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Tell HN: Want a better HN? Visit /newest
Most good posts die in /newest, buried under low-quality submissions.
HN depends on people visiting /newest and upvoting or flagging what they see.
A few minutes there each day probably does more for HN than commenting.
It’s anonymous, thankless work, like Reddit’s old “Knights of New,” but it makes a difference.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newest https://news.ycombinator.com/newest
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- tyleo 11mo agoI like /active personally which will show controversial topics. https://news.ycombinator.com/active https://news.ycombinator.com/active
- an0malous 11mo agoNice I didn’t know even know about that one, it doesn’t show up in the top bar for me
- ASalazarMX 11mo agoI think a list of active topics where the overall comment's upvote/downvote ratio is high, would help to avoid political, ideological, and rage posts; for those times where you just want to browse fun topics like labyrinth algorithms. Despite that, /active is not that bad for that.
- qq99 11mo agoFor me, the better HN is https://hckrnews.com/ https://hckrnews.com/
- Brajeshwar 11mo agoI do visit pretty often along with https://news.ycombinator.com/pool https://news.ycombinator.com/pool
- pmontra 11mo agoNo so thankless: there are many interesting links that never make it to the front page and the only way to find them is browse the first two or three pages of New. It's self rewarding.
- mixmastamyk 11mo agoIndeed, a few friends have been submitting an important piece on a new open/FOSS platform, but have been unable to get it noticed. It really needs feedback: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46079803 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46079803
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- mittermayr 11mo agoIf you're wondering what those /* urls mean and what else is there: https://news.ycombinator.com/lists https://news.ycombinator.com/lists
- karmakaze 11mo agoThanks for this. The classic[0] "Frontpage as voted by ancient accounts" list has me intrigued. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/classic https://news.ycombinator.com/classic
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- Leftium 11mo agoMy HN reader supports all those /* urls. (Plus chronological order from HckrNews!) https://hn.leftium.com/config https://hn.leftium.com/config
- afavour 11mo agoI’m grateful for those who do visit /newest because it’s a cesspit of spam and uninteresting links that, justifiably, never make their way to the home page. /active, on the other hand, is the real insiders tip. It shows the most active submissions, irrespective of whether they’ve been flagged off the homepage by users who want to avoid “controversial” topics or by an algorithm trying to avoid the same. You don’t want it to replace the homepage as the arguing will drive you mad over time but it’s worth checking in with to see what conversation is being hidden from you. https://news.ycombinator.com/active https://news.ycombinator.com/active
- zahlman 11mo agoI've been wondering, why isn't /active in the top nav bar?
- tekla 11mo agoHN is tries (and mostly succeeds) to discourage controversial topics.
- akerl_ 11mo agoDoes it? The rules seem to suggest that the intent is to discourage arguments and grandstanding in favor of discussions, and many controversial topics and posts tend to end up as shouting matches in the comments.
- monero-xmr 11mo agoI could name 10 widely held societal opinions that would instantly get flagged and likely your account banned if you mention a few times. Very hive mind place here
- akerl_ 11mo agoCan you cite any evidence of anybody being banned for the societal opinions they’ve expressed here?
- b2ccb2 11mo agoI really like https://news.ycombinator.com/best?h=24 https://news.ycombinator.com/best?h=24 with the GET parameter for hours.
- coffeecoders 11mo agoIf we all rely on others to skim /newest, the whole curation system collapses. Maybe the homepage should surface a couple random fresh posts too?
- krapp 11mo agoThis is what worries me. If too many people read these pages the mods might think it undermines the quality of the community and discourse and just remove them. There is only one acceptable way of using HN, and it's in the service of maximizing civil, intellectually curious technical conversation, and suppressing everything else.
- ChrisArchitect 11mo agoIt does. That's why if you look at any given point there's random posts on there with like 5 votes mixed in.
- alecco 11mo agoI remember this being discussed a while ago and I proposed a box at the bottom with a few pseudo-random /newest links. Bu someone raised issues with the idea.
- dang 11mo agoWe tried that once and it failed, because the median random submission is so much lower-quality than the rest of the frontpage. People reacted much as they would to finding kitchen compost in their breakfast cereal.
- andrewflnr 11mo agoI definitely think this is a good idea for a new social platform, though. Probably the key is setting expectations correctly. I do wonder if a new post quarantine box on the front page, marked as such, would do better than just mixing them in.
- tech234a 11mo agoMaybe this could be an option to enable in profile settings?
- Walt-Stevens21 11mo ago[dead]
- timonoko 11mo agoI asked Gemini to make me HN-reader that show only [flagged]-messages, because when somebody was triggered that much, it must be something interesting. Found out that they have devious schema to keep those hidden from anonymous visitor. And if you do this on a registered account, they block such perverts right away, said Gemini.
- andrewflnr 11mo agoDid Gemini not tell you about the showdead feature in your profile?
- timonoko 11mo agoThat is not the point. I wanted only [flagged]-content. You can get all stuff in JSON-format, but [flagged]-content is elsewhere available only to registered users.
