The epic feature request thread seems vestigial: you often responded there 800-900 days ago but haven't for 428 days, I'd guess because HN has outgrown it.
Yeah, is kind of cheesy to use an ordinary comment thread. But a new, purpose-built feature request system is one of the many potential new features that, while a good idea in principle, would take significant time and yet have little effect on the quality of the site.
What about simply giving meta discussions (including features) a place of their own ?
That way if there is an interesting one (and it does happen, even if rarely) it has a spot and doesn't get killed because it takes up valuable space on the 'new' page.
I've been thinking about that for a while, if only because if there was an official place for meta-discussion, I could make people stop cluttering the real threads with it. On the other hand, maybe this feature would make the site more attractive to the kind of people who like meta-discussion, when I want it to be less attractive to them.
Well, since some of it is useful, give that it's own spot and leave the flag and kill options in place to control the meta discussion should it get out of hand.
Just like in wikipedia there is the 'talk' page, it's out of band but it is not out of control.
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I totally agree; it's just the incongruity.
The epic feature request thread seems vestigial: you often responded there 800-900 days ago but haven't for 428 days, I'd guess because HN has outgrown it.
Yeah, is kind of cheesy to use an ordinary comment thread. But a new, purpose-built feature request system is one of the many potential new features that, while a good idea in principle, would take significant time and yet have little effect on the quality of the site.
What about simply giving meta discussions (including features) a place of their own ?
That way if there is an interesting one (and it does happen, even if rarely) it has a spot and doesn't get killed because it takes up valuable space on the 'new' page.
I've been thinking about that for a while, if only because if there was an official place for meta-discussion, I could make people stop cluttering the real threads with it. On the other hand, maybe this feature would make the site more attractive to the kind of people who like meta-discussion, when I want it to be less attractive to them.
Well, since some of it is useful, give that it's own spot and leave the flag and kill options in place to control the meta discussion should it get out of hand.
Just like in wikipedia there is the 'talk' page, it's out of band but it is not out of control.
That seems to be a good middle ground.