Show HN: Hacker Smacker – spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance
Hacker Smacker adds friend/foe functionality to Hacker News. Three little orbs appear next to every commenter's name. Click to friend or foe a commenter and you'll more easily spot them on future threads. Makes it easy to scroll and spot the commenters you love to read (and hate to read).Main website: https://hackersmacker.orgChrome/Edge extension: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hacker-smacker/lmcg... Safari extension: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hacker-smacker/id1480749725 Firefox extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hacker-smacke...The interesting part is friend-of-a-friend: if you friend someone who also uses Hacker Smacker, you'll see their friends and foes highlighted too. This lets you quickly scan long comment threads and find the good stuff based on people you trust.I built this to learn how FoaF relationships work with Redis sets, then brought the same technique to NewsBlur's social layer. The backend is CoffeeScript/Node.js/Redis, and the extension works on Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari.Technically I wrote this back in 2011, but never built a proper auth system until now. So I've been using it for 15 years and it's been great. PG once saw it on my laptop (back when he was still moderating HN, in 2012) and remarked that it was neat.Thanks to Mihai Parparita for help with the Chrome extension sandboxing and Greg Brockman for helping design the authentication system.Source is on GitHub: https://github.com/samuelclay/hackersmackerDirectly inspired by Slashdot's friend/foe system, which I always wished HN had. Happy to answer questions!
68 points by conesus - 56 comments
Although there are some commenters I would want to follow because they are potato.
There is something so magical about some of the more delulu Take Havers around here.
I'd prefer not to label things such that I'm justifying the label's negative potential by the disproportionately small "even if" range of positive ones.
Most things are interesting if you look deeply into them. People on the other hand can be repetitive and boring about them. Which would extend to the excessive use of meta-argument: complaining people aren't listeninf but also not actually saying anything of substance.
Version two: hide foes? Come to think of it, maybe the 'foe' aspect is the fun part...
EDIT: it's like I summoned him.
That's a good idea.
Here's my bad idea: the extension auto downvotes foes and auto upvotes friends. :)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17717598
Original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46993774
What do you feel is the benefit to the community for this that isn't offered by native blocking/existing extensions?
I ask not out of malice, I ask because 2 reasons: 1. I imagine spending time on this/it's working well required you to see the value/benefit to it. 2. We must assume all hacker news commenting follows the rules, IE; good faith comment with relevant experience when required. This seems like a way to promote getting around that.
There is no “native blocking” on HN. You cannot block a user or hide their comments and submissions in perpetuity. You can only hide on a per-story basis.
It had a little text label next to names so you could manually add whatever you want. Recently I've thought about this extension and using it to tag the LLM users, or the humans who tend to pop up to fan the flames or who regularly post thought terminating comments - little tags to remind me to ignore the bots and trolls.
How old is that icon set? I swear I used that same peppers icon for a Windows app that I published around 2002.
https://rickyromero.com/shutup/
I guess if you just prefer wearing horse blinders?
Challenge my core belief? Well… I could rationally evaluate that, or, I could just use a tool to block it from my vision! Bubble thickener.
Also, many comments just take a wrong premise and attack you (e.g. that not wanting the slaughter of innocent people equals supporting terrorists who want to slaughter innocent people). They don't offer anything more than that, so that IMO taking the time to consider their mostly one-note opinion is just wasting said time.
As moderators we can only judge comments according to the guidelines, and can only ban accounts if they repeatedly breach them. You're always welcome to email us (hn@ycombinator.com) about an account that has been continually breaching the guidelines.
That's where an ignore system is useful.