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Tell HN: An Observation

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Tell HN: An Observation

#1

Post by DanielBMarkham »

For what it's worth, seems to me like nobody is reading the new page much any more.

Used to be I'd submit an article and get 60-150 reads as the article dropped off the new page. Today I submitted an article http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1723576 and got only a couple of dozen.

Now perhaps you guys have managed to figure out that all of my articles suck all of the time, but even then you'd think with 10x the traffic it would still translate into more initial readers from a year ago.

I'm not trying to complain that nobody upvoted my article! Hope it doesn't sound that way. I'm much more interested in the lack of drive-by readers now as opposed to a year ago and what that means for the site.

If you'd like to hear me complain, happy to oblige. Meanwhile the front page has gossip stories about how a lot of Angels are actually assholes, some famous guy quit Oracle, another guy rags on .NET, Uncle Bob is a great person, and more Google/Apple fluff, along with the more usual HN material.

Just seems kind of strange. Don't know about you, but all this industry gossip, fanboy-bait, and the lack of user-generated content drives down the quality for me in a big way. Combine that with a lack of readers from the new page, and it seems like there is a feedback loop setting up. It's not that HN is turning into reddit, but it seems like the mechanism of HN itself has changed significantly.

Re: Tell HN: An Observation

#4

Post by rewind »

You're unhappy that people aren't going to the New page so you wrote an observation that can only be seen by going to the New page ;-)

In all seriousness, it took me quite awhile before getting into the habit of going to the New page, but now I do it after going over the main page. It was actually only after seeing a comment that "people don't go to the New page" that I started doing it, so it was one of the rare times when a "reminder" post didn't annoy me and seem like whining. These types of reminders are legitimately helpful IMO.

I'd love to see new items integrated into the home page, personally. Like a split screen, or just have them listed at the bottom of the page, or just in a narrower column somewhere, or whatever.

But I'm not sure that that would have any effect on your other issue, which is the type of thing being voted to the top. They get there because people start by going to the New page; they don't get there on their own. So although giving more attention to new items might get more people to take notice, I don't think it would have any effect on what makes it to the top.

Re: Tell HN: An Observation

#5

Post by michael_dorfman »

One of the factors that I've noticed lately is that due to the quantity of new submissions, it takes only 30 minutes or so for an article to drop off the first "new" page.

I try to check the "new" page periodically, but I must admit, I don't scroll beyond the first page-- so, the article referenced above I missed entirely, and it seems like I wasn't the only one.

Which means that the problem may not be that "nobody is reading the new page much any more" as much as "things age off the new page too quickly for most people to notice them."

As for potential fixes: off the top of my head, I haven't the foggiest.

Re: Tell HN: An Observation

#6

Post by logicalmind »

Forgive my generalization, but I see HN as a handful of groups with some overlap. You have hackers/programmers, business marketing, pure entrepreneurs, and investors/angels. There are people who fall into multiple camps, but stories tend to fall into one of these groups. I think the point you're making is that topics along the lines of hackers/programmers seem to have fallen off in favor of some of the other areas. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Personally, I visit the "new" page as often as the frontpage and find many interesting stories there.

Re: Tell HN: An Observation

#7

Post by logicalmind »

logicalmind wrote: post #6

Forgive my generalization, but I see HN as a handful of groups with some overlap. You have hackers/programmers, business marketing, pure entrepreneurs, and investors/angels. There are people who fall into multiple camps, but stories tend to fall into one of these groups. I think the point you're making is that topics along the lines of hackers/programmers seem to have fallen off in favor of some of the other areas. C…

To be constructive, if my generalizations are correct, then HN could support some form of tags or categorizations to identify the kind of story being posted. People could focus on the areas that interest them and not see stories that don't appeal to them. This could also be a way to identify "gossip" and track its appeal to parts of the userbase. Just an idea...

Re: Tell HN: An Observation

#8

Post by diego »

michael_dorfman wrote: post #5

One of the factors that I've noticed lately is that due to the quantity of new submissions, it takes only 30 minutes or so for an article to drop off the first "new" page. I try to check the "new" page periodically, but I must admit, I don't scroll beyond the first page-- so, the article referenced above I missed entirely, and it seems like I wasn't the only one. Which means that the problem may not be that "nobody i…

It's obvious: feature a random article from the new page on the front page like Reddit does (a different one each time you load the page), so it gets some exposure.

Re: Tell HN: An Observation

#9

Post by robryan »

It depends on time you can spend on HN to, really with the speed HN moves these days it's hard enough just to keep up with some of the top stories. Only when I really have hours to spend do I get time to get past the stuff that catches my eye on the front page.

Re: Tell HN: An Observation

#10

Post by edanm »

I read HN quite a lot, and I have to say, I rarely get around to reading the New page. Honestly, it takes me a lot of time to just go through most of the stuff that hits the front page (including comments), so I usually don't have the time to check out more articles whose quality hasn't even been vetted.

I think HN really should implement a way around this. The most obvious is to randomly show new articles on the front page, give them a chance to collect some points (if they're good, of course).

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