Comment by ineedasername
13 hours ago
I’d encourage a change of labels away from “friend/foe”. It may seem minor but the subtle loaded nature of those paired terms encourages an adversarial stance rather than one of productive discourse. It’s not catchy so there’s probably better than this but, just as an example— “engage/ignore” could better signal to the user a neutral “do I want to bother with this person?”
I see this as a very hn type commenting. Nitpicking over semantics rather than engaging the whole. Your comment is fine, but the whole response in the rest of the thread is boorish.
I'm fine with friend or foe, because they are in reality, just coloured blobs
Agreed, independent of where the terminology came from, I think if you're trying to promote healthier engagement both for yourself and others using this extension, then not having such adversarial names it's probably a good idea. It should just end up being a sort of web of trust to help you decide what's worth engaging with — and sometimes perfectly valid people that you're not actually enemies with or anything just aren't worth your time engaging with because of fundamental axiological or positional differences.
That's just Slashdot's influence. They did the same thing at some point.
Ah, okay-- though that doesn't mean the author can't do better, if I'm not just being too nitpicky.
The last thing HN needs is to become more like Slashdot.
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Dot product of opinions? Using a fancier term for the same thing might be a significant axis though.
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I've wanted something like this for a long time and also thought of the slashdot system. This is directly from that.
That would imply a slightly different semantics than what the extension currently provides, though.
If you truly want certain users to be "ignored", then you probably want any of their comments (and the subtree of descendant comments) to be hidden/collapsed/made less legible, so that you don't accidentally read them, and thereby don't accidentally get rage-baited by them into wasting your day arguing with them. Same as e.g. kill files on Usenet.
Given that this comment collapsing/hiding/visibility-decreasing is something already built into HN (for comments/subtrees with strongly-negative score), it'd be really easy for the extension to hijack this functionality for its own purposes... if it actually wanted the red button to mean "ignore".
That the extension doesn't do that, implies to me that the extensions intended semantics for "foes" isn't "I don't want to engage with this person" but rather "I want to notice this person more." Perhaps "so that I can take the opportunity to actively antagonize them / argue with everything they say."
(I'm not saying that this is a good thing; just that insofar as "the purpose of a system is what it does", this is the purpose of a plain "foe" signal!)
Bring back hot or not!
I like friend and foe far more than engage and ignore. A foe isnt someone you ignore. Ignoring is what builds bubbles. A foe can often be right even if you disagree.
That makes sense, but then what is the purpose of the 'foe' label? I can see the logic behind using it as a time-saver (as described by conesus) or a reminder that engagement will probably be unproductive. But if you intend to learn from and engage with the foe, it seems like the 'foe' label is just going to prejudice you against their comments before you read them, without much benefit.
Hacker Smacker doesn't mean you ignore your foes. Their comments are now labeled with the tiny red orb, giving you acknowledgement of how you've felt about them in the past.
I've used this extension for the past 15 years and I can say that I love seeing foes show up in threads. I still read their comments, but I know going into it that I can probably skip it after the first sentence if I recognize that it's more of what I disliked about them in the first place.
This is a time saving browser extension, freeing me up to scan more HN threads. I now often scan a thread to see if there's any friends, foes, or FoaFs inside.
A foe is also someone you might preemptively punch in the face if they get too close before you could determine if they actually meant you harm right then.
I'd prefer not to label things such that I'm justifying the label's negative potential by the disproportionately small "even if" range of positive ones.
Woh there cowboy we are talking about online chat miles away. If u dont like it, cool beans.
I like it. sometimes my greatest foes become my dearest friends. Funny how life works that way.
People I want to ignore I usually disagree with as well, but that's not the problem: the problem is they are repetitive and boring.
I sure hope the disagreement to ignore ven diagram doesnt look like that. If u never engage, how will you ever know you were wrong about something repetitive and boring?
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Follow/Distance?
Ahh, I have you green orbed, and I recognize your username from NB. The system works!
What do you gain from this?
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[flagged]
I propose: Bubble/Whistle
That's such a friend thing to say!
favorite / potato
Although there are some commenters I would want to follow because they are potato.
There is something so magical about some of the more delulu Take Havers around here.
As a boomer, I had fun trying to decode your last sentence!
potato / tomato?
I'd suggest to move even beyond "engage/ignore".
This is HN. The focus should be "does this person provide interesting or thought provoking comments", not "relationships" or "engagement".
There are plenty of HN commenters whose opinions I absolutely dislike (I'm sure it's mutual ;), but I still read them - they are at least well reasoned or point out missing facts. I don't have to like them to learn from them.