51–60 of 93 posts
(EDIT: This wasn't meant as a diss... it's just that people know by now that saying "HN is becoming Reddit" is a no-no, it's even listed in the guidelines. So whoever has complaints or concerns about the site, often wants to make it clear that they are not playing the HN-is-Reddit card.)
(Update: On reflection, reducing usability might not be a great way to go. Typically that's a better way to reduce bad behavior than to encourage good..)
Submit on a Saturday.
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 fro…
However not all stories are created equal. Most of the stories on that page are from noob users who want to jack up their karma. Hence, the deluge HN on the weekdays (only dedicated ones stay around on the weekends) leading to this difference between the weekday and weekend articles.
How can we solve this?
One simple way to do this would be to post noobstories only to the noob stories page and sort the entries not by time, but by karma of the user as well as the votes given like the comments.
This way we could have a quasi front page which will create a positive feedback loop. Hence, there will be an implicit reward in going to the new page which will ensure that only the good stories were posted. Also, since older users (by karma, PG's metric) who are more settled in and are less likely to do karma antics it won't overflow every minute or so.
However, this might create a barrier to entry on HN and perhaps that's a good thing. This would force people to comment and get karma before it shows up over there. Hence, ensuring that the quality get maintained.
All in all with the same code behind the comments the new page problem can be solved.
(update: wrote a lot more detail)
But what if one were able to earn karma points by interacting with the "new" page. The details could be worked out to make it un-"gamable", but the basic premise is to reward users that put more effort into discovering posts in the waterfall of the "new" page.
The problem is too many submissions, not less people reading the new page:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1720742
It's an alternative explanation.
I think downvotes on new page can actually help so they can discourage users from spamming HN with articles in trying to build karma points
Alternately, make posting cost the user something, say 10 Karma points per submission, in that case users will only submit something they think will grab enough attention
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks Jacques. As usual, we agree. Sometimes I wonder why I reply to your comments at all, since we agree so much. :) I think what bugged me was the lack of drive-by readers. HN is pretty much the only site I submit to. I have no aspirations of blogging as a business. I blog because I want to, and I'd blog if nobody came by. So heck with the score or the front-page status. And no, it doesn't bug me that a large perc…
I think as Jacques suggests, the problem is sheer number of submissions, combined with the way the new page seems to work by showing everything: stuff thus scrolls off the bottom much faster than it used to. It’s unclear what could be done to counteract this.