Comment by ClintEhrlich

I'd like to suggest a very basic fix that will help new users.

People need to know about rules before they can reliably follow them. And Hacker News makes that surprisingly hard for new people.

Above the submit button, there is a line that says: "If you haven't already, would you mind reading about HN's approach to comments?"

I wanted to make sure I followed the rules, so I clicked the hyperlink and began reading a new page. It began, "Hacker News is a bit different from other community sites, so we'd appreciate it if you'd take a minute to read the site guidelines."

I thought that was the page that I had just clicked through to, so I continued reading. And it seemed like I was right: I learned about the rules against crap links, rudeness, etc.

Unfortunately, I was wrong. The first link took me to the 'welcome page' — which provides some guidelines for using the site, but not all of the rules. If you want to learn the rest of the rules, you have to know to click on another hyperlink to reach the site guidelines page. I found this counter-intuitive, and I doubt I'm the only one.

If you want people to learn the rules, please consider placing them beneath the existing text on the welcome page, so everyone will realize they exist. Or, at minimum, place a link to the guidelines page directly above the submit button, instead of just sending people back to the welcome page. And maybe add a "Rules" tab to the top navigation bar.

Thanks for your help!