- rufusdali 11mo ago[flagged]
- armenarmen 11mo ago[flagged]
- carlosjobim 11mo agoIf you find a good post on "new" and it doesn't seem to get any traction, then you can e-mail the moderators here and they might put it in their "pool" or "invited" list (forgot which one). https://news.ycombinator.com/lists https://news.ycombinator.com/lists
- jperras 11mo agoThere's also /classic, which only counts votes from user accounts created before a certain cutoff date. The cutoff used to be early 2008, I believe, but that may have changed in the last ~17 years :)
- kilroy123 11mo agoThis is the default view I use. But I'm kind of an OG HN user myself.
- dooglius 11mo agoI've noticed occasionally a new post will show up in my homepage, which I've interpreted as being a randomized injection of new stuff to see if it gets traction. If that's true (and this is all speculation on my part), it's not strictly necessary for anyone to visit /newest.
- ChrisArchitect 11mo ago"most good posts" don't die in newest, otherwise HN wouldn't be functioning/popular. Almost all of the top-top posts (save a few dupes) are fresh, original content that's popular with readers and/or generating lots of discussion. C'mon now. If anything, use /newest to see the actual mire of low-quality submissions and keep them there.
- _hao 11mo agoIf you want to see everything and pick and choose what's interesting use RSS to get everything - https://news.ycombinator.com/rss https://news.ycombinator.com/rss
- znpy 11mo agoBetter HN? Everytime i open /newest there's a lot of trash that hasn't been downvoted or flagged to oblivion yet. Not sure it's that better.
- the__alchemist 11mo agoCan you see why viewing "new" might be a good idea for overall site health, with this point in mind? What actions could you take to help with this?
- tzury 11mo agofact is, this one made its way from /newest to "/". And yet, indeed, it is up to us to weigh in for better content.
- tmvnty 11mo agoThere are indeed many ways of consuming HN/news. Here are just few ways I've collected recently: - https://hckrnews.com/ https://hckrnews.com/ - https://hcker.news/ https://hcker.news/ - https://hn.unlurker.com/ https://hn.unlurker.com/ - https://refactoringenglish.com/tools/hn-popularity/ https://refactoringenglish.com/tools/hn-popularity/ - https://lessnews.dev/ https://lessnews.dev/ - https://news.kagi.com/world/latest https://news.kagi.com/world/latest - https://forty.news/ https://forty.news/ - https://news.ysimulator.run/news https://news.ysimulator.run/news
- silexia 11mo ago[flagged]
- kazinator 11mo agoThere is a link to this: just click on "new" in the banner bar, right next to "Hacker News". By saying that it feed is better you are saying that the mechanisms which promote stories, and other mechanisms like moderation, make HackerNews worse.
- 8cvor6j844qw_d6 11mo agoI'm looking for a simple dark mode reader/frontend, but similar in the current HN style and adapted for mobile view (adjusted font size) for late night bed scrolling. No apps however.
- npodbielski 11mo agoThere is dark most mode browser add-on. To Firefox.at least
- petermcneeley 11mo ago> 'Most good posts die in /newest, buried under low-quality submissions.' If the system doesnt work why advocate for it? We are a technical people, dont we have a technical solution?
- flakiness 11mo agoI kind of enjoy /newest. Yes, the it has more noise, but sometimes you can get random interesting things without filtered by that HN bias. I do like that bias overall, but sometimes fresh unfiltered air is nice thing to have.
- labrador 11mo agoI second this. Sometimes people post off-the-wall interesting things that don't suit Hacker News. Even the dead and flagged links can sometimes be interesting, although 99% of the time I agree with the dead and flagged status. But that one percent can be good in another context.
- kylehotchkiss 11mo agoI like the more curated homepage, it sorts out of a lot of the promotions for people seeking VC.
- the__alchemist 11mo agoI consider it a duty to periodically check new, sample some articles, and upvote or flag if appropriate. Once a day, once every few days etc; a few articles each time.
- Der_Einzige 11mo ago/active is FAR better.
- redbell 11mo agoTotally agree on this although I have to confess that I don't visit /newest frequently, this is a nice reminder! Fortunately, the HN system has that feature called pool or second chance (https://news.ycombinator.com/pool https://news.ycombinator.com/pool) where mods periodically check then pick interesting submissions that were overlooked when posted and put them in the second half of the front page and see if the community finds them interesting. This happened to many of my submissions that I was surprised to see trending, sometimes after three days of submission where I totally forgot about them.
- whamlastxmas 11mo agohckrnews.com is my go to and has been for years
- chfritz 11mo agoLet's divide-and-conquer! -- like all good CS algorithms do. /newest is very noisy but if you subscribe to just a "sliver" that you are interested in and review those submissions, then we can improve voting together very effectively. Personally I'm interested in robotics, so I just use this in my RSS reader and literally look at every submission (because it's not too much): https://hnrss.org/newest?q=robot%20OR%20robotics%20OR%20robots https://hnrss.org/newest?q=robot%20OR%20robotics%20OR%20robo...
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- dcsocialclick 11mo agowhen would i be able to submit?
- zsolt224 11mo agoIt seems to me that unless you already have some social following and promote your HN submission there it’s impossible to get to the front page. No matter how good your submission is. I posted (subjectively) high quality stuff about longevity tools that had a potential to be on front page, but the /newest just grows go so fast that no one will notice it.
- nrhrjrjrjtntbt 11mo agoI did that and see karpathy has a bearblog https://karpathy.bearblog.dev/ https://karpathy.bearblog.dev/ wow ref: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46095250 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46095250