alt.hn

5/29/2026 at 12:31:59 PM

Poll: How often do you check "newest"?

by ColinWright

5/29/2026 at 3:58:40 PM

Reddit had a term for people who read the new page -- the knights of new. The small group of people who make the site work by traipsing through the sludge that is the new page, finding the gems within.

We did a lot of experiments to try and get more people to look at the new page or new content. One was placing one new item at the top of your home page and changing that every couple of minutes. The other was the "rising" sort, which was similar to the hot sort on the front page, but much higher velocity.

None of them really worked all that well. The group of people who read new are a unique breed. :)

by jedberg

5/29/2026 at 6:36:29 PM

Reddit, as I'm sure you know well :D, also had the advantage that non-mega subreddits would often only have a single page of new posts per day to look at. So if you were trolling subreddits direct instead of just the ones you follow (I always hated the combined view) or /r/all then it effectively functioned the same as looking at new.

Anyway, back to the original question: I don't normally follow newest regularly but if I'm on a long flight or something I might get bored and poke around there is anything else there. Often there is something good which never bubbles up.

by zamadatix

5/29/2026 at 8:05:13 PM

What percent of the knights of new in 2026 are genuine vs sock puppets designed to seed engagement and get the snowball moving? Probably not a lot, considering most posts on reddit these days seem to come from spam bot accounts that do nothing but post identical links to dozens of subreddits. reddit now allows media accounts to post directly from their own managed accounts, violating the old rules against self promotion.

by asdff

5/29/2026 at 7:21:23 PM

Looking at New makes for an unfiltered experience, and you accept the nonsense that comes with that, on any platform. At that point it's still unaffected by the hivemind consensus.

by natureiskino

5/29/2026 at 6:13:51 PM

> We did a lot of experiments to try and get more people to look at the new page or new content

Is that what "best" sort is doing when browsing a specific subreddit? Occasionally I'll notice some crappy 1 minute old post on my feed that's out of place and realize the sorting was reset to "best" instead of "hot" instead

by ro_bit

5/29/2026 at 6:15:50 PM

You can also just sort by "new" i.e. chronologically.

by oneeyedpigeon

5/29/2026 at 6:21:14 PM

"Best" may include some new posts, I actually haven't checked, but the thing that stands out to me is how old many of the posts are. Ever since Reddit made "best" the default sort on the app I notice that any new subreddit I go to will show me at least some posts from more than two weeks ago. It's really baffling that Reddit seems to think it should be preferred over "hot".

by SOTGO

5/29/2026 at 8:10:28 PM

I was going to comment I've never seen this before. Then I went to a subreddit and it hit me that I only use old reddit, which lacks the "best" feature.

I'm not sure why people tolerate the new reddit website. It is so slow, busy, and chock full of ads. When I open it on the phone you are straight up missing a lot of discussion comments, so it is broken too. You click a comment it looks like it has no subcomments under it. You click the permalink opening that comment thread in a new window, and there's still no subcomment under it. Now you prefix old. to the url, now you see the subcomments.

Makes me wonder how much discussion there is that is just not observed at all by a good fraction of the site who browses these same threads. Two universes on the same post.

by asdff

5/30/2026 at 4:03:03 PM

I prefer the new design because the text is readable on my phone, and it has a native dark mode. I don't see any of the ads because I use an ad blocker.

Also, I have no idea what you mean about the comments thing. I can immediately see all comments other than the ones that have been collapsed due to having negative karma.

by jazzypants

5/30/2026 at 9:00:08 PM

I don't know how else to describe it beyond what I've already done. Are you sure you are seeing all the comments? Have you tested with a post? I don't use the app fwiw. Only tested with the mobile website and it has been like this for years.

