.

For threads I am interested in but want to comment immediately, I only collapse those comments that I don't find interesting -- and as above, go back a few days later to read the others without constantly having new ones added in real time.

lapcat2• 2 years ago

If you want to read every comment in a thread, https://hnrss.org/item?id=

Otherwise, though, HN itself has a terrible format that's nearly impossible to follow.

CoastalCoder• 2 years ago

I'm not a web developer. Would you mind explaining how I'd use that snippet?

compressedgas• 2 years ago

For example for this story one would place the number 40952952 from the URL https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40952952 at the end of the given URL such https://hnrss.org/item?id=40952952

xigoi2• 2 years ago

What’s easier to follow than a tree which naturally groups comments by what they’re replying to?

lapcat2• 2 years ago

It's a tree with no branches, only leaves. And only a small amount of indentation distinguishes the various levels.

Just look at any submission with hundreds of comments and deeply nested replies. It's a total unreadable mess.

tetris11• 2 years ago

Skim for keywords you're interested in, decide from a glance whether or not a comment chain is just two people passive-aggressively fighting semantics (and whether or not those semantics matter to you), scroll to the bottom to see if the dead comments have anything useful to say and rescue them if they say something interesting (albeit not popular)

Don't internalize everything you read here, just a quick dip down for some interesting perspectives, and then you resurface with those endorphins and wait for the next hunt

gsich4• 2 years ago

Tree structures suck for that. Linear style all the way.

lproven2• 2 years ago

Tree structures are the only way it remains manageable at all, IMHO. No tree = no structure = no way to skip forwards.

forgotacc240419• 2 years ago

It depends on the size of the community in my experience. Old school bulletin board style fitting are great once trolls and manic megaposters are kept under control but if they've too few users they tend to die and if they've too many they become impossible to follow

gsich4• 2 years ago

Trees devolve into a 1on1 discussion, also other branches can have the same discussion, leading to redundant arguments.

You can have a tree, but only 1 branch is allowed for efficient discussions. Like every sane forum software does, be it phpbb, vbulletin, xenforo ...

new_user_final• 2 years ago

I usually/only read comments with replies to get different opinions and go to next sibling comments if child comments aren't interesting to me anymore.

Jensson• 2 years ago

I look for comments with responses. Comments with responses are usually more interesting, that filters out like 90% of comments.

If those comments were interesting I read more.

OJFord• 2 years ago

I minimise threads that get more narrow or argumentative than I'm interested in for a particular topic.

Sometimes in a particularly large discussion I'll do that even for top-level comments without replies that I've either read (and won't reply to/not interested in replies to) or skimmed/read enough and decided I won't read.

Help others by voting (both directions) and flagging/vouching where necessary.

muzani• 2 years ago

There's the [-] button on the right which hides a subthread. Then go to the next. On particularly huge ones, just go to the next page.

From that, it's like a party. Just go out and talk to someone at random. Past a certain level of discussion, there's going to be repeated conversations on the topic anyway.

lproven2• 2 years ago

I just... read them all?

GuB-42• 2 years ago

It took me a while to realize that there is a "prev" and a "next" button next to every comment. It makes navigation much easier when there are long threads. Using [-]/[+] is another option.

If the problem is just the sheer amount of data and not navigation, you can simply bookmark the thread and come back later. The algorithm usually does a good job getting the best comments on top after things have settled down, just read these. Plus, if you forget about the topic and don't come back to it, maybe it wasn't that interesting after all, that's a good filter.

sillysaurusx• 2 years ago

(It’s not entirely an algorithm, it’s also human curation.)

TeMPOraL4• 2 years ago

I wonder if we could train DangGPT that would reliably replicate dang's curation and moderation decisions (as distinct from just talking like him).

boomboomsubban• 2 years ago

It took me a while to realize that there is a "prev" and a "next" button next to every comment.

That feature is relatively new, Oct ~28th 2021 apparently https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29023087 so it mat not have been you missing it.

L0in• 2 years ago

That's what i ended up doing after i wrote the post. I was reading every parent comment as something different on the same topic and when i finished or wasn't interesting to me i minimized it the [-] button.

dsr_2• 2 years ago

It's quite easy, as long as you have threading, quoting and read/unread flags equivalent to 1990 Usenet.

michaelmior• 2 years ago

HN doesn't have read/unread flags for comments AFAIK.

corobo2• 2 years ago

I use the collapse thingy as a read flag - if I'm fully sated on a to and fro for a topic I might come back to I'll collapse the thread.

