Poll: How often do you check "newest"?

41 points | by ColinWright 3 hours ago

27 comments

  • wannabebarista 15 minutes ago

    I do not have showdead on, but I visit newest most times I visit HN. I'm more likely to browse the headlines/comments on the front page but click on links on newest.

    • saratogacx 26 minutes ago

      I use /active more then /newest because I often am looking for a discussion already happening so I can learn from others.

      I feel that new is wasted on me because I'm not confident that my own thoughts on what's interesting and worth front page promotion is well... interesting to the community.

      • ryandrake 17 minutes ago

        Yea, /active is HN's secret, killer app. HN's default ranking algorithm often penalizes stories that "get too much activity" which means that if you aren't one of those guys who refreshes the main page every 5 minutes, you're going to miss a lot of newsworthy articles that happen to get many comments. I'd recommend all HN readers visit /active once at the end of the day to see what The Algorithm hid from the front page.

      • happytoexplain 41 minutes ago

        I consume the RSS firehose exclusively, so I guess the answer is "constantly". I have no idea which submissions are highly voted.

        • saltcured 45 minutes ago

          Ironically, I use "new" on other sites to bypass their algorithms and see the raw stream. But I've never even had the urge here, nor really remembered it exists.

          It's probably because I have always looked at HN as a sort of amusement or curiosity. The curated listing is part of the entertainment. Not because it usually resonates for me, but because it gives me this glimpse into Otherness. The comments can be more resonant, once in a while.

          It's a bit like wandering through the bar district and finding your old haunts missing and replaced with weird facades and fashions. But here and there, you notice some patrons are interjecting with stories eerily similar to the one on the tip of your tongue...

          • sph 43 minutes ago

            Only when I post, because I’m superstitious that if I don’t upvote new posts no one is gonna upvote mine.

            It doesn’t work.

            • Shank 19 minutes ago

              I feel like newest is almost always spam, or low quality things. I have showdead on, so I'm kind of biased though.

              • I wonder about the bias in this survey as it goes from newest to the main page.

                From one that only ever opens the main page.

                • chistev 1 hour ago

                  If by newest you mean new, then I check it several times a day. It's a nice way of finding interesting content and submissions that will never make it to the Frontpage either because of bad timing or whatever reason.

                  • 1over137 1 hour ago

                    Where/what is newest? I see a “new” on the top page, is that what is meant?

                  • cortesoft 44 minutes ago

                    I go to newest when I want to check if there is an outage with GitHub or AWS or something

                    • perryizgr8 15 minutes ago

                      Offtopic: I posted a Show HN and it was instantly flagged. I don't know what I did wrong :(

                      • s_dev 1 hour ago

                        Usually when I've submitted something myself.

                        • binaryturtle 38 minutes ago

                          I only have "new" here, and not "newest". Am I missing something?

                          • happytoexplain 31 minutes ago

                            The URL is /newest.

                            I'm a little confused by there being multiple people in the comments who are confused by this. They're basically the same word, and even if they weren't, you only have to look at the URL bar to see "newest". I know it's an unimportant phenomenon for me to be commenting on, but it strikes me as unusual.

                            • Jtsummers 32 minutes ago

                              The URL is:

                                https://news.ycombinator.com/newest
                            • techteach00 1 hour ago

                              If I get past page 3 without seeing anything interesting I will generally try new.

                              • theandrewbailey 3 hours ago

                                Every time I come to HN, I go to newest first before really looking at the main page.

                                • econ 1 hour ago

                                  Change the link text from new to newest. Use the big word.

                                  • AndrewKemendo 16 minutes ago

                                    I’ve almost entirely moved to /newest because there’s almost no point in discussion anymore

                                    I still comment on main threads out of habit but im probably 10% as active as a decade ago once a top comment gets locked into a thread nothing else matters and there’s no discussion around the edges

                                    All the “AI” debates are played out and boring with basically anyone still excited about anything related to AI treated poorly by people who have basically no expertise in it but mad capitalist automation came for their job

                                    • GaryBluto 1 hour ago

                                      Very rarely, showdead on

                                      • hluska 44 minutes ago

                                        I don’t know if this is the data point you’d like, but I forget that it exists. I forget to such a point that I’m going to check out newest now because it seems like a page I should include every visit here.

                                        So my answer is ‘never’ but I’m working on it. I keep showdead turned on.

                                        Edit - I have been making a big mistake here for a long time. Newest is a heck of a good page and I need to make visiting it into a habit. Thanks for posting this poll; I wouldn’t have remembered that I forgot about a feature without this.

                                        • keybored 44 minutes ago

                                          Sometimes I want to see what kinds of submissions are dead and one minute old.

                                          • Imustaskforhelp 49 minutes ago

                                            Whenever I interact with the main posts of Hackernews and I am interested for more, which happens almost multiple times per day or atleast once a day.

                                            • mhitza 1 hour ago

                                              Couple of times a year.

                                              • abcd_f 1 hour ago

                                                Twice a year

                                                • SanjayMehta 1 hour ago

                                                  I don't even know how to check newest except by accident.

                                                  • manfromchina1 3 hours ago

                                                    I rarely go to the front page.

                                                    • I use https://hckrnews.com/ . I prefer new over upvoted.

                                                      • CamperBob2 1 hour ago

                                                        I usually go through https://brutalist.report/ rather than HN's own 'new' link. It seems to filter out a lot of slop and self-promotion.