Hacker News Reader

Comment by vinceguidry | Hacker News Reader

The solution HN implemented for the problem of crowdsourcing front-page curation is to allow a short window of time for all submissions to be on the front page in order to gather points. Wouldn't work for Reddit, but works rather well for HN.

I have noticed that when I use a mobile app to browse HN, I'm far more willing to keep going past the front page, if only because it doesn't require clicks to do so.

I'd suggest an option for forever-scroll presentation for the article list.

EDIT: A quick Google search turned up this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4484616

EDIT2: Sadly broken, scrolls once then I get an error in the console. I may end up fixing it and forking.

View on HN

> The solution HN implemented for the problem of crowdsourcing front-page curation is to allow a short window of time for all submissions to be on the front page in order to gather points.

I wasn't aware of that…

My own HN submissions never made it to the front page without gathering two upvotes first. Those are pretty hard to get without a voting ring (err, two friends). There's the "new" page all right, but new stories come so fast there that it never lasts more than an hour.

Once you get past the "front page" threshold however, points tend to flood in. The second vote is probably worth several dozen votes on average.

Reddit sub-forums however lets new submissions land in the front page directly. Unsurprisingly, this makes voting pattern much more predictable (at least on r/programming and r/crypto, which are basically the only forums I go to).

I think a hybrid approach would be to show the new submissions list after the front page list, after the fold (maybe having a delimiter separating them). That way new stories still get exposure to everyone by default (of course, this should also be a user option where they can turn this on or off, but default to on).

Make new into the front page then unlock access to the real HN by reading X articles for Y seconds and upvoting Z of them.

Then have 1000 euro/month pro accounts to bypass having to work for your precious.

> I'd suggest an option for forever-scroll presentation for the article list.

As long as it's optional - if I get to the bottom of the front page, that's my trigger to stop wasting time here and get back to work. :P

> The solution HN implemented for the problem of crowdsourcing front-page curation is to allow a short window of time for all submissions to be on the front page in order to gather points.

I have never seen anything on the homepage with < 3 points.

That's indeed the minimum.

Try http://hckrnews.com/, infinite scroll works nicely.

Definitely agree, hckrnews is my main method of browsing Hacker News. It's nice to get a chronological view that keeps track of when I last visited.

The mobile version doesn't have a color scheme picker. It's harsh going from HN to hckrnews because of the white background.

> I'd suggest an option for forever-scroll presentation for the article list

As long as it's off by default. Infinite scroll is a major time sink.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com