Show HN: Extension to highlight and tag users on Hacker News

8 years ago (github.com)

Funny, I just made something like this today (but more primitive), mostly so that I won't miss Walter Bright's comments.

    // ==UserScript==
    // @name     Hacker News VIP highlighter
    // @version  1
    // @grant    none
    // @match    https://news.ycombinator.com/*
    // ==/UserScript==

    function highlightVIPs() {
      'use strict';

      const VIPs = [
        "WalterBright"
      ];

      const userTags = Array.from(document.getElementsByClassName("hnuser"));

      userTags.forEach(tag => {
        const username = tag.href.split("=")[1];
        if (VIPs.includes(username)) {
          tag.style.fontWeight = 'bold';
        }
      });
    }

    highlightVIPs();

(I'm not much of a JavaScript programmer, but it seems to work.)

I'd like an extension to remove usernames entirely. I would rather my opinions about commentary be less biased, not more.

  • You'd probably want them hashed instead (maybe with a salt based on toplevel thread ID) - while you may prefer to not know who are you reading, you probably want to know whether a series of comments are written by the same person.

Very cool! I think it's especially great that this is a browser plugin instead of a separate website. It's great when developers make things as easy as possible on users. Nice job, I'll be giving it a try!

  • Agree! I am an app developer, and I like to think about how to make app developers jobs (and onboarding) easier, and the next thing I will write on that vein I think, already decided with the idea and design mostly formulated, will be a Chrome extension (for Pivotal Tracker users that also connect Bitbucket to a CI, to aid in merge request management)

    This example is great, as it is open source and supports Firefox too. Maybe I'll do both browsers as well! This HN friends extension does most if not all of the primitive things that I will need to do, so I'm being sincere and I think it's a great publish.

This is super! I was able to understand how to use it right away, installed and upvoted. I don't know how much I will use it, but I have often noticed the same insightful people popping up in discussions I am interested in, and so I will get some value out of it, and I guess I love the logo, too.

I have noticed that sites like reddit and HN feel implicitly anonymous. it'd be interesting to see how this helps reduce some of that. I've been trying my own ways of improving how I interact with people on reddit, maybe I'll try this.

Would be neat if you could tag people with different colors, to indicate like/dislike, or to indicate the primary topic that you have encountered them talking about in the past.

  • I would think that would be generally harmful for the point of thoughtful discussion as you are essentially labeling a person from the get-go with a certain bias.

this is just like reddit RES that's pretty cool

I was meaning to write my own userscript / chrome extension to show a button if there's a reddit-thread with same URL trending in hackernews, so you can click and go to those comments. It would say how many comments there are, and pull up the one with the most upvotes/comments within a 6 month timespan.

Haven't gotten around to it yet unless someone else wants to make it

I made one for my favorite notetaking app though, that I use fairly often. I made a write up of things I learned to write it

http://vincentmtang.com/2018/06/29/adventures-in-writing-a-t...

Seems useful, does anyone know of a similar thing for Safari or as a userscript that works in Tampermonkey (across all browsers) or Stylish?

Love it. Thanks. Even better if tag is visible btw.

  • I'll work on it!

    • Also I would personally prefer for the "tag" box to have a save button next to it. It wasn't clear to me whether it autosaves or if I was supposed to type the name before clicking "add friend". Could just be me though, but I would like this feature. Added this issue so that if people agree or disagree, they can vote on it through thumbs up/down in the Github interface: https://github.com/veggiedefender/hn-friends/issues/1