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Ask HN: How many of you look at http://news.ycombinator.com/newest?
I recently submitted the same (reasonably interesting, IMO) story twice.
The first time, the story didn't get any upvotes; the second time, I asked some friends (in the interest of, erm, "science") to upvote it immediately after posting. The story appeared on the frontpage and gathered ~20 upvotes (in line with my "expectations"). In terms of clickthroughs, the ratio is probably 1:100+.
Don't consider that a real experiment; I didn't control for anything (time of day &c.), so it's almost purely anecdotal. Nevertheless, my preconceptions were strengthened to the point of almost making them hypotheses:
- a. "Kick-starting" a story by asking friends or followers to upvote it _dramatically_ increases the chances of it being read, without any inherent difference in "story quality" (if we assume that inherent story quality is a reasonable notion at all).
- b. A very small fraction of HN readers check out http://news.ycombinator.com/newest.
Do you?
- Tichy 17y agoI only check it out sometimes, when I am very desperately in need to procrastinate. At times it will be several times a day, at other times I don't look at it for weeks.
- megamark16 17y agoI like to get comments in on good articles early, they seem to get more responses that way, before the thread has grown old.
- chuhnk 17y agoI will usually scan newest once I'm done reading through the top 1-60. Everyone has differing tastes and so the stuff that I like to read doesn't always end up on the front page.
- nfnaaron 17y agoExactly me too. Newest gives me a chance to upvote things that I'd like to see discussed.
- RiderOfGiraffes 17y agoYour findings are completely consistent with what people have been saying many, many times over the past few months. If something doesn't get noticed quickly on "newest" then it can sink without trace, regardless of its inherent value. Unless you get some friends to check your submissions and upvote them if appropriate, it's very hit-n-miss. It's mostly because of this that I have always visited "newest" which then also means that I recognise things when seeing them second time around. Recently I've stopped bothering marking repeats and duplications, in part because some people find it deeply irritating, in part because it seems unvalued, and, yes, in part because it drags down my average karma. If one of the metrics PG has put in place gives me a poor grade because of some activity, I'll think twice about continuing. So certainly your hypothesis "a" seems true. Not sure about "b" because it depends on what you mean by "small fraction," but I would agree with that too.
- mrduncan 17y agoI completely agree. I've actually started browsing "newest" much more lately (almost exclusively on some days). My solution is to pick out quality submissions and try to give them the bumps that they need to make it to the front page for other users to see.
- Perceval 17y agoI rarely upvote articles, even if they're generally interesting to me (front page or /newest). Because upvoting also functions as a saving mechanism on your userpage, I only upvote things I want to save (mostly on a certain topic). If there were some distinction between upvoting and saving, I might be more liberal in upvoting interesting stories.
- georgecmu 17y agoIt seems a few people use the kick-starting strategy. I've seen articles get a bunch of points right after being submitted and making their way to the frontpage, while my submissions of the same content that have been made a bit earlier never got any upvotes whatsoever. Personally, I haven't done it and don't intend to. On the other hand, I'm guilty of checking the newest articles only after I submitted something myself.
- Scriptor 17y agoI once alluded to something on IRC that I'd submitted here. Granted, I didn't directly link to anything and they found it themselves, it still felt like cheating a little. Either way, the post only started to get a significant number of points after the first couple of outside votes brought it somewhere in the frontpage.
- makmanalp 17y agoPeople like me who subscribe to the RSS feed get almost every story, which is equivalent to newest I think. As a sidenote, maybe there should be a "hourly / daily new good stuff" feed rather than a dump of everything.
- elblanco 17y agoI usually look at it instead of going to page 2.
- proee 17y agoHere's an idea... Make the first 5 listings on the HN frontpage be the 'newest' entries, followed by the top rated entries. This would force people to scan past new items and give them their "30-seconds" of fame. Plus it would keep the front page very fresh feeling. It's like singing in front of Simon Cowell for American Idol tryouts.
- johns 17y agoThat's a prominent position to put spam in (which frequently consumes the newest page)
- proee 17y agoIn looking on the newest entries page, I don't see any spam.
- johns 17y agoHow often do you watch it? It moves faster during the day. There are times where there is more spam than not. And if you feature it on the home page, the amount will only go up.
- Tichy 17y agoenable "showdead" in your profile
- silvestrov 17y agoI just checked the users of the posts on the first page. All users that have (almost) no karma have posted junk. Not all posts by high-karma users are good, but a base level of karma required for posting can't hurt. If somebody does't spend time on the site commenting to archive e.g. 25-100 karma, why should we expect that user to provide a lot of valuable links within the sites focus?
