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Poll: How often do you check "newest"?
Submissions rely on early upvotes to get to the main page, and I was wondering how many people actually visit "newest" to give those submissions a chance.
It would be nice to correlate this with people who have "Show Dead" turned on, but this is a start. Polls suffer from selection bias, but it might be interesting.
Pick whichever is closest ...
- idle_zealot 4mo agoSometimes I miss when aiming for the Y logo to refresh the main page or Threads to read replies. Does that count?
- mhitza 4mo agoCouple of times a year.
- SanjayMehta 4mo agoI don't even know how to check newest except by accident.
- manfromchina1 4mo agoI rarely go to the front page.
- theandrewbailey 4mo agoEvery time I come to HN, I go to newest first before really looking at the main page.
- PowerElectronix 4mo agoI wonder about the bias in this survey as it goes from newest to the main page. From one that only ever opens the main page.
- CamperBob2 4mo agoI usually go through https://brutalist.report/ https://brutalist.report/ rather than HN's own 'new' link. It seems to filter out a lot of slop and self-promotion.
- abcd_f 4mo agoTwice a year
- s_dev 4mo agoUsually when I've submitted something myself.
- techteach00 4mo agoIf I get past page 3 without seeing anything interesting I will generally try new.
- 1over137 4mo agoWhere/what is newest? I see a “new” on the top page, is that what is meant?
- bstsb 4mo agoit’s referring to the page available at /newest - the “new” link leads to it
- peesem 4mo agoyes, the "new" anchor links to /newest
- goodmythical 4mo agoGiven that that link points to https://news.ycombinator.com/newest https://news.ycombinator.com/newest , yes.
- josefritzishere 4mo agoI use https://hckrnews.com/ https://hckrnews.com/ . I prefer new over upvoted.
- econ 4mo agoChange the link text from new to newest. Use the big word.
- cortesoft 4mo agoI go to newest when I want to check if there is an outage with GitHub or AWS or something
- GaryBluto 4mo agoVery rarely, showdead on
- chistev 4mo agoIf by newest you mean new, then I check it several times a day. It's a nice way of finding interesting content and submissions that will never make it to the Frontpage either because of bad timing or whatever reason.
- gpvos 4mo agoYeah, it's "newest" in the URL but labelled "new" in the menu.
- Imustaskforhelp 4mo agoWhenever I interact with the main posts of Hackernews and I am interested for more, which happens almost multiple times per day or atleast once a day.
- saltcured 4mo agoIronically, I use "new" on other sites to bypass their algorithms and see the raw stream. But I've never even had the urge here, nor really remembered it exists. It's probably because I have always looked at HN as a sort of amusement or curiosity. The curated listing is part of the entertainment. Not because it usually resonates for me, but because it gives me this glimpse into Otherness. The comments can be more resonant, once in a while. It's a bit like wandering through the bar district and finding your old haunts missing and replaced with weird facades and fashions. But here and there, you notice some patrons are interjecting with stories eerily similar to the one on the tip of your tongue...
- keybored 4mo agoSometimes I want to see what kinds of submissions are dead and one minute old.
- hluska 4mo agoI don’t know if this is the data point you’d like, but I forget that it exists. I forget to such a point that I’m going to check out newest now because it seems like a page I should include every visit here. So my answer is ‘never’ but I’m working on it. I keep showdead turned on. Edit - I have been making a big mistake here for a long time. Newest is a heck of a good page and I need to make visiting it into a habit. Thanks for posting this poll; I wouldn’t have remembered that I forgot about a feature without this.
- sph 4mo agoOnly when I post, because I’m superstitious that if I don’t upvote new posts no one is gonna upvote mine. It doesn’t work.
- happytoexplain 4mo agoI consume the RSS firehose exclusively, so I guess the answer is "constantly". I have no idea which submissions are highly voted.
- Brajeshwar 4mo agoI tried this and it was unbearable.
- happytoexplain 4mo agoYeah, I'm certainly in the minority. I have an "all or nothing" brain problem. To be clear, I'm not reading tons of submissions. I just don't like the idea of only being presented with the top N submissions by vote count. I'd rather scroll a feed that auto-marks each one as read until I see something interesting. I have the same problem with YouTube. I (almost) only consume entire channels via RSS feeds (sans shorts). I never see the home page, and I only occasionally click an algorithmic recommendation.
