Ask HN: Should HN users be incentivized to use/visit newest submissions? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Should HN users be incentivized to use/visit newest submissions?

71 pointsjicea58 comments

I’m a HN user for 10 years, and I realized that I’ve newer used nor visit « /newest » page on HN. I always use the home page, where the top 30/60 upvoted submissions are. Quality submissions can only reach visibility if HN users upvote them from /newest so I wonder if we shouldn’t be incentivized in any way to do so?

View on HN

I often come to HN for the discussions, not for the links themselves, and unfortunately that's something missing in "New". It happens quite often that the submission itself is not terribly interesting (e.g. a blog post ranting about some database engine), but nonetheless it spawns a fascinating discussion, filled with first-hand anecdotes and other insights.

So when I browser "New" I usually upvote submissions that have potential to create an interesting discussion (so I upvote what I believe _other_ people will find interesting, in a Keynesian beauty contest way).

Same here. I come to HN to sense the heartbeat of the industry. What are the opinions, the controversies, the trends, the public sentiment. It's not even the technicalities that interest me herer.

> the public sentiment

Mostly the same here, but I also realize HN is such a tiny slice of the public that sometimes you get a opinion it feels like is generally agreed upon because every single HN user subscribes to that idea, but when you come out in the afk world it turns out most people just don't give a shit about it.

I've had an email from Dang, I think, in the past, and so has a buddy of mine.

> A submission that you posted to Hacker News looks good, but hasn't had much attention so far. We put it in the second-chance pool, so it will get a random placement on the front page some time in the next day or so.

So there are mechanisms to get new content on to the front page, but they're dependent on Dang noticing them.

Not just that. I and others have noticed submissions that looked interesting but didn’t make front page, and emailed the post ID/link to the HN email address. It’s not a guarantee, but it helps good things from being missed.

I've never succeeded in getting even a single upvote on links I submit. I've stopped bothering, there seems to be no point. It's not the quality of the links either. It just doesn't have a high chance of getting through. I've actually seen links that I submitted land to the front page a day or so later when somebody else resubmitted them. You basically need to get lucky with the right people actually looking at the new section in the few minutes it will be on there. After that it's gone.

One interesting enhancement that would help with that and that also addresses the problem of duplicates is to simply count duplicate link submissions as an upvote on the original. Most popular links have numerous duplicates before and after that did not make it. Some links actually make it to the front page multiple times.

So use the link as a Unique Resource Locator and treat them like the ids they are.

> One interesting enhancement that would help with that and that also addresses the problem of duplicates is to simply count duplicate link submissions as an upvote on the original.

It does, for a time (a few hours?) after the original submission.

But when you repost a link two hours later on a submission that didn't get any traction, that upvote is meaningless and a new submission with a new chance of traction might have been better.

Huh, I thought HN actually prevented you from resubmitting the same URL for a certain period of time (at least a few weeks).

I always thought people added some query parameter or something to get around that restriction to resubmit.

Not if other people resubmit them.

I just tested it. I picked something[1] off of /newest that was 4 hours old, and created a new submission with that as the link and the same title. It seemed like it submitted, but on closer look, HN had actually just taken me to the old post. The poster was still the previous person, the time was still the previous submission time. Funnily though, it actually upvoted it. I hadn't upvoted it before, but submitting it caused me to automatically upvote the other person's post.

I guess I could try it with different ages if you want.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30185632

I expected you to have submitted around 100 links without any of them getting traction, but you have submitted three, and complaining that none of them hit the frontpage? HN might be a small place compared to many other social media, but it's not that small, countless of links are submitted every day, and yes, it's not simple to get a story to the frontpage but it's not that hard if it's interesting either. It also depends on what sources you're submitting from, that could have something to do with it, as the submission you've done are not from "popular" domains, so people won't even give them a chance (specifically, I think techcrunch is penalized automatically as they usually have very poor articles).

According to my profile page, I've made almost 200 submissions since Sept 2019, with many of them ending up on the frontpage. Even if the "success" (I wouldn't call hitting the frontpage success even) rate is low, even ending up on the second or third page sometimes yield interesting discussions, which is my main goal with doing submissions to HN in the first place.

> One interesting enhancement that would help with that and that also addresses the problem of duplicates is to simply count duplicate link submissions as an upvote on the original. Most popular links have numerous duplicates before and after that did not make it. Some links actually make it to the front page multiple times.

This already happens. I'm not sure what the threshold in time is, but sometimes I make a submissions and it takes me automatically to a story that is a few days old and adds a upvote to it.

Looking at my current submissions page, last 30 submissions, 8 of them got uptake (which I will say more than 3 upvotes), 5 of them got 15 or more, none of them in the 100s.

