

Ask HN: Possible fix for the 'lost' submissions? - jacquesm

There is a big problem with submissions (good ones!) falling through the cracks.<p>There are countless examples of really good stuff that got submitted and that scrolled off the new page without getting votes. These are then stuck in limbo, they can't be re-submitted no matter how good they were.<p>Most people seem to monitor the new page but do not make the click to the 'more' link a the bottom.<p>I can see several ways to fix this:<p><pre><code>    - put up a little blurb of text on the new page 
      that explains this and invites people to 
      go to page 2 and beyond to 'rescue' the
      good stuff that is under threat of being
      lost

    - a small code change the increases the 
      length of the new page based on the
      age of the oldest item, say the oldest
      item at the bottom of the 'new' page
      should always be at a minimum 5 hours
      old (if it doesn't get enough votes in 
      that time then too bad).

    - Randomizing the 'new' page across the last
      200 submitted links so that the 'new' page
      is a sample, rather than a sequence</code></pre>
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niyazpk
Two things:

\- Most of the submissions in the home page are pretty good. We cannot discuss
every single interesting thing in the world. We are discussing just a small
subset of them and as long as we are getting a very high quality home page,
the lost submissions are not a problem.

\- You can always resubmit links (if you think they are extremely good) by
manipulating the url. Add another query parameter to the url and resubmit it.

~~~
jacquesm
> You can always resubmit links (if you think they are extremely good) by
> manipulating the url. Just add another query parameter to the url and
> resubmit it.

I think you may have opened a can of worms there.

~~~
alanthonyc
Agreed. I don't think we want to resort to hacking the system to keep good
submissions in view (notwithstanding the name of this site).

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MaysonL
Maybe a karma threshold for letting people resubmit stuff? (that is no longer
accessible other than via ?id=x)

I was going to suggest decaying old stuff faster, but looking through the 210
current items available through clicking "More" from the /news page, only 3
are listed as 2 days old (none 3 days).

------
icey
Reddit handles this one pretty well by displaying a random new story in a box
at the top of the page. That way lots of new stuff gets some exposure.

