Poll: How often do you check "newest"?

Submissions rely on early upvotes to get to the main page, and I was wondering how many people actually visit "newest" to give those submissions a chance.

It would be nice to correlate this with people who have "Show Dead" turned on, but this is a start. Polls suffer from selection bias, but it might be interesting.

Pick whichever is closest ...

41 points | by ColinWright 3 hours ago

28 comments

  • dooglius 2 minutes ago
    Often the frontpage will include a new submission with few votes at the top, I recall others in other threads speculating that this is an intentional way (rather than an edge case in the ranking algo) of getting new posts evaluated without people having to visit /newest
  • saltcured 39 minutes ago
    Ironically, I use "new" on other sites to bypass their algorithms and see the raw stream. But I've never even had the urge here, nor really remembered it exists.

    It's probably because I have always looked at HN as a sort of amusement or curiosity. The curated listing is part of the entertainment. Not because it usually resonates for me, but because it gives me this glimpse into Otherness. The comments can be more resonant, once in a while.

    It's a bit like wandering through the bar district and finding your old haunts missing and replaced with weird facades and fashions. But here and there, you notice some patrons are interjecting with stories eerily similar to the one on the tip of your tongue...

  • saratogacx 20 minutes ago
    I use /active more then /newest because I often am looking for a discussion already happening so I can learn from others.

    I feel that new is wasted on me because I'm not confident that my own thoughts on what's interesting and worth front page promotion is well... interesting to the community.

    • ryandrake 11 minutes ago
      Yea, /active is HN's secret, killer app. HN's default ranking algorithm often penalizes stories that "get too much activity" which means that if you aren't one of those guys who refreshes the main page every 5 minutes, you're going to miss a lot of newsworthy articles that happen to get many comments. I'd recommend all HN readers visit /active once at the end of the day to see what The Algorithm hid from the front page.
      • 866-RON-0-FEZ 4 minutes ago
        Those missing stories are nearly all Reddit-style political flamewars which is not what this site is for, so don't think finding something on active is some massive W.
  • happytoexplain 35 minutes ago
    I consume the RSS firehose exclusively, so I guess the answer is "constantly". I have no idea which submissions are highly voted.
    • Brajeshwar 4 minutes ago
      I tried this and it was unbearable.
  • wannabebarista 9 minutes ago
    I do not have showdead on, but I visit newest most times I visit HN. I'm more likely to browse the headlines/comments on the front page but click on links on newest.
  • sph 37 minutes ago
    Only when I post, because I’m superstitious that if I don’t upvote new posts no one is gonna upvote mine.

    It doesn’t work.

  • PowerElectronix 1 hour ago
    I wonder about the bias in this survey as it goes from newest to the main page.

    From one that only ever opens the main page.

  • Shank 14 minutes ago
    I feel like newest is almost always spam, or low quality things. I have showdead on, so I'm kind of biased though.
  • chistev 54 minutes ago
    If by newest you mean new, then I check it several times a day. It's a nice way of finding interesting content and submissions that will never make it to the Frontpage either because of bad timing or whatever reason.
  • 1over137 1 hour ago
    Where/what is newest? I see a “new” on the top page, is that what is meant?
  • cortesoft 39 minutes ago
    I go to newest when I want to check if there is an outage with GitHub or AWS or something
  • s_dev 1 hour ago
    Usually when I've submitted something myself.
  • binaryturtle 32 minutes ago
    I only have "new" here, and not "newest". Am I missing something?
    • happytoexplain 26 minutes ago
      The URL is /newest.

      I'm a little confused by there being multiple people in the comments who are confused by this. They're basically the same word, and even if they weren't, you only have to look at the URL bar to see "newest". I know it's an unimportant phenomenon for me to be commenting on, but it strikes me as unusual.