Out of the 30 I would also think 5 of them which got 1 or 2 votes each were lower quality submissions - of less interest although still suitable - for example this one "Science Fiction Is Never Evenly Distributed" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30085327 or "Literature-clock: Clock using time quotes from literature" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30044179

many of those that didn't get any uptake I thought were pretty great - like this one "Marie Boulanger on the nostalgic power of typography in The French Dispatch" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30130297

There was one that got 52 points that I wondered - should I post this - "Getting to Know the Armed, the Most Unknowable Band in Hardcore" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30082588

In short - HN Submissions sure are a land of contrasts.

on edit: In fact as a general rule it seems the ones of mine that get any significant uptake are because they were added to the second chance pool, not sure if maybe being in Denmark I post during disadvantaged times of the day or something, but that is my general feeling.

There's simply too many things being submitted. Hundred items per hour. Some people treat HN as a bookmark engine or something like that and submit way too much, others self-promote/spam heavily etc.

I noticed often things make it to top of HN after buzzing on Twitter for few hours; perhaps people on HN seeing stuff they already saw on Twitter are more likely to quickly upvote it without reading which lifts it to front page.

However there are a few users whose submissions I see each day on front page and I wonder how they do this.

I've never noticed this.

Which users have you noticed ending up on front page regularly?

E.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=todsacerdoti

64k karma in 2 years

Checking current front page... Yep there's one from him :)

Not every submission gets to page 1 but since he posts several links per day, at least a few each week get there.

> However there are a few users whose submissions I see each day on front page and I wonder how they do this.

Some people simply submit a ton of stuff that could be interesting (looking at you tosh [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tosh], who seems to average like 5 submissions/day). I'm also confident that the more time you spend around here, the more you learn about what kind of content HN would like and submit it only if you think it has a chance here. I read a lot of different things during the day, but only half of those things are even worthy of a HN submit, while half of those half would actually have a chance of getting upvoted.

One interesting enhancement that would help with that and that also addresses the problem of duplicates is to simply count duplicate link submissions as an upvote on the original.

That's how it works now. For example, I just submitted the URL for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30160524, and now it's on 2 points with no 'upvote' button next to the link for me.

Enough people visit the newest page such that that around 80% of the good stuff makes it to the front page, and about 5% of the bad stuff makes it (and then is quickly flagged to death).

I think it's working fine as things are now. Our information is imperfect enough as it is, even before taking into account the huge number of people trying to game the system to get their ph3r0mones to reach the front page (seriously, the new page can get pretty dismal). Complicating it further will give diminishing returns, and even risk backwards progress.

Agreed, there is enough critical mass in /newest to act as a first pass filter, if there really is something interesting that falls through the cracks the moderators will put it into that second chance pool or what have you.

Also generally there isn't as much hate on resubmissions/repost as for instance in reddit. So you can simple repost if you feel that you didn't submit it at the right day of the week, timezone peak time, etc.

>and about 5% of the bad stuff makes it (and then is quickly flagged to death).

I would say some really good stuff makes it among that flagged to death stuff that unfortunately is not among the things that HN does well.

That is very far off. It's not anywhere near 80%.

Maybe 1 or 2 of the top 1000 /newest submissions could be randomly mixed into the homepage results on every page load

I personally like the slow churn of front page a great deal. It effectively alleviates FOMO and keeps things sane here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21868928

Rather not, I like NH as it is. I do not want to get notified upon reactions, I do not want to be fed the latest, I do not want emotes wilder then :)

What makes this site so compelling is the quality replies & discussions and the lack of anything blinking and shiny.

Source: old man.

If I could suggest one concession in that a native dark mode be possible as an option.

FYI Chrome Canary has a "dark mode for websites" in incubator. It allows you to darken every website. On mobile it works very well on HN; the desktop exp doesn't have UI affordances yet though.

It's also in stable (incl. forks like Brave) behind chrome://flags -> search "dark"

That works brilliantly, thanks!

/newest is tricky because it's inherently the opposite of what most people read the front page for. What's a little worse is that there are actually disincentives to visit it - like many people, I have showdead on which is essentially harmless for comment pages because dead comments are rare.

It shows all the spam in /newest so on top of looking at a stream of unfiltered submissions, you also have to look at all the spam. It's too big of an ask - you'd like to do your bit to help the site but in this case it feels like the site goes out of its way to not help you.

In contrast to /asknew which is almost spam-free. Since /asknew was introduced about half a year ago (?) I have the feeling 'Ask HN' posts do reach more often the front page. This might back up your point because people seem to go to /asknew (and leaving an upvote/comment there) more often (less spammy experience).

It might be the luck of the draw but I see four pre-deaded comments in /asknew now vs five in /newest. It looks about the same, again, with the caveat it might just be a coincidence.

