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Dan, speaking of experiments, can I pitch an idea? Mix a random story from the New page into the front page on each page load. This should get more eyeba

Dan, speaking of experiments, can I pitch an idea? Mix a random story from the New page into the front page on each page load. This should get more eyeballs on new submissions, with more even exposure across HN populus and ultimately increase the overall appeal of the front page material. Should make the FP a bit more dynamic too.

samstave 11y ago
Let me propose an alternative: In my profile, similar to [show dead] - let me select the number of new posts to randomly show... And another idea: always show posts with word [xyz] in title... Edit: and finally; collapsible threads please
- krapp 11y ago
  Let me try to distill this even further - let people have better control of the way list pages and threads are sorted. Filters like that could easily be added through the user control panel and applied as query strings without affecting the appearance of the rest of the site. Being able to sort a thread by most recent comments rather than just karma would be great.
rorykoehler 11y ago
Great idea +1
dang 11y ago
We alpha-tested that and it didn't work. The median item on /newest is far too low-quality (by HN's definition) for randomness to do much good there. In practice, it just mixes junk onto the front page—the worst thing that can happen to the front page. (I've posted about this a few times; let me see if I can find the links.) Edit: I found some of them, in addition to the ones scott_s mentioned downthread. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=by:dang%20%22median%20story%22 https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&date...
- scott_s 11y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9866140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9866140 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8790134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8790134
  - dang 11y ago
    Those links are about an experiment we tried that did work, and which we've expanded. If you get an invitation asking you to repost a story, that's the latest incarnation of this. Where we're stuck is on figuring out a way to let the community manage it that wouldn't just reduce to how upvoting works now. We're working on it though.
    - scott_s 11y ago
      The latter also mentions the old thing that did not work, where you just pulled a random post for /newest, and put it at the bottom of the front page. I see the current, successful, technique as an iteration of the failed one.
      - dang 11y ago
        Ah thanks!
- romaniv 11y ago
  No need to mix then. Display it separately. On the bottom or on the left. Something has to be done with new submissions.
- danmaz74 11y ago
  What about adding a couple of random "new" articles at the end of the front page, clearly marking them as "new"? This would help people that simply don't take the time to click the "new" button often enough - people like me - to contribute to the initial selection much more often.
  - 11y ago
devit 11y ago
A related thing: what about considering the number of people who clicked on the article or comments links in addition (or even instead of) to the number of upvotes? For article links, it can be tracked with navigator.sendBeacon for recent browsers with JavaScript enabled, and a server-side redirect otherwise. There is some risk of promoting click-bait this way though, so might need to be careful and provide an "undo upvote" or downvote button, and perhaps find some click-bait-related signals to hedge against (maybe time until next action on HN, titles with lots of generic words, similarity to Buzzfeed headlines, etc.).
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

samstave 11y ago

Let me propose an alternative: In my profile, similar to [show dead] - let me select the number of new posts to randomly show... And another idea: always show posts with word [xyz] in title... Edit: and finally; collapsible threads please

krapp 11y ago
Let me try to distill this even further - let people have better control of the way list pages and threads are sorted. Filters like that could easily be added through the user control panel and applied as query strings without affecting the appearance of the rest of the site. Being able to sort a thread by most recent comments rather than just karma would be great.

rorykoehler 11y ago

Great idea +1

dang 11y ago

We alpha-tested that and it didn't work. The median item on /newest is far too low-quality (by HN's definition) for randomness to do much good there. In practice, it just mixes junk onto the front page—the worst thing that can happen to the front page. (I've posted about this a few times; let me see if I can find the links.) Edit: I found some of them, in addition to the ones scott_s mentioned downthread. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=by:dang%20%22median%20story%22 https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&date...

scott_s 11y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9866140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9866140 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8790134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8790134
- dang 11y ago
  Those links are about an experiment we tried that did work, and which we've expanded. If you get an invitation asking you to repost a story, that's the latest incarnation of this. Where we're stuck is on figuring out a way to let the community manage it that wouldn't just reduce to how upvoting works now. We're working on it though.
  - scott_s 11y ago
    The latter also mentions the old thing that did not work, where you just pulled a random post for /newest, and put it at the bottom of the front page. I see the current, successful, technique as an iteration of the failed one.
    - dang 11y ago
      Ah thanks!
romaniv 11y ago
No need to mix then. Display it separately. On the bottom or on the left. Something has to be done with new submissions.
danmaz74 11y ago
What about adding a couple of random "new" articles at the end of the front page, clearly marking them as "new"? This would help people that simply don't take the time to click the "new" button often enough - people like me - to contribute to the initial selection much more often.
- 11y ago

devit 11y ago

A related thing: what about considering the number of people who clicked on the article or comments links in addition (or even instead of) to the number of upvotes? For article links, it can be tracked with navigator.sendBeacon for recent browsers with JavaScript enabled, and a server-side redirect otherwise. There is some risk of promoting click-bait this way though, so might need to be careful and provide an "undo upvote" or downvote button, and perhaps find some click-bait-related signals to hedge against (maybe time until next action on HN, titles with lots of generic words, similarity to Buzzfeed headlines, etc.).

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]