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Poll: How often do you check "newest"?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: How often do you check "newest"?

#101

Post by Jtsummers »

semolino wrote: post #100
psygn89 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Reddit I often sort by new for comments (which I know isn't the same as new topics), especially on thoughts over whatever thing I'm looking up. Does Hackernews have that ability or am I being blind?

My read on HN comment sorting is that just like its frontpage, everyone sees the same comment page. New comments are added to the top, and quickly sink below others unless they are engaged with. This is just a guess tho, as my account can't (yet?) see comment upvote counts.

No accounts (except the actual admins/mods) can see upvote counts on comments. That was a deliberate choice from a long time ago for reasons expressed at the time (by pg, IIRC) that I can't seem to locate now. The site originally made them public, but eventually made them private.

Re: Poll: How often do you check "newest"?

#104

Post by mna_ »

My HN viewing habit: check frontpage quickly (only the frontpage, rarely beyond that), check "new" for 5-6 pages to see if anyone has posted something cool, and then lastly check "active" and go through every page because that's where the interesting discussions are.

I used to think the frontpage was natural and unadulterated but then I learned that dang, tomhow, et al "curate" the frontpage, so you essentially see what they want you to see, but with "active" there's less of that.

Re: Poll: How often do you check "newest"?

#106

Post by defrost »

If you email hn@ycombinator.com and ask, you might get back a more accurate approximation of newest URL hits by uniqueIP over time.

That'll have it's own set of issues, but could be of interest for numberwang fans to compare against limited self selected poll data.

Re: Poll: How often do you check "newest"?

#107

Post by layer8 »

econ wrote: post #103
layer8 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On mobile, shorter menu bars save screen space.

It wraps to the second line on mine.

Depending on screen and font size, it can even wrap to three or more lines. The more lines, the more vertical screen space it takes up.

Re: Poll: How often do you check "newest"?

#108

Post by hnlmorg »

mna_ wrote: post #104

My HN viewing habit: check frontpage quickly (only the frontpage, rarely beyond that), check "new" for 5-6 pages to see if anyone has posted something cool, and then lastly check "active" and go through every page because that's where the interesting discussions are. I used to think the frontpage was natural and unadulterated but then I learned that dang, tomhow, et al "curate" the frontpage, so you essentially see w…

I don't think they curate it. From what I understand it is basically just "hot" submissions. However they do have the ability to bump individual submissions onto the front page if they feel a specific submission might have been of interest to the community but was previously overlooked when it was "new".

If I understand that correctly, then I think that's a nice balance. It means the front page is largely items that the community, as a general, that voted on. But it also gives the opportunity for interesting submissions to have a second chance if they did slip through the system unnoticed.

Re: Poll: How often do you check "newest"?

#109

Post by michaelsmanley »

happytoexplain wrote: post #25

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

Same here. I scan the post titles to decide what to look at, and only open the HN discussion if the article looks like the discussion will be at all useful. That's increasingly rare.

Re: Poll: How often do you check "newest"?

#110

Post by jazzypants »

asdff wrote: post #89
SOTGO wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Best" may include some new posts, I actually haven't checked, but the thing that stands out to me is how old many of the posts are. Ever since Reddit made "best" the default sort on the app I notice that any new subreddit I go to will show me at least some posts from more than two weeks ago. It's really baffling that Reddit seems to think it should be preferred over "hot".

I was going to comment I've never seen this before. Then I went to a subreddit and it hit me that I only use old reddit, which lacks the "best" feature. I'm not sure why people tolerate the new reddit website. It is so slow, busy, and chock full of ads. When I open it on the phone you are straight up missing a lot of discussion comments, so it is broken too. You click a comment it looks like it has no subcomments und…

I prefer the new design because the text is readable on my phone, and it has a native dark mode. I don't see any of the ads because I use an ad blocker.

Also, I have no idea what you mean about the comments thing. I can immediately see all comments other than the ones that have been collapsed due to having negative karma.

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