I think the existing incentive is by browsing /newest, you can find interesting submissions and get a quality comment in earlier, and probably get more upvotes as more people view the comments page.
Ask HN: Should HN users be incentivized to use/visit newest submissions?
11–20 of 59 posts
Re: Ask HN: Should HN users be incentivized to use/visit newest submissions?
#12I often come to HN for the discussions, not for the links themselves, and unfortunately that's something missing in "New". It happens quite often that the submission itself is not terribly interesting (e.g. a blog post ranting about some database engine), but nonetheless it spawns a fascinating discussion, filled with first-hand anecdotes and other insights.
So when I browser "New" I usually upvote submissions that have potential to create an interesting discussion (so I upvote what I believe _other_ people will find interesting, in a Keynesian beauty contest way).
Re: Ask HN: Should HN users be incentivized to use/visit newest submissions?
#13I've had an email from Dang, I think, in the past, and so has a buddy of mine.
> A submission that you posted to Hacker News looks good, but hasn't had much attention so far. We put it in the second-chance pool, so it will get a random placement on the front page some time in the next day or so.
So there are mechanisms to get new content on to the front page, but they're dependent on Dang noticing them.
Re: Ask HN: Should HN users be incentivized to use/visit newest submissions?
#14Maybe 1 or 2 of the top 1000 /newest submissions could be randomly mixed into the homepage results on every page load
I personally like the slow churn of front page a great deal. It effectively alleviates FOMO and keeps things sane here.
Re: Ask HN: Should HN users be incentivized to use/visit newest submissions?
#15No, it works well as of today. The more new stories are upvoted the less time a good story spend on the front page ( because the front page has fixed number of links)
Re: Ask HN: Should HN users be incentivized to use/visit newest submissions?
#16If you find the unfiltered new submissions interesting, that's the incentive.
Re: Ask HN: Should HN users be incentivized to use/visit newest submissions?
#17/newest is tricky because it's inherently the opposite of what most people read the front page for. What's a little worse is that there are actually disincentives to visit it - like many people, I have showdead on which is essentially harmless for comment pages because dead comments are rare.
It shows all the spam in /newest so on top of looking at a stream of unfiltered submissions, you also have to look at all the spam. It's too big of an ask - you'd like to do your bit to help the site but in this case it feels like the site goes out of its way to not help you.
Re: Ask HN: Should HN users be incentivized to use/visit newest submissions?
#18No.
HN should be as it is now.
Re: Ask HN: Should HN users be incentivized to use/visit newest submissions?
#19I've had an email from Dang, I think, in the past, and so has a buddy of mine. > A submission that you posted to Hacker News looks good, but hasn't had much attention so far. We put it in the second-chance pool, so it will get a random placement on the front page some time in the next day or so. So there are mechanisms to get new content on to the front page, but they're dependent on Dang noticing them.
Not just that. I and others have noticed submissions that looked interesting but didn’t make front page, and emailed the post ID/link to the HN email address. It’s not a guarantee, but it helps good things from being missed.
Re: Ask HN: Should HN users be incentivized to use/visit newest submissions?
#20Is there any evidence that upvotes affect frontpageification?
Serious question.