Far and away, most of my pageviews are on recent threads. However, the oldest threads are the ones that give me the most value: if I happen upon an old thread,

Far and away, most of my pageviews are on recent threads. However, the oldest threads are the ones that give me the most value: if I happen upon an old thread, it's because it contains advice on a topic that I searched. In other words, when I use HN on a daily basis for the community, I'm browsing the latest articles in high-volume fashion. When I use it as a technical resource, I'm probably only hitting a few old articles. But pageview-for-pageview, the old articles that pop up when I'm doing a search offer me much more value than the ones I browse daily. While you must certainly be right re: the degree to which traffic goes to old vs new articles, I think you might be underestimating the value of old HN threads. The traffic going to old articles probably has different purpose and those pageviews are probably not isomorphic to typical pageviews coming from the front page.