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Comment by dkhenry | Hacker News Reader

I know its not the elephant in the managed source code hosting space, but I like BitBucket better then Github. I like the option to use Mercerial for projects and I like the way they ask me to pay for things ( pay for private shared repositories ).

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Also, BitBucket's free plan allows for unlimited public and private repositories, while GitHub only allows for public repositories on the free version.

I use BitBucket for a number of side-projects mostly as a way to make sure all my code is backed up off-site, for free.

I like http://beanstalkapp.com/ myself, pretty comparable to BitBucket.

We use beanstalk at work. Gets the job done, but not nearly as nice as Github or Bitbucket, and there are times page loads are pretty slow.

> and there are times page loads are pretty slow.

Then again, Github and Bitbucket routinely have the same issue as far as my experiences go (I mostly use Bitbucket, but routinely interact with github due to the project on there)

We switched over from Beanstalk to Github a few months ago.

Beanstalk's web interface had fewer features and, more worryingly, it just failed to display changesets quite often (was also down for maintenance relatively frequently).

    I like BitBucket better then Github.

That should be than. Then is an order of operations type deal, eg:

    I read the new BitBucket blog post and *then* I signed up

whereas than is things like greater than, less than, it's for comparisons.

http://www.elearnenglishlanguage.com/difficulties/thanthen.h...

So off topic, but...

Has anyone ever tried to implement a 'crowd-correct' feature where a reader could do something like correct "then->than", and if enough users made the same correction (a couple high-rep users, or more low-rep users) it would stick.

I supposed the biggest challenge would be user abuse -- changing even just one word can completely change the meaning of a comment, and yet the comment would still be attributed to the OP. You would need, at least, a flag to indicate the post had been 'crowd-corrected', and perhaps a way for the OP to revert & lock their comment.

Another thought is use Google's auto-complete API, if you pass it the string "better then Github" it returns "better than Guthub". I find simply running a Google search on a phrase is often the best way to auto-correct it.

That's very similar to the editing mechanism in Stack Exchange sites; a low-rep user (or even an anonymous user) can suggest an edit which then must be approved by two high-rep users or by the original poster. Or any high-rep user can just edit it directly, although that would be a less attractive feature on a site like Hacker News.

This sounds like a really great idea, I think the simplest way that would avoid abuse is if fixes were sent to the user so they could change it, but instead of needing to edit the comment manually (copy change -> remove old -> paste) they can view a diff and either "accept" or "reject". It wouldn't be perfect but it would be better than people needing to reply (like I did).

This works well for non-realtime stuff (e.g. this is how OKCupid does crowdsourced profile edits), but in this instance dkhenry may not see these suggestions for some time (and, in your proposed solution, have an item sitting in the edit queue for approval), while hundreds of people are getting distracted by his typo in the meantime.

You have to be very careful, though, because there may be legal (and definitely social) ramifications for changing a user's submitted content without consent. I know it absolutely enrages me when Flickr auto-lowercases an all caps comment I try to post. ("lazer cat!@!" doesn't have quite the same oomph as "LAZER CAT!@!")

The solution knocking around my head for this was a "sub-channel" for off-topic corrections to posts, so you can suggest a spelling or grammar alteration without a) cluttering the discussion or b) looking like a <nasty word> for calling them out.

    The solution knocking around my head for this 
    was a "sub-channel" for off-topic corrections 
    to posts

That seems like a great idea

    b) looking like a <nasty word> for calling them out.

judging by the downvotes I guess people think I was trying to be a dick... then vs. than is a very common English error, I figured he'd rather know than continue to be wrong. I would have emailed if he had an email in his profile, but nope. oh well.

Regarding the second half, I find that problematic. Sometimes it's very clear to me that English is not someone's first language, and you can often tell what is by the mistakes they are making (for example, "I have been working here since 3 years" is a common mistake by native German speakers, as it's a direct translation of the equivalent phrase in German). In that situation I find many people are appreciative of stylistic notes, but it's hard to pull off without looking like a grammar [fascist].

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