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Experiment HN: Remove Numbered Listing
11 points by kyro on Oct 23, 2009 | hide | past | favorite | 15 comments
I tend to not give much attention to the news items that are towards the bottom of the front/news pages, more so to the ones on the 'next' pages, and I think part of that might be due to the number rankings next to them. My mind attaches some sort of numbered value, which could color the way I view the submission quality-wise. I'd imagine others might be doing the same. Might be interesting to see if there's more user engagement with submissions if those numbers are completely removed.


I think I tried this when I was writing it, and without numbers the page seems too unstructured. You need something, and bullets don't do it.


Funny how when you make something 'minimalist' the smallest changes can upset the balance because they are a large part of the whole.

One a 'bombastic' site such a small change would hardly be noticeable. HN is like a laboratory experiment.


You could do an iTunes-esque stripe pattern, alternating between white and some other contrasting color.

This site does something similar: http://slickdeals.net/


Oh god. Please don't use zebra stripes. That's even harder to read.


IIRC Reddit had those originally, and I learned from their example it was a bad idea.


I read HN from google reader so it doesn't even affect me. I wonder how many people actually read the site instead of from their reader.

edit: I just realized that by doing it this way, I negate the point system. Oops.


I didn't consciously notice that items have numbers next to them until a few days ago. The numbers communicate the same thing as the relative position. So I doubt it makes a difference for me.


I thought it would be pretty interesting to view the listings without numerical rankings, so I whipped up a script which removed the rankings.

As of now, I haven't really noticed much impact on the way I use HN, but maybe it's going to take more time. I think it would make a more positive impact if the points score was removed for the titles.

The greasemonkey script is at: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/60421


I don't notice the numbers anymore - they're just bullets to me. But even when I deliberately look, I don't apply any importance to them. It feels kinda random to me - I've seen stories with < 10 points beating not-particularly-old stories with > 100 points. I know there's a formula but since I don't know what it is.. it's random to me :-)


I use the numbers mostly when browsing pages (with "More"), since there is no other indication of what page you're on.


As I write this, #30 on the front page is yesterday's #1. Just remember that from time to time and you might not give the numbers so much significance.


How about just randomizing the order on the front page? That's a more standard approach to testing something like this...


How about just leaving it alone? I like the numbers.


The ranking of the news is also news.


..Or a way to retrieve a random article. Maybe with some point threshold qualifier. HN fortunes.




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