A two column hacker news?

[tcarnell]

Would anybody else find it useful to have the 'new' posts listed on the right hand side of the default HN page? (such that they update every 'n' minutes, or scroll)

I tend to end up not reading the 'new' posts and focus on the top rated posts. It is probably just the way I read HN, but maybe being able to see the 'new' news posts ON THE SAME PAGE as the top rated posts might help many of the new posts that fly past completely unseen by many people...

(I would have normally knocked up a screen shot, but I am restricted to install anything remotely useful onsite)

[sherlocked]

Protip: use pixlr.com - it's free and requires no installation!

I made a quick mockup. Is this what you had in mind? (Warning: not a design person) http://i.imm.io/jQMl.png

Such a thing might be useful. Don't know how much an auto-updating feed would impact the very non-live vibe I get from HN, but it'd change post distributions and such for sure. The feature I'd personally love to see is the ability to collapse chains of comments without using an external script. :)

[tcarnell → sherlocked]

Perfect! good thinking and you read my mind!

[Alexandervn]

There is always a tendency by people to place more content on the frontpage or above the fold to give it 'more attention'. This is a fallacy.

An extra column clutters the homepage and adds no functionality to what a simple click on 'new' (which is the most important link, right next to the brand name) would also do.

If it is the case that too few good articles arrive on the homepage, since everyone is ignoring the new ones, then the algorithm should be changed. But I don't think that is the case at all.

As an extra, I like reading HN on my mobile phone. And with the current one column design this works very neatly. An extra column would complicate that. You might handle that with CSS media queries, but I still think it wouldn't be elegant.

[polyfractal → Alexandervn]

There's an option C: most everyone ignores the new ones (because most people don't click the 'new' page and upvote articles), but pg generally does not change anything on HN.

So we are relatively stuck. No algorithm change, no UI change, increasing volume of submissions and few people upvoting - means most articles that bubble up are link-baity.

[tcarnell → polyfractal]

Yes, I've noticed this quite a lot recently, that somebody posts an article that become popular, soon after there appear 'secondary' articles which seem to be trying to ride the same wave. It could be genuine, but I also suspect people just quickly knock up 'follow up' articles to get the traffic. This almost always seems to happen when a new PG essay is posted.

How could the quality of HN be measured? (very Robert Persig!)