I still use old.reddit.com on the phone. Works fine with pinch and zoom. Super performant too, loads in a fraction of the time which is necessary with mobile connections and spotty coverage. I just saw the native reddit app for ios at least is like 450mb. WTF...

by asdff

5/31/2026 at 12:25:43 AM

I don't use the native apps. They are bloated, disgusting messes. I just messed around with old.reddit and compared it to new reddit for around thirty minutes. I noticed no performance differences, and I noticed no discrepancy in comments. I don't know what to tell you. The only time I see fewer comments is when I use an incognito window, but that's just because it's not logged in.

by jazzypants

5/30/2026 at 5:52:36 PM

The funny thing is that all the reasons you listed to use the new design... existed before in basically any 3rd party app.

by kartoffelsaft

5/30/2026 at 6:06:47 PM

I agree, and I previously used a 3rd party app myself (Reddit Is Fun). The sad thing is that I actually completely understand why they shut down the free API access. The AI bot scrapers are absurdly aggressive, and bandwidth isn't free.

by jazzypants

5/30/2026 at 9:01:45 PM

AI bot scrapers are still scraping just fine.

by asdff

5/29/2026 at 8:33:23 PM

[dead]

by inquirerGeneral

5/29/2026 at 6:07:44 PM

On Reddit I often sort by new for comments (which I know isn't the same as new topics), especially on thoughts over whatever thing I'm looking up. Does Hackernews have that ability or am I being blind?

by psygn89

5/29/2026 at 9:14:22 PM

My read on HN comment sorting is that just like its frontpage, everyone sees the same comment page. New comments are added to the top, and quickly sink below others unless they are engaged with.

This is just a guess tho, as my account can't (yet?) see comment upvote counts.

by semolino

5/29/2026 at 10:00:10 PM

No accounts (except the actual admins/mods) can see upvote counts on comments. That was a deliberate choice from a long time ago for reasons expressed at the time (by pg, IIRC) that I can't seem to locate now. The site originally made them public, but eventually made them private.

by Jtsummers

5/29/2026 at 8:24:03 PM

> The group of people who read new are a unique breed

literally me

by king_zee

5/29/2026 at 3:16:54 PM

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...

by saltcured

5/29/2026 at 6:30:50 PM

Almost the only time when I check "newest" is after I submitted something myself, since then I am redirected there. But then I do read and upvote what I find interesting there (in a way diluting the score of my own submission). I really should look there more often.

by gpvos

5/29/2026 at 6:39:59 PM

Mine is usually when I fat-finger the logo on mobile and accidentally press it. Then I read 2-3 entries before realising what's happened

by StrangeSound

5/29/2026 at 3:18:59 PM

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.

by sph

5/29/2026 at 6:50:50 PM

Twice a year, typically to see how fast my own submission is sinking into obscurity.

by gojomo

5/29/2026 at 3:20:38 PM

I consume the RSS firehose exclusively, so I guess the answer is "constantly". I have no idea which submissions are highly voted.

by happytoexplain

5/30/2026 at 2:28:22 PM

Same here. I scan the post titles to decide what to look at, and only open the HN discussion if the article looks like the discussion will be at all useful. That's increasingly rare.

by michaelsmanley

5/29/2026 at 3:52:22 PM

I tried this and it was unbearable.

by Brajeshwar

5/29/2026 at 4:01:40 PM

Yeah, I'm certainly in the minority. I have an "all or nothing" brain problem.

To be clear, I'm not reading tons of submissions. I just don't like the idea of only being presented with the top N submissions by vote count. I'd rather scroll a feed that auto-marks each one as read until I see something interesting.

I have the same problem with YouTube. I (almost) only consume entire channels via RSS feeds (sans shorts). I never see the home page, and I only occasionally click an algorithmic recommendation.

by happytoexplain

5/29/2026 at 4:28:26 PM

I do the same (both here and YT). I stay away from algorithmic anything. If something is too high volume to avoid it, I'd rather avoid that something.

by arnvidr

5/29/2026 at 4:44:14 PM

I do the same thing, I never really noticed what submissions are high rank or not, I just come for my own interests.

by falsaberN1

5/29/2026 at 7:08:31 PM

~monthly, when I realized I've exhausted all the front page posts I care about, but have not yet realized I should just do something better with my life

by glaslong

5/29/2026 at 3:36:10 PM

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.

by saratogacx

5/29/2026 at 8:41:56 PM

Yep this is how I use HN as well. /new is definitely interesting when I do open it (usually after submitting) but because of the lack of existing discussion I don't usually seek it out day to day. It can definitely be rewarding though to be able to start the discussion on a new submission when it relates to an area of your own expertise though.

by samtheDamned

5/29/2026 at 3:45:15 PM

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.

by ryandrake

5/29/2026 at 7:45:03 PM

/active is like showdead. Use it for five minutes and you'll realize why the guardrails exist in the first place.

