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Ask HN: Is Ask HN Shrinking?

20 points by keiferski 2mo ago

I only see 7 posts in the Ask HN section. The other day, there were only 10. Is this due to a cap on Ask submissions, or something else?

cebert 2mo ago
Many of the Ask HN posts are lower quality. Additionally, with LLMs, everyone has access to personal research assistant that can investigate questions for them.
- chistev 2mo ago
  Oh, come on. Users have always filtered out the low quality stuff.
- keiferski 2mo ago
  I think the majority of Ask HN questions have always been looking for the opinions of the community, not just pieces of information.
mikhailfranco 2mo ago
Multi-year web traffic statistics for HN?
Bender 2mo ago
Is Ask HN Shrinking? I only have anecdotal information so take what you want from it. If one of my silly blog articles ends up on the front page I get a total of about 18K unique IP's that are mostly only humans which is about the same as I received last year. Not many people would be interested in my articles so take that with a grain of salt. When my articles are only in /newest I get roughly ~20 to ~40 unique human viewers depending on the time of day which is down a little bit from last year. That makes sense to me as a number of regulars are probably tired of the LLM slop fest. If I put on my tinfoil underwear I could imagine some concerted effort to use LLM's to drive people away from independent platforms that are unable to filter the slop and/or attempt to warm up accounts and control the narrative on a number of platforms. I am leaning towards organized crime being behind some of it. Thankfully a number of regulars have stuck around and flag most of it and team dang are doing a great job of automating some of this.
ThrowawayR2 2mo ago
There's the uncurated version of Ask HN at https://news.ycombinator.com/asknew https://news.ycombinator.com/asknew if you want to see more of them. (It's listed in the Lists link at the bottom of the page.) But it's mostly low quality submissions, particularly with showdead enabled.
mikert89 2mo ago
I think opinions on HN are less relevant and less information dense. Many people here are not keyed into the true trends in the industry, and instead are cynics
sph 2mo ago
Everyone bringing their wild theories without answering the damn question: Yes, it's been shrunk. It was a full page of posts until very recently (changed this week?) No idea why, perhaps because it was used as if HN were Reddit, and also Ask HN in their implementation has always been pretty bad, suffering from the same downranking system so if your Ask HN has a lively discussion, it gets quickly dropped from /ask, and only questions no one really found interesting enough to engage with remained up for days.
- mejutoco 2mo ago
  Why not ask for higher karma before allowing posting?
- daemonologist 2mo ago
  I don't think it's been shrunk, I think there just aren't enough high karma posts to fill the default (filtered) page. Old posts fall off due to karma decay and low quality posts get flagged or hidden by mods. I've seen it several times before (and thought to myself that it would be a good time to post). As mentioned there's also asknew: https://news.ycombinator.com/asknew https://news.ycombinator.com/asknew
andyjohnson0 2mo ago
For a while now Ask has been plagued by green userids slop-posting random takes like this is the r-site. If someone is doing something about this then good.
- purplemoonx 2mo ago
  I hate new people, glad I never was one
brudgers 2mo ago
It’s been tidal for awhile. I miss the full page visually. Intellectually, I don’t miss what typically sits in slots 11-30. Like the removed |More| link, I only looked that far down the page from extreme boredom.
anenefan 2mo ago
I have no idea, I was going to say it was only showing the last 2 or three days as I've struck using one of the /foo in the past. I would have then suggested points but not a fit, at least one thread 11 hours old isn't there ... but if anyone were hand picking topics it's one that I'd not include as it seem it's intention was to stir the possum. I would suggest change setting to show dead, then visit /asknew Edit, typo, no -> not
andrevalleee 2mo ago
[flagged]
Daxo 2mo ago
[dead]
bellowsgulch 2mo ago
Where else are people frequenting? The crowd here has changed, and I'm not what HN is now. Maybe I never was. I know a lot of people are saying much of social media has moved into private chats, Discord and such, but I'm just curious.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
Vahzryn 2mo ago
I think it is just how their algorithm works like new posts that don't get enough upvotes or comments in recent window get pulled down...automatically.
mr_big_bowls 2mo ago
[dead]

