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New ‘past’ link on HN front page

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: New ‘past’ link on HN front page

#101

Post by dang »

bekishore wrote: post #85

Please consider a "first" and "latest" day in these options ... or let everyone go back years and find out the first day 2007-02-18

The first day is actually https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-09.

In the first few months, there were quite a few days where nothing was posted (see the difference between https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=61 and 62). If /front works for a day, but shows no stories, that means HN existed but there were no stories that day.

The navigation links work until they point outside the ultimate beginning or end of the data, and then stop appearing. That was a bit tricky to get right as I recall.

Re: New ‘past’ link on HN front page

#102

Post by dang »

tivert wrote: post #13
Karlax wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it just means how long the entry stayed on the front page. There shouldn't be anything special about computing this number.

Ah, that makes sense. I'd initially interpreted it as some kind of engagement metric.

Yes, I see how that was ambiguous. Have changed the language—is it clearer now?

If anyone can figure out how to make it shorter, let me know. It feels a bit wordy now.

Re: New ‘past’ link on HN front page

#103

Post by MilnerRoute »

dang wrote: post #96
MilnerRoute wrote: post #11

I like it. It seems to surface more unusually good stories -- but is that a problem? Won't the list end up dominated by a handful of winner-take-all stories, lingering throughout the entire day at the top of the list, rather than an ongoing series of slightly-less-popular stories popping in and out? If there's always going to be better stories with the "sorted by time spent" view, does that create a danger that every…

It's just a list of past front pages. Once each day is over, its front page never changes. Does that answer your question? (Well, it's not exactly a list of past front pages, because what appears on /front was never the actual front page at any point. Since that's always changing, we take a kind of average.)

Yeah, I was confused about how this works. But if the link appears at the bottom of the page, then this new page will be more of an afterthought (after reading the current front page and upvoting its stories at that moment in time).

Re: New ‘past’ link on HN front page

#106

Post by ggm »

Isn't it confusing to have the word [more] twice on the front page, but doing different things depending on if its at the top or the bottom?

I like the function, but some how "by date" feels more "more" than "more" does.

Re: New ‘past’ link on HN front page

#108

Post by forgotmypw »

pmoriarty wrote: post #59
forgotmypw wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I largely browse using the front page. I am not looking to keep up with every article ever, I just look for a few interesting things to read, then close it and move on with my day. I also find the design and web layout to be very pleasing. My RSS reading habits never recovered from GR's demise... but maybe one of these days.

"I am not looking to keep up with every article ever" HN's RSS feed does not post every article ever, but just those that make it to the front page. It's an alternate way of accessing the same articles, but I find it much more powerful and useful than using a web browser for the following reasons: 1 - I have a local archive of the titles of and links to each article that does not depend on HN. So if HN ever goes away…

Thanks for sharing Newsboat!
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