by pibaker

5/29/2026 at 3:52:18 PM

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.

by 866-RON-0-FEZ

5/29/2026 at 2:39:19 PM

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.

by PowerElectronix

5/29/2026 at 2:49:48 PM

Where/what is newest? I see a “new” on the top page, is that what is meant?

by 1over137

5/29/2026 at 2:59:44 PM

it’s referring to the page available at /newest - the “new” link leads to it

by bstsb

5/29/2026 at 3:00:31 PM

yes, the "new" anchor links to /newest

by peesem

5/29/2026 at 6:56:40 PM

I read it weekly or so and have showdead on. It would be nice to have multiple levels of dead. I want to see what’s unpopular or questionable in new, not the dating site spam. I nominate showhell as a new flag and setting for spam.

I’ve found some interesting sites from new before they were popular and started subscribing to them. This is the selfish benefit that keeps me going. It also feels good to be the first upvote on something that ends up hitting the front page.

by 1123581321

5/29/2026 at 6:14:27 PM

A year or so ago, I started clicking “new” instead of the logo, which I usually click to get to the front page. I had no idea what was going on and just assumed HN had changed the algorithm and suddenly become much more active.

I think it took me between one and two weeks to realize I wasn’t actually clicking the front page.

Not the smartest sheep.

by yNeolh

5/30/2026 at 7:40:41 AM

My HN viewing habit: check frontpage quickly (only the frontpage, rarely beyond that), check "new" for 5-6 pages to see if anyone has posted something cool, and then lastly check "active" and go through every page because that's where the interesting discussions are.

I used to think the frontpage was natural and unadulterated but then I learned that dang, tomhow, et al "curate" the frontpage, so you essentially see what they want you to see, but with "active" there's less of that.

by mna_

5/30/2026 at 1:31:11 PM

I don't think they curate it. From what I understand it is basically just "hot" submissions. However they do have the ability to bump individual submissions onto the front page if they feel a specific submission might have been of interest to the community but was previously overlooked when it was "new".

If I understand that correctly, then I think that's a nice balance. It means the front page is largely items that the community, as a general, that voted on. But it also gives the opportunity for interesting submissions to have a second chance if they did slip through the system unnoticed.

by hnlmorg

5/29/2026 at 3:54:20 PM

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

by dooglius

5/29/2026 at 8:38:29 PM

I think this would be an okay place to ask about the vouching process since it seems like a big part of the /new sifting system. When I'm browsing on /new as well as on /active (which I browse much more frequently) I'll see dead links that seem like valid posts and that I would enjoy discussing, but I'm a little worried about "over-vouching" so I tend to play it very cautious. Am I overthinking that process? Outside of running it against the guidelines/faq is there a way to see why a post was flagged?

by samtheDamned

5/29/2026 at 6:01:03 PM

For me, it's a tripwrire. If I'm ever feeling desperate enough for new content that I'm checking the "newest" page of Hacker News, that means I need to put down my phone and reset myself.

by Bratmon

5/29/2026 at 6:12:29 PM

Same

by agluszak

5/29/2026 at 3:01:42 PM

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.

by chistev

5/29/2026 at 6:32:29 PM

Yeah, it's "newest" in the URL but labelled "new" in the menu.

by gpvos

5/29/2026 at 2:49:39 PM

If I get past page 3 without seeing anything interesting I will generally try new.

by techteach00

5/29/2026 at 12:50:53 PM

Every time I come to HN, I go to newest first before really looking at the main page.

by theandrewbailey

5/29/2026 at 3:17:35 PM

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.

by hluska

5/30/2026 at 8:01:56 AM

If you email hn@ycombinator.com and ask, you might get back a more accurate approximation of newest URL hits by uniqueIP over time.

That'll have it's own set of issues, but could be of interest for numberwang fans to compare against limited self selected poll data.

by defrost

5/30/2026 at 5:24:27 PM

Be sure to weed out hits that are HTTP/1.1, they are mostly bots. There are also obvious bots.

by Bender

5/29/2026 at 6:03:03 PM

I wonder if it was ever considered to page size the first new page proportional to the current submission rate.

