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Are top stories biased towards the preferences of those who browse the new page?
This is something that has been on my mind for years as an HN user: posts sometimes make it to the front page in as few as 3 or 4 initial votes, but the demographic of users who give those initial votes is the very small section of users who make a deliberate decision to visit the “new” page.
It seems like this means that spending time on that page, and commenting on or upvoting things you find interesting is a pretty influential way to project your preferences on the reading material of HN users.
Bonus question: is this a good or a bad thing?
- Gormisdomai 3y agoI was browsing an old thread about this, and this comment from 2010 put it very well https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1076422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1076422 which is where I got the phrasing of the title from
- uberman 3y agoIf the worth of new posts was not judged by users who view new posts, how else should they be judged?
- Gormisdomai 3y agoYou could, for example, show all front page users a random selection of new posts alongside top content.
- compressedgas 3y agoNo, I browse the new page because the top stories are mostly irrelevant to me.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]