Ask HN: What are your heuristics for deciding which HN links to click on? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What are your heuristics for deciding which HN links to click on?

#21

Post by danso » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 12:20 AM UTC

- Anything with >500 upvotes that isn't general news, the more technical/esoteric, the better.

- "How to write/build a [something]" if that "something" is fairly low-level, like a compiler.

- Just about anything involving bees.

- Highly-voted threads with mundane headlines -- i.e. either the content is good enough to not need a catchy headline, or its headline has been changed to be less clickbaity -- which might mean the mods thought it was worth saving rather than flagging into oblivion.

- Virtually any Show HNs that happen to make it to the front page

- Ask HNs that have > 50 comments.

Re: Ask HN: What are your heuristics for deciding which HN links to click on?

#22

Post by gnicholas » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 12:25 AM UTC

I’m a non-technical founder, so I click mostly on:

Accessibility-related articles (my field)

Education/edtech articles (my field)

Most Show HNs that I’m in the target demographic for

Political articles that have lots of upvotes or comments (though I won’t always have the patience for diving into the comments)

Science videos or novelties that appear not to require background knowledge

Re: Ask HN: What are your heuristics for deciding which HN links to click on?

#23

Post by koolba » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 12:27 AM UTC

I rarely click on anything not on the front page from a domain I don’t recognize. Even with all the noscript and ad blockers in the world there are too many baddies out there to justify the risk.

As far as the front page goes I lean toward titles that are about (in no particular order):

Infosec

Politics

Databases

Kernel / OS

News about major tech corps

I upvote stories that I want to see a discussion about or stories that I want to have a discussion about.

Re: Ask HN: What are your heuristics for deciding which HN links to click on?

#24

Post by aldoushuxley001 » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 12:36 AM UTC

aaavl2821 wrote: post #16

I've found that when there are a decent number more comments than upvotes (say 1.25+ comment / upvote ratio) it is generally a controversial topic, probably with a huge amount of subcomments under the top comment. If it is in my domain, I tend to ignore it, as I've often heard both sides many times before and its draining to see debates play out again. If it isn't in my domain and it is interesting, I'll check it out…

Why is it draining to see debates play out again? I know what you mean though, I feel same way, but just curious your take on it.

Re: Ask HN: What are your heuristics for deciding which HN links to click on?

#25

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 12:36 AM UTC

danso wrote: post #21

- Anything with >500 upvotes that isn't general news, the more technical/esoteric, the better. - "How to write/build a [something]" if that "something" is fairly low-level, like a compiler. - Just about anything involving bees. - Highly-voted threads with mundane headlines -- i.e. either the content is good enough to not need a catchy headline, or its headline has been changed to be less clickbaity -- which might mea…

> Ask HNs that have > 50 comments.

Apparently you make exceptions for interesting cases:D (currently this thread is at 21 comments)

Re: Ask HN: What are your heuristics for deciding which HN links to click on?

#26

Post by stephengillie » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 12:39 AM UTC

I start by scanning through the front page and clicking "HIDE" on:

  Betterridge Headlines
  Articles with a (YEAR)
  Articles with a [PDF] 
  "Do X in Language"
  Blockchain-related
  Mac-related
  "Ask HN: List things"
  Hiring notices

- Specific domains:

  All newspapers
  All longform sites
  All clickbait sites
  All health information
  Medium
  Github
  Wikipedia
  Stratechery

This usually clears out all the time-sinks, ads, "Github spam" and clickbait. And sometimes you find a Tesla article or 2 that's been pushed back to the 2nd or 3rd page.

Re: Ask HN: What are your heuristics for deciding which HN links to click on?

#27

Post by ohmatt » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 12:47 AM UTC

IpV8 wrote: post #4

I click on most things that start with "10 ways to..." and then immediately regret it. I then repeat the process with "Kubernuts (is/isn't) the best thing ever" and then immediately regret it. And then I click on the comments of any article that I have industry specific knowledge on and tell everyone why their opinion is wrong without reading the article. Gosh I need a new way to kill time.

Sounds about like me. Except I mostly lurk in the comments. I keep HN as my home tab though, so every morning I scroll through top posts and look for what appeals to me. Generally articles that are either a) dumb, and then I regret reading them, or b) too technical or too long, so I save them to Pocket, and then never read them. (I do actually read some articles, it just seems like a majority of the time I save articles to read and then never get around to it)

Re: Ask HN: What are your heuristics for deciding which HN links to click on?

#28

Post by spondyl » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 12:51 AM UTC

mettamage wrote: post #7

Hacker News is basically slowly but surely converting me more into a technical person. When I came here first, I mostly looked at the psychological articles and some web articles. But when I felt a bit more focused and bold I'd go for more technical articles. I have been doing this ever since and I have noticed there are two types of technical articles I really like: 1. any computer graphics reverse engineer article,…

It's surprising what you can learn by osmosis! You don't necessarily have to understand everything but you absorb over time, just like how children learn their first language I suppose

Re: Ask HN: What are your heuristics for deciding which HN links to click on?

#29

Post by ohmatt » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 12:55 AM UTC

I tend to (as others have mentioned) focus on languages or fields I'm familiar with. Lots of articles on frontend stuff, and JS libraries, even ones I don't use. Mainly just to get a feel for what is out there. A lot of the time I like to read comments more than the actual article on a lot of things, because I find opinions on HN (specifically comments that have long threads with multiple replies) to offer a better understanding of things than the actual article. A lot of articles are somewhat biased, intentional or not, and reading the comments (most of the time) offers a better perspective from people actually using/working in/experiencing, things the articles are talking about.

Re: Ask HN: What are your heuristics for deciding which HN links to click on?

#30

Post by alexandercrohde » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 12:58 AM UTC

stephengillie wrote: post #26

I start by scanning through the front page and clicking "HIDE" on: Betterridge Headlines Articles with a (YEAR) Articles with a [PDF] "Do X in Language" Blockchain-related Mac-related "Ask HN: List things" Hiring notices - Specific domains: All newspapers All longform sites All clickbait sites All health information Medium Github Wikipedia Stratechery This usually clears out all the time-sinks, ads, "Github spam" and…

I HIDE:

"X" the good parts

"X" driven design

Building a toy "X" in toy language "Y" in Z minutes

How to interview [another random internet opinion]

Anything that's crawling with cp-grey types.

Anecdote about hallucinogen curing every psychological problem

2-week Microstudy on nootropic improving attention