20 points by keiferski 2mo ago

I only see 7 posts in the Ask HN section. The other day, there were only 10. Is this due to a cap on Ask submissions, or something else?

cebert 2mo ago

Many of the Ask HN posts are lower quality. Additionally, with LLMs, everyone has access to personal research assistant that can investigate questions for them.

chistev 2mo ago
Oh, come on. Users have always filtered out the low quality stuff.
keiferski 2mo ago
I think the majority of Ask HN questions have always been looking for the opinions of the community, not just pieces of information.

mikhailfranco 2mo ago

Multi-year web traffic statistics for HN?

Bender 2mo ago

Is Ask HN Shrinking? I only have anecdotal information so take what you want from it. If one of my silly blog articles ends up on the front page I get a total of about 18K unique IP's that are mostly only humans which is about the same as I received last year. Not many people would be interested in my articles so take that with a grain of salt. When my articles are only in /newest I get roughly ~20 to ~40 unique human viewers depending on the time of day which is down a little bit from last year. That makes sense to me as a number of regulars are probably tired of the LLM slop fest. If I put on my tinfoil underwear I could imagine some concerted effort to use LLM's to drive people away from independent platforms that are unable to filter the slop and/or attempt to warm up accounts and control the narrative on a number of platforms. I am leaning towards organized crime being behind some of it. Thankfully a number of regulars have stuck around and flag most of it and team dang are doing a great job of automating some of this.

ThrowawayR2 2mo ago

There's the uncurated version of Ask HN at https://news.ycombinator.com/asknew https://news.ycombinator.com/asknew if you want to see more of them. (It's listed in the Lists link at the bottom of the page.) But it's mostly low quality submissions, particularly with showdead enabled.

mikert89 2mo ago

I think opinions on HN are less relevant and less information dense. Many people here are not keyed into the true trends in the industry, and instead are cynics

sph 2mo ago

Everyone bringing their wild theories without answering the damn question: Yes, it's been shrunk. It was a full page of posts until very recently (changed this week?) No idea why, perhaps because it was used as if HN were Reddit, and also Ask HN in their implementation has always been pretty bad, suffering from the same downranking system so if your Ask HN has a lively discussion, it gets quickly dropped from /ask, and only questions no one really found interesting enough to engage with remained up for days.

mejutoco 2mo ago
Why not ask for higher karma before allowing posting?
daemonologist 2mo ago
I don't think it's been shrunk, I think there just aren't enough high karma posts to fill the default (filtered) page. Old posts fall off due to karma decay and low quality posts get flagged or hidden by mods. I've seen it several times before (and thought to myself that it would be a good time to post). As mentioned there's also asknew: https://news.ycombinator.com/asknew https://news.ycombinator.com/asknew

andyjohnson0 2mo ago

For a while now Ask has been plagued by green userids slop-posting random takes like this is the r-site. If someone is doing something about this then good.

purplemoonx 2mo ago
I hate new people, glad I never was one

brudgers 2mo ago

It’s been tidal for awhile. I miss the full page visually. Intellectually, I don’t miss what typically sits in slots 11-30. Like the removed |More| link, I only looked that far down the page from extreme boredom.

anenefan 2mo ago

I have no idea, I was going to say it was only showing the last 2 or three days as I've struck using one of the /foo in the past. I would have then suggested points but not a fit, at least one thread 11 hours old isn't there ... but if anyone were hand picking topics it's one that I'd not include as it seem it's intention was to stir the possum. I would suggest change setting to show dead, then visit /asknew Edit, typo, no -> not

andrevalleee 2mo ago

[flagged]

Daxo 2mo ago

[dead]

bellowsgulch 2mo ago

Where else are people frequenting? The crowd here has changed, and I'm not what HN is now. Maybe I never was. I know a lot of people are saying much of social media has moved into private chats, Discord and such, but I'm just curious.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

Vahzryn 2mo ago

I think it is just how their algorithm works like new posts that don't get enough upvotes or comments in recent window get pulled down...automatically.

mr_big_bowls 2mo ago

[dead]