- arnvidr 4mo agoI do the same (both here and YT). I stay away from algorithmic anything. If something is too high volume to avoid it, I'd rather avoid that something.
- falsaberN1 4mo agoI do the same thing, I never really noticed what submissions are high rank or not, I just come for my own interests.
- michaelsmanley 4mo agoSame here. I scan the post titles to decide what to look at, and only open the HN discussion if the article looks like the discussion will be at all useful. That's increasingly rare.
- binaryturtle 4mo agoI only have "new" here, and not "newest". Am I missing something?
- Jtsummers 4mo agoThe URL is: https://news.ycombinator.com/newest
- happytoexplain 4mo agoThe URL is /newest. I'm a little confused by there being multiple people in the comments who are confused by this. They're basically the same word, and even if they weren't, you only have to look at the URL bar to see "newest". I know it's an unimportant phenomenon for me to be commenting on, but it strikes me as unusual.
- zamadatix 4mo agoHN is infamous for having extra "hidden" functionality you're just supposed to know exists if you want to use/unlock it.
- happytoexplain 4mo agoOh? Like what? I am actually ignorant here. Edit: Neat. Thanks, all.
- clifflocked 4mo agoSee /active
- Confiks 4mo agoThe "Lists" page, lists most of such 'hidden' functionality: https://news.ycombinator.com/lists https://news.ycombinator.com/lists (which itself is linked in the footer).
- zamadatix 4mo agoDownvoting/flagging kind of just "appear" for most before they get a chance to read about it being a thing. Even when someone unlocks flagging they often don't know you can flag comments instead of just downvote them because you have to load the direct link (most easily, the timestamp link) to see it. I actually don't remember how you're supposed to know about https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc. I'm pretty sure it's not linked on the main page and the input box doesn't make mention of it. There are some lists out there (probably easiest to just ask AI or check the lists page) of special URLs like /bestcomments or /classic. There are also some query paramters available for certain URLs. Keep in mind the lists page is not exhaustive, e.g. /over Many never poke around their settings enough to understand showdead or noprocrast exist/how they work. I bet a good number learned that polls were a thing from this post :D. That's what comes to mind but it can be hard to remember some of the things because you get ao used to them being there personally (I'm continually surprised users often reach the karma threshold for downvoting before understanding they can flag/vouch comments). I'm sure others can fill in some good ones :).
- saratogacx 4mo agoI use /active more then /newest because I often am looking for a discussion already happening so I can learn from others. I feel that new is wasted on me because I'm not confident that my own thoughts on what's interesting and worth front page promotion is well... interesting to the community.
- ryandrake 4mo agoYea, /active is HN's secret, killer app. HN's default ranking algorithm often penalizes stories that "get too much activity" which means that if you aren't one of those guys who refreshes the main page every 5 minutes, you're going to miss a lot of newsworthy articles that happen to get many comments. I'd recommend all HN readers visit /active once at the end of the day to see what The Algorithm hid from the front page.
- 866-RON-0-FEZ 4mo agoThose missing stories are nearly all Reddit-style political flamewars which is not what this site is for, so don't think finding something on active is some massive W.
- pibaker 4mo ago/active is like showdead. Use it for five minutes and you'll realize why the guardrails exist in the first place.
- samtheDamned 4mo agoYep this is how I use HN as well. /new is definitely interesting when I do open it (usually after submitting) but because of the lack of existing discussion I don't usually seek it out day to day. It can definitely be rewarding though to be able to start the discussion on a new submission when it relates to an area of your own expertise though.
- Shank 4mo agoI feel like newest is almost always spam, or low quality things. I have showdead on, so I'm kind of biased though.
- AndrewKemendo 4mo agoI’ve almost entirely moved to /newest because there’s almost no point in discussion anymore I still comment on main threads out of habit but im probably 10% as active as a decade ago once a top comment gets locked into a thread nothing else matters and there’s no discussion around the edges All the “AI” debates are played out and boring with basically anyone still excited about anything related to AI treated poorly by people who have basically no expertise in it but mad capitalist automation came for their job
- perryizgr8 4mo agoOfftopic: I posted a Show HN and it was instantly flagged. I don't know what I did wrong :(
- GoblinSlayer 4mo agoIt's a bot.
