Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors
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Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderMore and more websites are getting rid of user comments on their websites. Just in the last couple of months the National Review and The Atlantic have got rid of comments. In simple terms they couldn't keep up with comment moderation and were not able or willing to invest in enough moderators. So I have to give credit to HN to having one of the most civil comment sections on the internet. What I like about HN is that the…
> If a user has 251 Karma, they can set the color of the top bar in their profile settings. The default is #ff6600. Here's the complete set of colors users have set. It's so close, why isn't the required karma 256?
Ohh... I thought 'flag' was like a bookmark, for something that I wanted to read but isn't my 'favorite', but because I couldn't find the flagged articles I stopped using it...
Big discussion 4 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822 (437 points/188 comments)
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 3
- Total points
- 1471
- Total comments
- 750
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-02-22 | Hacker News's Undocumented Features and BehaviorsFirst breakout · Best thread | minimaxir | 803 | 391 |
| 2019-06-27 | A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors | qndev | 55 | 25 |
| 2020-09-21 | Hacker-News-Undocumented | varbhat | 5 | 3 |
| 2021-04-19 | A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors (2018-20) | rdpintqogeogsaa | 335 | 255 |
| 2022-10-04 | A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and BehaviorsHall induction | behnamoh | 226 | 68 |
| 2025-01-27 | A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and BehaviorsLatest 20+ point return | Willingham | 47 | 8 |