Future me will often un-collapse the thread through curiosity of course, but will quickly realise I was right

jarule2• 2 years ago

nnhackernew.el presents HN as a 90s era Usenet forum.

dsr_2• 2 years ago

That was, in fact, my point.

Most discussion systems are inferior to 1990 Usenet, 34 years later.

At this point it is traditional to shout about Usenet not having good moderation. In fact, it is possible for either individual news groups or specific news servers (that only carry a limited number of groups) to have good moderation. It is, of course, expensive: you need to get enough trustworthy people to run it to cover the time and volume.

Then someone will sniff about not wanting to use a TUI, which can be rebutted by pointing at all the GUI newsreaders -- having a standard protocol for talking to a server is quite valuable.

"Isn't Usenet a huge space and bandwidth hog?" Yes, Usenet was a huge space and bandwidth hog -- in 1990, and 2000. If you don't carry the warez groups, it can be adequately handled on a high-end server from 2000 -- which today is equivalent to a Raspberry Pi. (1994: 7 x 2 GB SCSI disks, 1.5Mb/s Internet connection)

HN approximates the activity level and content size of 1 very active Usenet newsgroup.

jszymborski• 2 years ago

I begin by reading the top comment, if it's interesting I'll read its replies, if it's not I'll collapse it's replies and move down until bored.

Most big threads have many replies and far fewer top comments so 133 can become much smaller this way.

I also have no problem quitting as I scroll down. On big threads that have been up for a while, the insight tends to fall off with the number of votes as you keep scrolling.

paulnpace• 2 years ago

After getting bored, I begin randomly reading comments as I scroll. I'm surprised at how I find nuggets this way, though mostly it becomes more of the same.

ColinWright• 2 years ago

I do this:

https://www.solipsys.co.uk/Chartodon/112750744215259093.svg

And this:

https://www.solipsys.co.uk/QL/Cricket.html

aendruk• 2 years ago

I use a short userscript to “mark as read” comments on hover. They just get a different color so I can hop around and know where to resume. It’s particularly helpful with active threads where new comments appear in the middle.

wruza2• 2 years ago

One can also search for “minutes ago” etc.

Jare• 2 years ago

I skim top -> bottom, read what catches my eye, skip the reply tree to posts I'm not interested in, and when I am not getting value I stop and move out, regardless of reason for not getting value (direction the discussion takes, posting quality, my mood or attention, etc). I almost never revisit later, I don't use any navigation helpers like [-] or prev/next.

uzername• 2 years ago

I use the HACK app, a hacker news reader app, for android. It has collapsing sections and jump to next top level comment. Between these two functions reading long threads even with deeply nested comments isn't too bad.

codingdave• 2 years ago

HN has those features built-in - at the end of every comment's top line, click 'next', or '[-]'

adamomada• 2 years ago

I use HACK on iOS and I didn’t even know there was a version for Android.

It really is a more streamlined interface to HN comments, but I was used to it by using 3rd party apps on Reddit 100% of the time.

bsnnkv2• 2 years ago

These days I plug the article into https://kulli.sh which aggregates all the comments across HN, Lemmy, Lobsters, Reddit etc. into a single feed which I can quickly filter by source, discussions or order reverse chronologically.

When I've had enough of a particular comment thread or source, I click/tap to minimize it and continue with the next one.

I like having all the comments on an article in one place, not just for the convenience factor, but also because it gives me regular glimpses outside of my bubble and shows me how different communities, including ones I don't necessarily agree with, are discussing the same topics.

smiley1437• 2 years ago

Sounds like a great aggregator but the poor site is getting slammed

bsnnkv2• 2 years ago

The service-side rate limiters for requests made to the various aggregation sources are global across all user requests so it can slow down a little bit sometimes.

I've been thinking of offering dedicated instances for a fixed monthly cost if people are interested, but so far I haven't had any takers and I'm happy enough using the global instance for now.

jarule2• 2 years ago

Skip anything with more than three sentences. Long-windedness needs to be punished.

joey_spaztard• 2 years ago

A mouse with a scroll wheel and all the comments fully expanded on one page and a high-resolution monitor showing lots of lines of text at once.

