Ask HN: What’s the Purpose of /Newcomments? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What’s the Purpose of /Newcomments?

5 pointsnight-rider6 comments

I’m struggling to find a reason for HN’s comments page (/newcomments). Do people actually use it? If so, what is the reason behind why you use it? I very rarely visit that page and find it a bit overwhelming since it’s a live firehose of ongoing discussion. What purpose does it serve?

View on HN

It was created at a time when it wasn’t quite as much of a firehose:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070625191604/https://news.ycom...

When there are several minutes between every comment, you can see how it’s useful to get directed to threads with ongoing activity.

Used to be good for finding good interesting active threads, but if certain articles reach the front page, it’s going to be mostly disingenuous arguments and flame bait for a bit.

I've thought for a while that it should be curated. Don't show comments that aren't at least +2, nothing voted down or flagged, and preferably only comments no deeper than 2 levels from the root. Also only show a single comment from any thread, so quick threads don't overwhelm the feed.

The only downside I can think of, if it's really a downside, is that it would slow the feed down considerably. It seems like it does have the tendency to just provide low hanging fruit to trolls and snipers otherwise.

Well the top posts are posts that were once new and got upvoted and made it to the front page.

On a side note, as a non-tech guy who is into tech, I find stuff on the new comments page much more interesting than "top voted", and too specific posts as of right now such as "Algebraic Data Types in Elixir (appsignal.com)"

Lots of stuff on the front page seems to me stuff that is highly irrelevant to the "grand-scheme" of things

“All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.” – Winston Churchill

I have no idea but it is fun when I accidentally click it!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com