3 suggestions to help with the increasing popularity of HN
1/ Articles are more and more commented, we need a better distinction between older and newer comments. A simple way to achieve this could be setting up a color on the "x hour ago" part.
example : 15 points by pg [green font]20 minutes ago[/green font] (the newest comments would be green and slowly turn to a dark red as they get old).
It would be easier to spot new comments in a inobstrusive and simple way. An example of this system can be found on this page where we can see the last time a player logged in by watching the "active" column color : http://games.ravenblack.net/players
2/ The possibility to pick our favorites users. Their name could be bolded if they are in our favorites so that we can easily spot their submissions and comments.
ex : "15 points by [b]pg[/b] 20 minutes ago"
3/ To limit the "post to say nothing" syndrom (or the "comment every article that made the front page" syndrom), we could imagine a system where it costs some karma to post a comment. Let's say that everyone gets one free comment every 24h wich doesn't cost anything (non stackable), then each additional comment costs more and more karma :
24h period :
- 1st comment : free
- 2nd comment : 1 karma ?
- 3rd comment : 2 karma ?
- 4th comment : 4 karma ?
- etc.
I know this suggestion will be controversial, but I feel the current karma system emphasises too much the quantity. It was good when HN started, but it's becoming inadequate as more and more people joins the party. I also noticed that often the interesting users (at least to me) do not post that often, because they only do when they have something to say (and not only for the sake of commenting).
/end of suggestions
If you want to throw up yours, use this thread to do so. I know there is already an existing features request thread, but I felt it was worth creating a new one regarding the circumstances.