Tagging is available on any serious platform with lots of data. It can be used to search for or filter out posts to save time/energy.
Personally I skip about 95% of posts here -- a lot of that is based on the post's category.
Some e.g's of HN relevant tags (multiple could be used per post): Code, Software, AI, Crypto, Linux, Politics, History, Space, Math, Biology, Health, Robotics, Microsoft, Apple, Startup, Social Media, Study, Games, Entertainment, News
If readers don't want to use tags/filters they don't have to.
You state that as a fact, but it is an opinion. I think using a filter would prevent users from seeing posts and comments that they would find interesting. In a sense, it would create a bubble for each user.
Also, HN isn’t that large that a quick visual scan of the home page doesn’t work.
> If readers don't want to use tags/filters they don't have to.
And if writers don’t want to use tags, or can’t even remotely agree on which ones should exist?
For example, in your example list, Code and Software would have significant overlap, AI about always would be software, Politics should be very rare according to the HN guidelines, people would disagree about the definition of Startup.
The tagging approach wouldn't effect you -- you could simply not use it.
Simplicity has its virtues, too.
Though I would be very interested in your RSS setup if you could share a bit about it. I use Reeder and add interesting sounding posts to read later where I might actually get to reading it, but over time I no longer manage to clear it.. I have plenty of old posts I’ve taken a look at and wanted to check it out later as well more in-depth or something, and they just stay there indefinitely..
Lobste.rs is basically Hacker News with tags and it seems to do alright.
Add tags/filtering and you scatter the community in sub communities and that’s precisely what HN wants to avoid.
The most valuable thing about HN is the thoroughly educated comments, where under a related post the very creator of that program/language, etc might chime in to the discussion.
I don’t think @dang has enough time to handle more requests and chores that add little or no value to the discussions.
I’d rather have larger fonts, an accessible interface, dark mode based on the user’s system/browser’s hints, etc. Those would make a much bigger impact for the audience.
Lastly, I’m being pedantic here: “Ask HN” cannot answer questions on HN’s implementation. Neither I nor anyone else commenting here has any clue as to why HN does not have tags or is considering adding tags in the future. Only the HN mod/admin can answer that, which can be asked by emailing them. A “Tell HN” would’ve been better to make a suggestion and get inputs.
It does if there is an ocean of info and you miss posts.
>tagging is mostly useless because there needs to be a canonical dictionary of tags to choose from
Wrong. Tagging is simply solved on many existing platforms and is extremely useful.
I enjoy the breadth of HN articles.
Bigger communities such as Reddit and Stackoverflow use ideas similar to tags to create more focussed communities.
Then would be useless.
Maybe a tag system with a limit of 3 tags could be useful but people could use the wrong tags and manage it will request a lot of work from the mods.
The algolia search works well now, tags could help if well used by the users, but also create confusion.
Just because you can do a thing doesn't mean you should. Just because people ask for it doesn't mean it should be done. See: Social media.
The spirit of HN is a public forum to discuss all sorts of topics, and to be exposed to a broad set of headlines/subjects - even if one isn't educated on it.
more than ask, show, jobs would split the community
Perhaps a day people will realize that we have had all we need and demolished that...
A bad tagging system can have a fatal side effect - because readers start using it like any other social networking site.
see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
> Personally I skip about 95% of posts here
You can use the https://hckrnews.com/ "top 10" / "top 20" / "top 50"
> . It can be used to search for or filter out posts to save time/energy.
I am using the "Search Hacker News" site https://hn.algolia.com/