- wannabebarista 4mo agoI do not have showdead on, but I visit newest most times I visit HN. I'm more likely to browse the headlines/comments on the front page but click on links on newest.
- dooglius 4mo agoOften the frontpage will include a new submission with few votes at the top, I recall others in other threads speculating that this is an intentional way (rather than an edge case in the ranking algo) of getting new posts evaluated without people having to visit /newest
- jedberg 4mo agoReddit had a term for people who read the new page -- the knights of new. The small group of people who make the site work by traipsing through the sludge that is the new page, finding the gems within. We did a lot of experiments to try and get more people to look at the new page or new content. One was placing one new item at the top of your home page and changing that every couple of minutes. The other was the "rising" sort, which was similar to the hot sort on the front page, but much higher velocity. None of them really worked all that well. The group of people who read new are a unique breed. :)
- psygn89 4mo agoOn Reddit I often sort by new for comments (which I know isn't the same as new topics), especially on thoughts over whatever thing I'm looking up. Does Hackernews have that ability or am I being blind?
- semolino 4mo agoMy read on HN comment sorting is that just like its frontpage, everyone sees the same comment page. New comments are added to the top, and quickly sink below others unless they are engaged with. This is just a guess tho, as my account can't (yet?) see comment upvote counts.
- Jtsummers 4mo agoNo accounts (except the actual admins/mods) can see upvote counts on comments. That was a deliberate choice from a long time ago for reasons expressed at the time (by pg, IIRC) that I can't seem to locate now. The site originally made them public, but eventually made them private.
- ro_bit 4mo ago> We did a lot of experiments to try and get more people to look at the new page or new content Is that what "best" sort is doing when browsing a specific subreddit? Occasionally I'll notice some crappy 1 minute old post on my feed that's out of place and realize the sorting was reset to "best" instead of "hot" instead
- OptionOfT 4mo agoTook me a while to learn that the link above `new` points to `/newest`.
- mastax 4mo agoThe recents list on my browser got changed to newest so I end up checking it by accident.
- Bratmon 4mo agoFor me, it's a tripwrire. If I'm ever feeling desperate enough for new content that I'm checking the "newest" page of Hacker News, that means I need to put down my phone and reset myself.
- agluszak 4mo agoSame
- a1o 4mo agoI have a feeling that new was much slower moving five years ago. Now if I check new everything is from the last 15-20 minutes.
- srean 4mo agoI wonder if it was ever considered to page size the first new page proportional to the current submission rate. The idea is that with a fixed page size a new submission would get evicted off the first page quicker and would hence suffer a shorter exposure. One way to counteract that is to increase the aperture. This of course assumes that people would scroll to the bottom and would do that more often than navigating to the next page.
- latchkey 4mo agoI have 3 tabs pinned: homepage, active, newest I then use https://oj-hn.com https://oj-hn.com to do all my navigation via keyboard.
- yNeolh 4mo agoA year or so ago, I started clicking “new” instead of the logo, which I usually click to get to the front page. I had no idea what was going on and just assumed HN had changed the algorithm and suddenly become much more active. I think it took me between one and two weeks to realize I wasn’t actually clicking the front page. Not the smartest sheep.
- tsumnia 4mo agoThe MORNING CREW of Digg 4.0 is hanging out in /r/diggaspora now if you still need that New reminder
- gchamonlive 4mo agoHere in Brazil there is a forum where before you can post your account has to sit there for 6 months after being created (that's Hardmob for those wondering which). It's a viable strategy, create a non-elistist barrier of entry for new accounts and ban shitposters in order to disencourage the sludge of low quality submissions. Blog post fully written by AI? Sloppy repo cooked up in a weekend just for the shows? Content ripped and repackaged from another site? Irrelevant content? Notification and content removal, three strikes and the account is banned. That and maybe a reputation system, like 100 points to be able to start submitting requests, I think it has a high chance to make dang's life easier.
- abroun_beholder 4mo ago[dead]
- gpvos 4mo agoAlmost the only time when I check "newest" is after I submitted something myself, since then I am redirected there. But then I do read and upvote what I find interesting there (in a way diluting the score of my own submission). I really should look there more often.