I'll also admit I'm an unrepentant, flaming hater of Ask HN, its parents, its parents' friends and the people who owe them money.

Can you explain to me what a "pre-deaded comments" is? I haven't heard of that term before.

Also, if you don't mind, I'd be interested to hear what you have to bring against the 'Ask HN' format :) (Edit: I don't expect a long paragraph, but maybe you could indicate a general direction)

So people visit new when they post a story, when I am on new I look over what is around and if there is anything I should upvote or flag if really bad obvious advertising. I guess it is probably the same for most users who submit things.

As it is submissions do show up on the front page, so it must be that some are getting upvoted, so I sort of think the system works good enough, despite my many quality submissions not getting more than one upvote.

Another thing to consider (at least something that I sometimes do myself) is that some people may open a story to read for later (or even at the time) but never come back to upvote the post or engage in conversation.

I almost have a different issue. I feel like I miss big news here, even though I check in multiple times a day. When using the "past" menu item, there's stuff on top there I never saw on top on HN. Does thing stay shorter on top than they did before? Didn't feel it was such a problem a few years back.

I felt the same way, until I found out about /lists (https://news.ycombinator.com/lists) and subsequently /best (https://news.ycombinator.com/best). Best is literally the best part of HN for me as it moves slower and contains the "Highest-voted recent links". Give best a try, and I'm sure you'll feel like you miss less.

/active is the best for this I feel.

I use and highly recommended https://hckrnews.com/ for this very reason. Chronological list of what’s hit the front page, and seems to have a pretty decent threshold

If you're worried about missing quality new stories because they skyrocket or maybe don't hit front as fast etc, and you're on Twitter there's some handy bots collecting posts at thresholds like 20 and 50 upvotes over the course of a day that are handy for what's good

https://twitter.com/betterhn20

https://twitter.com/betterhn50

https://twitter.com/newsyc100

Yes, it would broaden the subject matter that hits the homepage. Also, encourage people to upvote more often. There appears to be a 150:1 click to upvote ratio on stories which seems very low.

No, it works well as of today. The more new stories are upvoted the less time a good story spend on the front page ( because the front page has fixed number of links)

I wonder if you could come up with some incentive scheme where if you upvote something you get karma or a different set of points based on a) how early you were to the party, and b) how many upvotes things gain after you, sort of like the internet community version of a Keynesian beauty contest, or a prediction market.

This is obviously a bit convoluted and not really hashed out, but I got curious how the incentive scheme might look like.

Nah, I think it's fine as it is, I like that the frontpage is "slower" and that I can get all sorts of random, funny trash in /newest

Could we sign up to be reminded to check new with a intermediate page that might be displayed occasionally?

Maybe set the frequency we'd like the reminder?

I think requiring a starter comment for submissions would be helpful and up the quality of submissions. Not sure if HN has ever tried that?

I don't think requiring but at least allow the option to explain why you posted the link. I sometimes do that with a first comment just in case it's not obvious, and maybe that's enough.

Recommend against incentivizing visiting the newest submission - it would increase effectiveness of submitting content over the effectiveness of community moderation. That kind of change would empower the outsiders over the community, presumably resulting in decrease of relevance and gradual erosion of HN's local culture.

You might not be visiting New but someone is. And/or enough ppl are submitting naturally new stuff to cause stuff to float up. It works pretty well for notable and fresh things (and then even old stale rehashed stuff that the new-watchers constantly upvote also pushing it onto the rest of our radars)

The current way HN works is fine for news and links etc, but for discussions i personally believe an imageboard style will work better (based on the number of replies against time), though that means that certain threads that become arguments will also be on the front page.

I sometimes use the search engine to filter popular topics from the last 24h. That often gives a good pre-selection of interesting newer topics. There is a lot that gets posted on HN and you cannot read it all.

Sometimes I look at newest too, but it is a lot to read through...

I think the existing incentive is by browsing /newest, you can find interesting submissions and get a quality comment in earlier, and probably get more upvotes as more people view the comments page.

>Quality submissions can only reach visibility if HN users upvote them from /newest

I could be wrong, but new posts should show on the main page to at least a small amount of users.

Good line of thought.

Quality content tax-payers could at least know what they are missing when they reload the same home page / feed for the 10th time. Quantity has a quality, etc...

I thought HN randomly pushed new submissions to the front page for random users, and measures how many votes they get before deciding whether to put them onto the home page for more people. There was a post about the mechanism recently. (It's why getting friends to upvote your new submissions doesn't front-page them, as those votes are ignored).

If you find the unfiltered new submissions interesting, that's the incentive.

Is there any evidence that upvotes affect frontpageification?

Serious question.

https://medium.com/hacking-and-gonzo/how-hacker-news-ranking...

No.

HN should be as it is now.

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