HN Explorer

Ask HN: Is HN Ignoring The Long Tail?

14 points by asimjalis ↗ HN
The front page is mostly made up of stories with a lot of votes. Stories with fewer votes bubble up briefly and then sink down again. Could HN be missing out on interesting stories that are not interesting to everybody? Is there a way to see stories that do respectably well -- say get > 10 points -- even if they don't reach 194?

16 comments

[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 44.9 ms ] thread
lsc
I watch /newest sometimes. But yeah, a way for the user to choose other ways to choose stories would also be pretty cool. say /getarticles?ratingbetterthan=10&afterdate=20100101 or something?
pg
Sure; click on the More link at the bottom of the page.
abstractbill
Just out of interest, what are the relative proportions of pageviews on the HN front page vs the first "More" page?
pg
I don't know. The server doesn't keep track, and the url is the same for all closure-generated pages, so you couldn't determine that from logs.
jrockway
If only computer scientists had invented an introspectable state-carrying structure ;)
mahmud
Couldn't you model that with closures?
oscardelben
you could also subscribe to the RSS feed.
nirav
Agree, I find it rather odd to not use RSS feed and hit front page all the time.
thinkbohemian
I would like the option to auto hide stories that I have clicked on after maybe 5 minutes, and to auto promote the "next" story to my front page.

Pros: More content on front page.

Cons: Slightly inconsistent content on front page between users, would need to be able to easily toggle between modes, incase you wanted to show a friend something.

What are your thoughts?

tome
This site seems to eschew all unnecessary complexity, and I think it's much the better for it.
devinj
I see plenty of posts with 10 points on the front page. This was one of them.
gaulinmp
I'm with @oscardelben, the RSS feed is the way to go. I browse what's interesting to me and am indifferent to the votes.
Kilimanjaro
My view:

- Voting for STORIES is retarded. It can be EASILY gamed.

- There should be editors who pick news RELATED to the main purpose of the site.

- Let the people SUBMIT stories but let the editors PICK the most relevant.

- On the other hand, voting in COMMENTS is ok.

A good idea would be to have say ten editors and let them vote on stories submitted by users. Stories with 5 votes or more go to the front page.

Can it be gamed? Sure!

When that happens it's time to change editors.

pbiggar
We can call it Slashdot!
dmharrison
Yep, but this is true for RSS and most news sites generally as well IMHO. You see it, read it and then unless someone reposts it, it's gone forever. I use delicious to tag that I've liked it and then can search, but it doesn't search content etc.

But the primary reason I use the feed is that it's filtered high quality new material that I'm genuinely not likely to have seen before.