- StrangeSound 4mo agoMine is usually when I fat-finger the logo on mobile and accidentally press it. Then I read 2-3 entries before realising what's happened
- rixed 4mo ago/newest not so much, but I'm trying to visit /shownew (with showdeads) every now and then. I believe that's really why HN is for, and voting there a service duty.
- gojomo 4mo agoTwice a year, typically to see how fast my own submission is sinking into obscurity.
- jakub_g 4mo agoI used to check a few times per month, but recently the number of submissions went through the roof, which makes me less likely to check.
- Bender 4mo agoI have showdead enabled and refresh /newest probably 40 to 50 times per hour. I vouch and upvote things I think people might have interesting discussions about. I flag slop, advertising and anything that goes against the guidelines. This is the only site I log in to every day for several reasons. I sometimes take a break and play a video game, watch a movie or go for a walk. I filter out karma numbers using uBlock.
- 1123581321 4mo agoI read it weekly or so and have showdead on. It would be nice to have multiple levels of dead. I want to see what’s unpopular or questionable in new, not the dating site spam. I nominate showhell as a new flag and setting for spam. I’ve found some interesting sites from new before they were popular and started subscribing to them. This is the selfish benefit that keeps me going. It also feels good to be the first upvote on something that ends up hitting the front page.
- exolymph 4mo agoWhenever you submit a link, you get dropped on /new, so that's when I look at it.
- glaslong 4mo ago~monthly, when I realized I've exhausted all the front page posts I care about, but have not yet realized I should just do something better with my life
- bryanrasmussen 4mo agosomewhere in between once a week and once a day, essentially when I post something and I end up on newest I scroll down and check what there is.
- vulcan01 4mo agoMight be interesting to try emailing dang to see if they keep track of this.
- tonytamps 4mo agoMaybe once or twice a day, right after I check Top.
- thih9 4mo agoWe have polls?
- layer8 4mo agoCheck the FAQ link at the bottom.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- pmontra 4mo agoLess than once a day but more than once a week. A lot of interesting stuff lies beyond the New link in the HN header.
- hasbot 4mo agoI've looked at New a few times and have been disappointed with the quality of submissions.
- danbruc 4mo agoWhy is it »/newest« but »new«? Or is it »new« but »/newest«?
- CM30 4mo agoProbably a couple of times a day to be honest. I like seeing what sort of new posts are there, especially given how long the same few topics seem to stick on the home page.
- iJohnDoe 4mo agoThe curated list stays on the home page way too long.
- samtheDamned 4mo agoI think this would be an okay place to ask about the vouching process since it seems like a big part of the /new sifting system. When I'm browsing on /new as well as on /active (which I browse much more frequently) I'll see dead links that seem like valid posts and that I would enjoy discussing, but I'm a little worried about "over-vouching" so I tend to play it very cautious. Am I overthinking that process? Outside of running it against the guidelines/faq is there a way to see why a post was flagged?
- sbayg 4mo agoNew is my page 3. Comments my page 0.
- mna_ 4mo agoMy HN viewing habit: check frontpage quickly (only the frontpage, rarely beyond that), check "new" for 5-6 pages to see if anyone has posted something cool, and then lastly check "active" and go through every page because that's where the interesting discussions are. I used to think the frontpage was natural and unadulterated but then I learned that dang, tomhow, et al "curate" the frontpage, so you essentially see what they want you to see, but with "active" there's less of that.
- hnlmorg 4mo agoI don't think they curate it. From what I understand it is basically just "hot" submissions. However they do have the ability to bump individual submissions onto the front page if they feel a specific submission might have been of interest to the community but was previously overlooked when it was "new". If I understand that correctly, then I think that's a nice balance. It means the front page is largely items that the community, as a general, that voted on. But it also gives the opportunity for interesting submissions to have a second chance if they did slip through the system unnoticed.
- rurban 4mo agoOnce a month is not very rarely.
- defrost 4mo agoIf you email hn@ycombinator.com and ask, you might get back a more accurate approximation of newest URL hits by uniqueIP over time. That'll have it's own set of issues, but could be of interest for numberwang fans to compare against limited self selected poll data.
- Bender 4mo agoBe sure to weed out hits that are HTTP/1.1, they are mostly bots. There are also obvious bots.
- ettko 4mo agoi use this as a sort of morning paper, so, every morning i press newest. sometimes i even do it in the afternoon too, if i feel adventurous.