The page-down button is a distant second. I find using a laptop without a scroll-wheel mouse mildly displeasing. A laptop with a screen that can show a quarter of the amount of text that my desktop PC can do is infuriating.

Are you trying to read long threads on a smartphone or tablet, pawing at the touchscreen with your finger?

smitty1e• 2 years ago

The little minus sign to collapse the comments is key.

kawera• 2 years ago

This extension marks new comments with an orange vertical bar, plus some niceties: https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news

gabrielsroka2• 2 years ago

The "Highlight new, unread" future already exists, but you have to email the mods to have them enable it. I've had it on for years. I'm not sure why it's not a GA feature.

Even still, it's not super useful.

impure• 2 years ago

https://andrewzuo.com/summarizing-comment-sections-22e00c34c...

saagarjha• 2 years ago

You’ve got to enter the thread with the expectation that there are idiots posting drivel that you can leap in to correct, obviously.

Seriously, though, reading 133 comments usually takes like two to three minutes total. You need to decide whether you want to spend that much on this site doing that or not. I expect for most people the answer is “no” and I commend them for their self-control.

For topics you actually really care about, you’ll find it a lot easier to read through the comments. You will learn which comments to skip (nobody wants to read a rehash of “does anyone else think all developers are lazy and software is so slow now”) and which ones are actually interesting to read.

solardev• 2 years ago

You can use a different frontend (like Harmonic on Android) too.

1vuio0pswjnm72• 2 years ago

I sometimes see HN commments that suggest readers prefer nesting. I do not. I dislike indentation; it is distracting. I prefer left justification. I use a text-only browser that presents threads as flat when tables are disabled. I can search through threads of max length using vi mode keystrokes. Much faster than using a graphical browser. Also, I do not use colors so, e.g., "greying out" comments has no effect. All comments appear in the same color textmode font. I decide what comments to read without unsolicited "curation" from voters or flaggers.

1vuio0pswjnm72• 2 years ago

No need for hnrss.org. For me, it's not the site that one uses that changes the "user experience", it's the client.

Using a non-graphical client I see all comments in a thread in a single page, all at once. Up the maximum that HN will display at one time. Nothing is hidden.

krapp• 2 years ago

I don't bother trying to keep up with everything. I'll follow /newcomments and I have a browser plugin that shows when a thread has new comments but beyond a certain point it isn't worth it. 90% of comments aren't worth reading anyway,

paulcole• 2 years ago

I just look for somebody who’s a know it all and start to troll them. Don’t really care about any comments other than that.

Leftium• 2 years ago

Try viewing this thread via my HN web app: https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/40952952

It does a few things to make viewing big threads easier:

- Collapses large threads into a toggle button showing the number of replies in that thread.

- Highlights the OP

- Follow any timestamp link to "focus" on that sub-thread, like this: https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/40953431

- The author of the parent comment becomes the highlighted "OP."

I have a bookmarklet that toggles between viewing on HN and my web app.

My app was heavily modified, but original credit goes to https://hackerweb.app/. The original author had an idea to make HN threads more like Reddit threads, which he may have implemented in the mobile app rewrite:

- iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hackerweb-hacker-news-client/i...

- Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cheeaun.hacker...

oumua_don17• 2 years ago

This thread itself is now a good source to try all the suggested nav options!!!

unraveller• 2 years ago

    javascript: (() => {     const id = window.location.href.match(/\d+$/g)[0];     window.open(`https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=story:${id}&sort=byDate&type=comment`)%20%20%20})();

bookmarklet shows you the latest story comments and you can usually tell where they belong or dig in to find out eg:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

reddit style comment threads: https://hacker-read-it.netlify.app/item/40965892

there is also chan style: https://hnchan.netlify.app/thread/40937119

cleaner hackerdaily tree style: https://hackerdaily.io/40955693/comments

flat style: https://ditzes.com/item/40937119

There is also one I cannot find at the moment which let you click and open each comment thread in the right side of screen, that was very good. edit: found it: https://hzn.jero.zone

gabrielsroka2• 2 years ago

nice.

here's a slightly shorter version:

  javascript:open(`https://hn.algolia.com?dateRange=all&prefix=false&query=story:${location.href.match(/\d+$/)[0]}&sort=byDate&type=comment`)

vasili111• 2 years ago

If the discussion is about the interesting topic I will start from top and go to bottom while collapsing discussions which I have read with “-”.

Ask HN: How do you read and follow the discussions on big threads?

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