
Ask HN: Why are submissions staying on the front page for longer? - aaronarduino
I&#x27;ve noticed over the last few months that things submitted to HN that reach the front page have been staying there for a day or two. It seems (maybe it is just my perception) that a year ago a submission would only stay on the front page for a few hours and at max a day. Am I imagining things? If I&#x27;m not imagining it, what is causing things to stay on the front page? An influx of users, maybe?
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brad0
Honestly I prefer this system.

There’s definitely some pseudo curation happening, which I like.

Some interesting things I’ve picked up:

\- If a submission is interesting but doesn’t get picked up for whatever
reason (posted at the wrong time or there was other big news at the time) mods
will get in contact with you and ask you to repost.

\- More comments than votes seems to sink the article quickly. It’s generally
a controversial topic which isn’t engaging and inspiring in the right way.

\- there are a number of mod specific flags other than the above that affect
the position of articles. From what I remember reading there’s 6 such flags.
Would love to know what they are

I’m guessing the algorithm is a sort based on time * points then modifying it
based on hidden flags

~~~
cityhomesteader
Seems like the antithesis of what a "hacker" news site should be. But everyone
is entitled to their own opinion.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
Maybe a new tab of results would be useful, like “discussed” or something.

I usually find the posts that generate more comments than votes to be the most
valuable and interesting.

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yorwba
[https://news.ycombinator.com/active](https://news.ycombinator.com/active)

More options can be found at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/lists](https://news.ycombinator.com/lists)

~~~
mlthoughts2018
I'm curious why 'active' (and 'lists' itself) is not in the default tab of
options across the top of the page.

~~~
yorwba
"Lists" is in the footer, together with a bunch of other important links like
the site guidelines. Why they're not in the header as well, I have no idea.

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minimaxir
Relatedly, submissions have been making the front page with only a few points
(3-4), and from what I can tell, it's at random (I've seen a lot of _bad_
posts fit this criteria, then quickly fall off once they are flagged). It's a
bit of an unstable equilibrium and I'm not fond of it.

Placement on the front page is a very finite resource.

~~~
dang
Submissions have always made the front page with three votes, depending on how
new they are vs. how stale the front page is. That hasn't changed in years.

There's also the second-chance pool that we put stories into, which get
randomly placed on the front page (this is described at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380)
and links back from there), and the repost invites we occasionally send out
when we notice a great post that's more than a few days old.

~~~
minimaxir
That's true, although I've noticed it occur much more recently (admittingly
that's a selection bias)

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lifeisstillgood
I have noticed something similar - I just put it down to a "slow news day".
Frankly it means I am getting some work done :-)

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curtis
Algolia's "Last 24h" view is often a nice alternative to the HN front page.
It's more stable and it's also a good way to find articles/discussions that
drew a lot of attention and then got flagged.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=last24h&type=story)
(it's not working at the moment for some reason)

The "Past Week" view is still working:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=pastWeek&type=story)

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Also [https://hckrnews.com/](https://hckrnews.com/) is nice.

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tropshop
Meanwhile, "Demand for Ruby on Rails is Still Huge" is about the hit the 3rd
page with 157 comments and only 3 hours old...

I guess anything Ruby is old news on HN

~~~
Deimorz
That post has more comments than votes, which seems to be a factor that HN's
ranking system uses to push posts off the front page faster. I think that's a
terrible decision that punishes posts that generate a lot of discussion, but
it seems to be how it works.

~~~
yorwba
Discussion without corresponding upvotes usually indicates that people didn't
like the original article that much and are mostly commenting to complain or
rebut.

~~~
NikolaNovak
But... doesn't more votes with few comments just mean people like or agree
with the idea/title, but might not even have read it and it doesn't generate
meaningful discussion? :-/

I find that trivially true statement, or those that seeming to appeal to our
values / beliefs, get a lot of upvotes without people even following the link,
let alone contributing thoughtful comments. Whereas I come to HN to read
insightful comments almost more than underlying articles - I find it
fascinating when an Apollo engineer or a ML researcher or a physicist etc
contribute their perspective on a topic :)

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usermac
If this is here tomorrow, your summation is verified.

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captain_perl
Because the YC alumni moved to their internal social network, BookFace.

HN is for rubes now.

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cityhomesteader
I've noticed that as well. Just a guess, but certain news organizations are
given "special treatment" lately.

Almost everyday, I see a post from select news sources with 1 or 2 upvotes and
no comments very high on the frontpage.

Also, is it just me or has hacker news slowly shifted from being about
technology to more politics?

And a final observation, what's with the neverending submissions about
facebook?

~~~
dang
> Also, is it just me or has hacker news slowly shifted from being about
> technology to more politics?

People have been saying this for about as long as HN has existed, but it isn't
true. HN is a mix, it's always been a mix, and the proportion of politics in
the mix has gone down somewhat. Why do people perceive the opposite? Because
of the cognitive bias where whatever you dislike stands out more. The users
who wish HN would have more politics believe that the trend is just the
opposite way (a la 'political stories are being increasingly suppressed' and
so on).

For anyone who wants details, I wrote a detailed post about this a few weeks
ago with tons of examples, so I could link back to it when this issue
inevitably comes up again. It's here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869).

p.s. There's no special favorable treatment of any publication on HN. We do
penalize sites that have been the source of too many off topic or lightweight
submissions in the past.

~~~
wrp
Although the political/technical balance may have stayed the same, I expect
that the recent trend to keep old posts on the front page longer would
heighten any perception of bias.

I for one have been finding coming to HN much less rewarding lately. I have to
search more pages to find interesting posts.

~~~
dang
It would be helpful if you'd include the newest page in your search routine
and vote for interesting things.

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mmt
Just the one (first) page of newest articles? Is that enough?

~~~
dang
The more the better!

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Macie44
I am so sorry. I am totally new HN platform.I can not submit posts HN. Please
Help me.

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pvg
You can just mail the mods and ask instead of asking a zillion people who
almost certainly can't possibly know.

~~~
sxates
If something changed, it's nice for everyone else to be made aware as well. I
had noticed the same thing.

~~~
pvg
Not really. It's pointless meta, imagine if every change, real or imagined,
clogged up the site. And there's a good chance mods who can answer it won't
even see it, they can't see everything but they read all their email.

This got sensibly flagged off. If you want to know, ask the mods. If something
super-interesting has changed, you can always write a thing about it and post
it and see how it fares.