      • zamadatix 24 minutes ago
        HN is infamous for having extra hidden functionality you're just supposed to know exists if you want to use/unlock it.
        • happytoexplain 22 minutes ago
          Oh? Like what? I am actually ignorant here.
          • zamadatix 14 minutes ago
            Downvoting/flagging kind of just "appear" for most before they get a chance to read about it being a thing.

            Even when someone unlocks flagging they often don't know you can flag comments instead of just downvote them because you have to load the direct link (most easily, the timestamp link) to see it.

            I actually don't remember how you're supposed to know about https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc. I'm pretty sure it's not linked on the main page and the input box doesn't make mention of it.

            There are some lists out there (probably easiest to just ask AI or check the lists page) of special URLs like /bestcomments or /classic. There are also some query paramters available for certain URLs. Keep in mind the lists page is not exhaustive, e.g. /over

            Many never poke around their settings enough to understand showdead or noprocrast exist/how they work.

            I bet a good number learned that polls were a thing from this post :D.

            That's what comes to mind but it can be hard to remember some of the things because you get ao used to them being there personally (I'm continually surprised users often reach the karma threshold for downvoting before understanding they can flag/vouch comments). I'm sure others can fill in some good ones :).

            • Jtsummers 10 minutes ago
              > I actually don't remember how you're supposed to know about https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc. I'm pretty sure it's not linked on the main page and the input box doesn't make mention of it.

              It's in the FAQ, linked at the bottom of (almost) every page along with the guidelines.

          • Confiks 18 minutes ago
            The "Lists" page, lists most of such 'hidden' functionality: https://news.ycombinator.com/lists (which itself is linked in the footer).
          • clifflocked 18 minutes ago
            See /active
    • Jtsummers 26 minutes ago
      The URL is:

        https://news.ycombinator.com/newest
  • techteach00 1 hour ago
    If I get past page 3 without seeing anything interesting I will generally try new.
  • perryizgr8 9 minutes ago
    Offtopic: I posted a Show HN and it was instantly flagged. I don't know what I did wrong :(
  • theandrewbailey 3 hours ago
    Every time I come to HN, I go to newest first before really looking at the main page.
  • econ 1 hour ago
    Change the link text from new to newest. Use the big word.
  • GaryBluto 59 minutes ago
    Very rarely, showdead on
  • hluska 38 minutes ago
    I don’t know if this is the data point you’d like, but I forget that it exists. I forget to such a point that I’m going to check out newest now because it seems like a page I should include every visit here.

    So my answer is ‘never’ but I’m working on it. I keep showdead turned on.

    Edit - I have been making a big mistake here for a long time. Newest is a heck of a good page and I need to make visiting it into a habit. Thanks for posting this poll; I wouldn’t have remembered that I forgot about a feature without this.

  • keybored 38 minutes ago
    Sometimes I want to see what kinds of submissions are dead and one minute old.
  • AndrewKemendo 11 minutes ago
    I’ve almost entirely moved to /newest because there’s almost no point in discussion anymore

    I still comment on main threads out of habit but im probably 10% as active as a decade ago once a top comment gets locked into a thread nothing else matters and there’s no discussion around the edges

    All the “AI” debates are played out and boring with basically anyone still excited about anything related to AI treated poorly by people who have basically no expertise in it but mad capitalist automation came for their job

  • Imustaskforhelp 43 minutes ago
    Whenever I interact with the main posts of Hackernews and I am interested for more, which happens almost multiple times per day or atleast once a day.
  • mhitza 1 hour ago
    Couple of times a year.
  • abcd_f 1 hour ago
    Twice a year
  • SanjayMehta 1 hour ago
    I don't even know how to check newest except by accident.
  • manfromchina1 3 hours ago
    I rarely go to the front page.
  • josefritzishere 1 hour ago
    I use https://hckrnews.com/ . I prefer new over upvoted.
  • CamperBob2 1 hour ago
    I usually go through https://brutalist.report/ rather than HN's own 'new' link. It seems to filter out a lot of slop and self-promotion.