hacker-news-undocumented is a reference guide that documents the hidden features, behaviors, and norms of Hacker News that are not covered in its official Guidelines or FAQ.
The project addresses the gap between Hacker News's official documentation and its actual operation. Hacker News maintains simplicity as a design principle, which means many features added over time remain undocumented or are only explained in occasional staff comments. This guide catalogs those hidden mechanics, including moderation practices, voting restrictions, comment behaviors, and algorithmic downranking patterns that shape how the platform actually works.
The guide suits anyone who participates on Hacker News and wants to understand the full set of rules governing visibility, voting, and moderation. It covers practical features like edit and delete time limits, unvote windows, and comment collapsing, alongside less obvious behaviors such as implicit downranking of political content, diversity-related topics, and posts without URLs. The guide also documents bonus features like Hacker News Classic, access to historical data via Wayback, and BigQuery datasets. Developers building tools around Hacker News will find the documented API behaviors and public URL structures particularly relevant.
The project accepts community contributions through GitHub issues and pull requests to correct or expand the documented behaviors, indicating ongoing maintenance in response to user feedback about accuracy and completeness.
