I check the new section from time to time and I agree with the link you posted that there is a lot of junk/spam in there. It's no surprise that they can't just

I check the new section from time to time and I agree with the link you posted that there is a lot of junk/spam in there. It's no surprise that they can't just be randomly put into the main pages. Having a look at the 15 latest submissions for example. I roughly see: SEO spam, trump spam, a super complex physics paper, 4 well known news site, 3 university websites, VC spam, spam, one pdf download, a couple of articles, etc... I think HN could do with a "curated new" section besides the general "new" section. A bit of filtering to remove high volume subjects (virus, climate, trump) and to remove major news sites (new york times, bbc and co) and maybe university/paper sites. That should leave room to lower volume sites and personal blogs. Maybe filter to domains that had at least one article with 100 votes in the past years and see what's left.