The idea is that with a fixed page size a new submission would get evicted off the first page quicker and would hence suffer a shorter exposure. One way to counteract that is to increase the aperture.

This of course assumes that people would scroll to the bottom and would do that more often than navigating to the next page.

by srean

5/29/2026 at 6:55:37 PM

I used to check a few times per month, but recently the number of submissions went through the roof, which makes me less likely to check.

by jakub_g

5/29/2026 at 2:47:31 PM

Usually when I've submitted something myself.

by s_dev

5/29/2026 at 3:17:17 PM

I go to newest when I want to check if there is an outage with GitHub or AWS or something

by cortesoft

5/29/2026 at 6:18:49 PM

Here in Brazil there is a forum where before you can post your account has to sit there for 6 months after being created (that's Hardmob for those wondering which). It's a viable strategy, create a non-elistist barrier of entry for new accounts and ban shitposters in order to disencourage the sludge of low quality submissions.

Blog post fully written by AI? Sloppy repo cooked up in a weekend just for the shows? Content ripped and repackaged from another site? Irrelevant content? Notification and content removal, three strikes and the account is banned.

That and maybe a reputation system, like 100 points to be able to start submitting requests, I think it has a high chance to make dang's life easier.

by gchamonlive

5/29/2026 at 6:41:46 PM

/newest not so much, but I'm trying to visit /shownew (with showdeads) every now and then. I believe that's really why HN is for, and voting there a service duty.

by rixed

5/29/2026 at 8:33:04 PM

Probably a couple of times a day to be honest. I like seeing what sort of new posts are there, especially given how long the same few topics seem to stick on the home page.

by CM30

5/29/2026 at 8:35:29 PM

The curated list stays on the home page way too long.

by iJohnDoe

5/29/2026 at 3:47:09 PM

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.

by wannabebarista

5/29/2026 at 6:13:34 PM

I have 3 tabs pinned: homepage, active, newest

I then use https://oj-hn.com to do all my navigation via keyboard.

by latchkey

5/29/2026 at 3:12:58 PM

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.

by Imustaskforhelp

5/29/2026 at 6:02:12 PM

I have a feeling that new was much slower moving five years ago. Now if I check new everything is from the last 15-20 minutes.

by a1o

5/29/2026 at 8:09:45 PM

Less than once a day but more than once a week. A lot of interesting stuff lies beyond the New link in the HN header.

by pmontra

5/29/2026 at 7:13:51 PM

Sometimes I miss when aiming for the Y logo to refresh the main page or Threads to read replies. Does that count?

by idle_zealot

5/29/2026 at 3:42:23 PM

I feel like newest is almost always spam, or low quality things. I have showdead on, so I'm kind of biased though.

by Shank

5/29/2026 at 6:17:48 PM

The MORNING CREW of Digg 4.0 is hanging out in /r/diggaspora now if you still need that New reminder

by tsumnia

5/29/2026 at 2:40:16 PM

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.

by CamperBob2

5/29/2026 at 7:02:16 PM

Whenever you submit a link, you get dropped on /new, so that's when I look at it.

by exolymph

5/29/2026 at 3:47:06 PM

Offtopic: I posted a Show HN and it was instantly flagged. I don't know what I did wrong :(

by perryizgr8

5/29/2026 at 7:08:12 PM

It's a bot.

by GoblinSlayer

5/29/2026 at 4:44:38 PM

The recents list on my browser got changed to newest so I end up checking it by accident.

by mastax

5/29/2026 at 7:19:16 PM

Might be interesting to try emailing dang to see if they keep track of this.

by vulcan01

5/29/2026 at 3:23:39 PM

I only have "new" here, and not "newest". Am I missing something?

by binaryturtle

5/29/2026 at 3:30:25 PM

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.

by happytoexplain

5/30/2026 at 6:07:19 PM

"new", just means "new entries" (in no specific order), but "newest" suggest some sorting/ ranking. If it's the very same why would it need two different words? :) It's like people often confusing the words "art" and "artwork".

Anyway… the URL first becomes visible once you hover over the link (assuming a browser that shows the link target)/ or click on the "New" entry. If you don't know beforehand that the "New" link turns into a "newest" URL… one only can make an educated guess. Sure, I assumed it may be the same, but could have been there's some actual more obscure "Newest" somewhere too… the way the question / poll was asked it didn't feel like this was about the first top most link on the site. Hence my query for proper clarification.

