What do you mean you've recently been heading to the "New" section? That happens to be how the site works. Submissions don't end up on the front page for any ot

What do you mean you've recently been heading to the "New" section? That happens to be how the site works. Submissions don't end up on the front page for any other reason than people browsing New and upvoting submissions. The majority of submissions have 0 comments because again, that is how the site works. HN is a link aggregator first and foremost, and discussion follows upon the discovery of a resource that encourages intellectual curiosity. This is entirely controlled and decided by the site users themselves, not the one who submits. The authority is "users as a whole" rather than "a single user". > if someone took the time to post a url on HN, surely a discussion on the topic is the reason? For sure a lot of discussions could benefit from an initial comment, but the main reason is generally the fact that the submitter himself found it interesting and wants to share. Alternatively, it's a highly trending topic (breaking news or something else) and it's left up for a broader discussion. > Would it not be more useful to require the poster of the url add a comment to kick off the discussion? This would lead to a lot less submissions overall which is bad for the site and the community. In my own experience as someone who submits stories, there are often stories I will submit that I myself don't grasp fully, but I know for a fact that other people on this site would be interested to read/learn about it. In such a case, I could never leave a meaningful comment but I could still benefit from all the karma that comes with a good submission.