
Ask HN: Does HN move too fast for 'Ask HN'? - J-dawg
&#x27;Ask HN&#x27; questions have only a few minutes to gain traction before they fall off the front page of &#x27;new&#x27;, otherwise they never make it to &#x27;ask&#x27; and basically disappear.<p>I feel like this sink-or-swim system works just fine for regular posts, but for &#x27;Ask HN&#x27; posts it can be frustrating to see them disappear so quickly. Especially when you consider that more time is invested into asking a question than posting a link.<p>Should &#x27;Ask HN&#x27; posts be allowed to stick around a little longer somehow? One solution would be to give them their own separate &#x27;new&#x27; page.
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brudgers
My understanding is that "Ask HN" questions have a different "gravity" and
sink more slowly. That said, I suspect that the average quality of an "Ask HN"
question is not much better than the average non-spam submission...maybe worse
since meta-discussions are fairly common and lead to dull comments like mine
here.

Even non-meta questions can be rather lazy...I mean a couple of throw away
sentences that don't provide much context suggest that it's probably not that
important.

For example:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11160872](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11160872)

Versus:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11149361](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11149361)

While I don't think of "Ask HN" as StackOverflow, there's something to the
response "What <code> have you tried?" and the idea that a two sentence
question doesn't necessarily deserve a long detailed comprehensive answer.

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monroepe
While I agree they do get lost quickly, there is an "ask" link in the header.
I check there every so often, but maybe I am in the minority.

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lovelearning
Only questions that are upvoted make it to "ask".

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brudgers
I suspect that is because submissions with both a link and editorial content
get classified as "Ask HN" by default and that tends to correlate with PR type
submissions.

But really, the only sure fire way to surface good overlooked content is
through the "New" page.

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brndn
Ask HN is probably my favorite part of HN and I check it every time I visit. I
wish it was more active. I love hearing the opinions of all of you smart
people.

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27182818284
The overall quality of Ask HN questions is pretty hit or miss compared with
other submissions in the News section. Often times there are Ask HN questions
with no context, that border on spam, really aren't asking a question, or
would be better served on Stack Overflow.

so I guess what I"m saying is that I'm not particularly surprised by its
speed, because a lot of the stories submitted to deserve to decline quickly

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throwaway21816
Will this Ask HN become its own self fulfilling prophecy?

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J-dawg
Ha, I expect so!

EDIT: I guess I lose either way, if it makes it to the 'ask' page it will
disprove its own argument!

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cremno
>One solution would be to give them their own separate 'new' page.

It's not exactly that but
[https://news.ycombinator.com/ask](https://news.ycombinator.com/ask) exists.

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adenadel
There could be an equivalent like

[https://news.ycombinator.com/shownew](https://news.ycombinator.com/shownew)

I'm not sure why some of these pages aren't linked from the main page.

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beamatronic
Yes, absolutely 100% yes.