- DenisM 17y agothat's easy to fix - require karma or age above certain level.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- chl 17y agoNo, that the story didn't get any votes just made it a good opportunity to test a long-standing pet hypothesis of mine.
- jayair 17y agoI submitted a Ask HN post about our service (Personal Trending Topics) and didn't get a response - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1118331 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1118331 I posted it at a time when there was a lot of other stuff getting posted so it got buried really quickly. And now I feel discouraged to post it again...
- megamark16 17y agoI follow (and am followed) by several HN'ers and I've noticed that sometimes they will tweat a title and link to something they've posted (or found interesting), and I usually click through and (if I find it interested) upvote it. Use your network, and don't be discouraged, I'll vote for your stuff :)
- mnemonicsloth 17y agoI always read /newest first. I figure there's a pretty good incentive. Early votes have the greatest impact. So at the cost of a little bit more time spent foraging, you can promote more stuff you're interested so it will get talked about by lots of smart people. I think I get a better collection of saved links too, but that's subjective.
- jluxenberg 17y agoTrue. Reminds me of Derek Sivers's first follower idea that's been making the rounds lately: http://sivers.org/ff2 http://sivers.org/ff2
- Vindexus 17y agoI like to scan the newest page for Ask HN: Review my startup ______ posts. They don't seem to make it to the front as often and I find them immensely interesting. I also scan the newest page after I'd digested all the stuff I find interesting on the main page. I'm on the site a lot so I go to newest to get more of my fix.
- GrandMasterBirt 17y agoI rarely read newest. I go to /classic usually.
- chl 17y agoInteresting. What's the difference between the default frontpage and /classic? Update: Thanks to SearchYC.com, I found the answer here -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1024293 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1024293
- pg 17y agoHmm, I'm surprised that the suspicious vote detector didn't catch this case. I'll have to tighten it up a bit.
- chl 17y agoProbably because the votes weren't all that suspicious: two semi-regular HN readers who upvote a story in quick succession, but certainly not simultaneously - I have no idea how you'd like to "catch" those (or even whether that would be all that desirable). BTW, have you ever thought about making other people's "saved" views (i.e. their upvotes) public (maybe w/ opt-in)? It would be an awesome data set for collaborative filtering ...
- pg 17y agoThe submission and the first two upvotes were simultaneous at the 1 minute resolution we use for those things, and that is usually a sign of something fishy. Usually there's something else fishy too, and it's the other things we currently look for.
- mixmax 17y agoGlad to hear you're actively doing something about this. It's been discussed a lot here, and it seems to be a real problem.
- jrockway 17y agoI always ask my friends to upvote my articles. What are friends for?
- chl 17y agoAs an aside, I'd rather focus on having more people exposed to fresh stories; that'd make "cabal upvoting" much tougher.
- tokenadult 17y agoEvery time I visit HN (which is several times a day), I read the main page first, and then immediately go to the newest page. I upvote submissions that satisfy intellectual curiosity, come from sources I trust, and don't duplicate something recently posted here. I also go to the noobs views http://news.ycombinator.com/noobstories http://news.ycombinator.com/noobstories http://news.ycombinator.com/noobcomments http://news.ycombinator.com/noobcomments from time to time, especially right after I have seen what appears to be a noob story that deserves a flag on the newest page.
- petercooper 17y agoI look at it a few times a week and I consider myself a pretty active member. If there were a "better" (and I can't define what that is) way to monitor new entries without having to keep going back to the page, I probably would.
- wglb 17y agoI check newest when waiting for a compile. Thanks to the speed of today's computers and languages, that check is not a very long one. Also, when I submit something, i check down the resulting page for interesting items. I occasionally have a browser open on another computer on the newest and refresh that if i am out of HN stuff to read. And while I don't ask friends to vote, it is very time-of-day sensitive. If it gets a few votes in the first hour (just guessing here) then it is quite possible for it to land on the front page. Once it lands on the front page, it is going to see a secondary effect, which is more likely to be on the merits as judged by a larger audience. Beyond that threshold (hour? two?) no votes means it will be off the "newest" page, likely to never be seen again. Except if someone else posts the same article, RiderOfGirafefes will find the dup.
- jacquesm 17y agoI read the 'new' page (and new page #2) first, then after that maybe I'll read the main page.
- hockeybias 17y agoRarely, thanks for the reminder!
- mickt 17y agoNever. I use a RSS reader rarely browse the site. I also don't see a RSS feed for http://news.ycombinator.com/newest http://news.ycombinator.com/newest .
- zarski 17y agoDidn't even know about /newest. I am going to checking it now.