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pg recently created this page: http://news.ycombinator.com/ask http://news.ycombinator.com/ask

Magneus 17y ago
Given, and it surely promotes their visibility when you're looking for discussion threads explicitly. However, I find that when discussion/ask threads are mixed in with the aggregate, it's easier on the brain when they're clearly labeled as such. Maybe I need a cognitive tune-up, but I find that I often will scan through the headlines, notice an ambiguously-titled thread, and have to do a quick judgment call: "Hm, is this a poorly-titled discussion thread or a rhetorically-titled headline?" My argument is simply to remove those minor hiccups to improve the experience of digging through the firehose of content that comes through HN.
- _delirium 17y ago
  One possibility would be for the HN code to somehow visually distinguish them, with a slightly different shade or other indicator.
  - Magneus 17y ago
    Excellent idea. This would be a good solution if pg has the time to hack it together.
  - kgermino 17y ago
    They are already visually distinguished. You have to look but every story post shows the domain after the title while ask (URL-less) posts do not. Between this and the ask page I never have problems finding question posts. Changing the color or doing something else to try and distinguish the ask posts would probably only detract from the simply look of HN.
profquail 17y ago
I think the poster's point was that "Ask HN" posts are becoming less common (either posted less frequently, or just aren't voted up to the front page as often as they used to be). I'll admit that I miss this a lot too, to the point where I often just go through and upvote all except the most trival "Ask HN" posts. The ability to ask for good advice from a very smart group of people was once one of the best features of this site.
- samwillis 17y ago
  I had a look through /newest and there seems to be roughly one new Ask HN post an hour although with the quantity of new submissions that HN get every hour they quickly move off the first page. I suspect that the posts don't stay visible on /newest long enough for a discussion to start and for the normal voter to find it worth voting for. I submitted an Ask HN post yesterday and it was off the bottom of /newest in little over an hour and a half, that is not long enough for a discussion to have become interesting. I don't know if there is something that could or should be changed to improve this, maybe an /ask/newest?
  - justliving 17y ago
    +1 for /ask/newest
  - njl 17y ago
    I had a couple of submissions that I thought were pretty reasonable, but disappeared without a trace. I now make it a habit to go through /newest when I visit HN. I view it as a little work to curate a community that I get a lot of value from.
- axod 17y ago
  I think the recent problem has been an overwhelming amount of iPad/iPhone/Apple news,opinion,opinion on opinion etc which has pushed everything else out. Hopefully it'll settle down soon. It's great there is now the 'ask' page though which means at least that we can see such posts.
elblanco 17y ago
Weird, my last askhn isn't on that page.

Given, and it surely promotes their visibility when you're looking for discussion threads explicitly. However, I find that when discussion/ask threads are mixed in with the aggregate, it's easier on the brain when they're clearly labeled as such. Maybe I need a cognitive tune-up, but I find that I often will scan through the headlines, notice an ambiguously-titled thread, and have to do a quick judgment call: "Hm, is this a poorly-titled discussion thread or a rhetorically-titled headline?" My argument is simply to remove those minor hiccups to improve the experience of digging through the firehose of content that comes through HN.

_delirium 17y ago
One possibility would be for the HN code to somehow visually distinguish them, with a slightly different shade or other indicator.
- Magneus 17y ago
  Excellent idea. This would be a good solution if pg has the time to hack it together.
- kgermino 17y ago
  They are already visually distinguished. You have to look but every story post shows the domain after the title while ask (URL-less) posts do not. Between this and the ask page I never have problems finding question posts. Changing the color or doing something else to try and distinguish the ask posts would probably only detract from the simply look of HN.

profquail 17y ago

I think the poster's point was that "Ask HN" posts are becoming less common (either posted less frequently, or just aren't voted up to the front page as often as they used to be). I'll admit that I miss this a lot too, to the point where I often just go through and upvote all except the most trival "Ask HN" posts. The ability to ask for good advice from a very smart group of people was once one of the best features of this site.

samwillis 17y ago
I had a look through /newest and there seems to be roughly one new Ask HN post an hour although with the quantity of new submissions that HN get every hour they quickly move off the first page. I suspect that the posts don't stay visible on /newest long enough for a discussion to start and for the normal voter to find it worth voting for. I submitted an Ask HN post yesterday and it was off the bottom of /newest in little over an hour and a half, that is not long enough for a discussion to have become interesting. I don't know if there is something that could or should be changed to improve this, maybe an /ask/newest?
- justliving 17y ago
  +1 for /ask/newest
- njl 17y ago
  I had a couple of submissions that I thought were pretty reasonable, but disappeared without a trace. I now make it a habit to go through /newest when I visit HN. I view it as a little work to curate a community that I get a lot of value from.
axod 17y ago
I think the recent problem has been an overwhelming amount of iPad/iPhone/Apple news,opinion,opinion on opinion etc which has pushed everything else out. Hopefully it'll settle down soon. It's great there is now the 'ask' page though which means at least that we can see such posts.

elblanco 17y ago

Weird, my last askhn isn't on that page.