Hope that clears it up. :-)

by binaryturtle

5/29/2026 at 3:32:07 PM

HN is infamous for having extra "hidden" functionality you're just supposed to know exists if you want to use/unlock it.

by zamadatix

5/29/2026 at 7:05:28 PM

To be fair, links at the top of the site header aren't exactly hidden.

I've seen comments where people haven't noticed for years that the site has a footer with links as well. The mods added thread folding and people just never even bothered to try clicking the new link to see what it did, so they never realized that was possible and kept asking for the feature. All of this "hidden" functionality is literally just a link or two away, but it might as well be buried under desert sand as far as this community is concerned.

by krapp

5/29/2026 at 3:34:06 PM

Oh? Like what? I am actually ignorant here.

Edit: Neat. Thanks, all.

by happytoexplain

5/29/2026 at 3:38:22 PM

The "Lists" page, lists most of such 'hidden' functionality: https://news.ycombinator.com/lists (which itself is linked in the footer).

by Confiks

5/29/2026 at 3:42:05 PM

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 :).

by zamadatix

5/29/2026 at 3:46:22 PM

> 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.

by Jtsummers

5/29/2026 at 4:03:46 PM

Thanks for the reminder! I knew I found it somewhere other than Google once!

by zamadatix

5/29/2026 at 7:06:35 PM

I see as a "help" url near the textarea.

by GoblinSlayer

5/29/2026 at 3:37:57 PM

See /active

by clifflocked

5/29/2026 at 3:29:51 PM

The URL is:

  https://news.ycombinator.com/newest

by Jtsummers

5/29/2026 at 8:26:54 PM

Why is it »/newest« but »new«? Or is it »new« but »/newest«?

by danbruc

5/29/2026 at 6:56:23 PM

I have showdead enabled and refresh /newest probably 40 to 50 times per hour. I vouch and upvote things I think people might have interesting discussions about. I flag slop, advertising and anything that goes against the guidelines. This is the only site I log in to every day for several reasons. I sometimes take a break and play a video game, watch a movie or go for a walk. I filter out karma numbers using uBlock.

by Bender

5/29/2026 at 3:17:34 PM

Sometimes I want to see what kinds of submissions are dead and one minute old.

by keybored

5/29/2026 at 4:05:22 PM

Took me a while to learn that the link above `new` points to `/newest`.

by OptionOfT

5/29/2026 at 3:45:20 PM

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

by AndrewKemendo

5/29/2026 at 2:48:51 PM

I don't even know how to check newest except by accident.

by SanjayMehta

5/29/2026 at 7:14:44 PM

somewhere in between once a week and once a day, essentially when I post something and I end up on newest I scroll down and check what there is.

by bryanrasmussen

5/29/2026 at 7:57:50 PM

Maybe once or twice a day, right after I check Top.

by tonytamps

5/29/2026 at 2:51:13 PM

Change the link text from new to newest. Use the big word.

by econ

5/29/2026 at 9:08:11 PM

On mobile, shorter menu bars save screen space.

by layer8

5/30/2026 at 4:24:53 AM

It wraps to the second line on mine.

by econ

5/30/2026 at 1:12:46 PM

Depending on screen and font size, it can even wrap to three or more lines. The more lines, the more vertical screen space it takes up.

by layer8

5/30/2026 at 7:53:46 AM

Once a month is not very rarely.

by rurban

5/29/2026 at 11:22:30 PM

New is my page 3. Comments my page 0.

by sbayg

5/29/2026 at 8:08:58 PM

We have polls?

by thih9

5/29/2026 at 9:04:56 PM

Check the FAQ link at the bottom.

by layer8

5/29/2026 at 12:44:23 PM

I rarely go to the front page.

by manfromchina1

5/29/2026 at 2:56:52 PM

Very rarely, showdead on

by GaryBluto

5/29/2026 at 2:34:33 PM

Couple of times a year.

by mhitza

5/29/2026 at 2:46:10 PM

Twice a year

by abcd_f

5/29/2026 at 8:19:42 PM

I've looked at New a few times and have been disappointed with the quality of submissions.

by hasbot

5/29/2026 at 6:20:04 PM

[dead]

by abroun_beholder