Ask HN: Why are you sorting by new? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why are you sorting by new?

29 pointshubraumhugo42 comments

I primarily read through the front page because of the vast number of new HN posts. But people who sort by new are actually deciding what eventually ends up on the front page.

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> Why are you sorting by new?

Otherwise, I wouldn't be reading the news, I'd be reading the olds.

I check Hacker News often enough during a day that if I only care about the most upvoted articles, I reach a point in the list where the items that I've already read and the ones I haven't get mixed. Sorting by new, the moment I see something I've read before, I go "Ah, no more news."

If I'm particularly craving, I scroll down past the chunk of most recently read to a point in the past where there was a larger gap.

"Ask HN: Why are you sorting by new?"

Because I spend too much time on here and exhaust the front page material.

ah so true so true.

I am actually reading this post on the frontpage but when I do (rarely) sort by new I am usually immensely bored/brainless and seeking some dopamine-hit (after exhausting the frontpage).

There's definitely a lot of randomness on what hits the front page. Generally the last item on the first page of /newest is ~30 minutes old. Few sort by new, even fewer go to thru multiple pages of it, so a post has half an hour to garner some attention before it slips below the waves!

(I'm not bitter about never getting a post to the front page...)

There's a lot of interesting content that flies under the HN hivemind's radar... or simply was posted from a wrong time zone.

The internet never sleeps, but the content aggregator sites don't acknowledge it. I wish they treated submissions posted in the last 24 hours as equally fresh.

New vs Recency*Popularity. Not two greatest choices, tbh, given how large and diverse the general HN community is. In some ways it would be nice if you could sort by upvotes by members of particular sub-HN communities (e.g. founders, or neuroscientists, or ...). Not sure how to do that, but might find more in-topic posts of interest to domain-experts (rather than general community).

If you're interested in browsing everything, try RSS. That way, you don't have to worry about looking at the same thing twice. Just scroll through until a title sounds interesting. That's what I do. The number of submissions might actually seem more vast than it is, because it's not like the "new" page is hiding everything that was there last time you visited.

I’m also here from RSS. I read Reddit the same way. I follow just 5 or 6 subreddits and don’t have to worry about falling into the trap of endless scroll in an app.

I sort by new with showdead on. I do it because there are some interesting topics that get flagged, and some that can be vouched for.

Great tip! I hadn't considered using showdead. Tons more to explore!

News are a flow, any news might matter at any point in time, of course, but news are most useful to elicit trends, know what's up in the world. Scoring by super-interesting thing is useful to learn, not to follow actual state of thing, witch means it's useful for a student who start learning something, not for a "pro".

IMVHO that's why modern scoring is bad: the good scoring must be personal, like reading news (usenet) with personal scoring, saving things that interest you for future analysis and to pass them summarized to third parties wishing to learn.

That aspect is often ignored by many but we aren't (unfortunately) the Borg, we are a society, but not "a collective" witch means we can't pass knowledge directly and any of us have metabolized just a certain part of human knowledge, that's why mere scoring "following a collective recommendation engine" does work a bit but not as good as a similar personal engine.

Zipfian distribution.

After scanning/browsing the first 2-3 pages, there's no point in looking any further. Might as well look at new.

Popularity isn't always an indicator of what is interesting.

It helps the community.

It's raw and there are some gems. It is kinda like browsing twitter via newest vs letting the algorithm decide.

Plus, a vote on a post in /new is has a lot more impact than a vote on a post on the front page.

I think a "rising" page like Reddit has will be a happy medium for many folks between browsing the FP and new pages.

There is a lot of good stuff on the new page.

Hear hear! HN has lots of interesting stuff that never hits the frontpage, although it's a bit hard to find the signal from the noise on the new page.

https://news.ycombinator.com/best and https://news.ycombinator.com/active are two other good pages that highlights stuff I missed from both the front and new page.

It's the first time that I discover these two "hidden" pages, now I wonder if there are others that aren't linked from the home page. Does anyone know?

Have you discovered the link to "Lists" at the bottom of the home page? Those two and many others are on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/lists

Thank you!

wonder why these dont show up?

yup, agree. I want to be the one who decides what I read.

I like to sort by chronological order and not to be affected by the voting/ranking. I would want to change everything else listed also in the chronological order, too. Some of them are, but some aren't.

I don't sort by new. Actually I love going to past posts and sort by 50% to see what was on top a few years ago, it's quite interesting. Many new things don't pass the test of time.

I want to sort by a mixture of new and HN karma of the submitter.

If someone has a lot of karma but a relatively new account it probably means they post comments/articles that are in line with the hivemind, but it's not an indication of quality no?

I agree; it would most likely just amplify the status quo, making already-popular people even more popular.

Aren't green usernames what you are looking for?

Green usernames show who’s new. There’s no similar indicia for who has the longest tenure or greatest karma.

Yeah, that's correct, but it filters out potential bots or spammers, who made an account for the sole purpose of submitting new entries. (I read parents comment this way that he wants to avoid blog spam etc.)

IMO some the best, most interesting posts are the ones that get lost in “new”. Front page and “comments” tends to aggregate too many flame war threads at times.

I think the front page is worse than it used to be, and I like commenting early on posts to set a tone.

When there is nothing that catches my eye on the default page I sort by new.

Is this some new feature I don't know about and can't find?!

It's in your top bar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newest

Ok, just that then.

If I read only front page I would miss tons of content.

For long time I used Hckrnews with top 50% option, but I was still missing some content interesting for me. https://hckrnews.com

Few weeks ago I switched to Serializer (just HN option) synchronized between PC/mobile and I am happy with my choice, I see much more posts, but not all new + I can easily mark those I checked as read. https://serializer.io

Once a day I check also top 24h submissions here, if I haven't overlooked something: http://besthackernews.herokuapp.com/

the frontpage reflects the anxieties of a specific set of people , and i ve found that limiting. occasionally i find interesting stuff in the new

News. It’s even in the title.

I read everything. Hckrnews is IMO the best source for news and current events, and because of my job, I am constantly scouring for news, and new ideas. Generally I read all first, then go through new.

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