It seems that fewer and fewer discussion threads are prefaced with "Ask HN." I'm not sure if it was ever a formal rule, but I find it much easier to parse through the headlines when "Ask HN" clearly marks all discussion-only items, while its absence indicates a news item.
Are other people feeling the same way?
If so, how do we encourage this practice to continue?
I'll admit that I miss this a lot too, to the point where I often just go through and upvote all except the most trival "Ask HN" posts. The ability to ask for good advice from a very smart group of people was once one of the best features of this site.
I suspect that the posts don't stay visible on /newest long enough for a discussion to start and for the normal voter to find it worth voting for. I submitted an Ask HN post yesterday and it was off the bottom of /newest in little over an hour and a half, that is not long enough for a discussion to have become interesting.
I don't know if there is something that could or should be changed to improve this, maybe an /ask/newest?
Hopefully it'll settle down soon. It's great there is now the 'ask' page though which means at least that we can see such posts.
However, I find that when discussion/ask threads are mixed in with the aggregate, it's easier on the brain when they're clearly labeled as such.
Maybe I need a cognitive tune-up, but I find that I often will scan through the headlines, notice an ambiguously-titled thread, and have to do a quick judgment call: "Hm, is this a poorly-titled discussion thread or a rhetorically-titled headline?"
My argument is simply to remove those minor hiccups to improve the experience of digging through the firehose of content that comes through HN.
This would be a good solution if pg has the time to hack it together.
I think they just aren't popular anymore.