HN Explorer

Poll: how do you use HN?

23 points by jmillerinc ↗ HN
Vote for all that apply.

26 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 72.7 ms ] thread
pedalpete
As a bit of reasoning behind why I go directly to the site (and I assume others as well)

1) On twitter, I don't get the num of votes, and comments

2) there are too many articles to use in RSS. It fills the rss reader.

3) Aggregator? could you clarify that one?

4) I tried a firefox extension just to provide feedback, but it wasn't as natural as going to the site proper.

Out of curiosity, is there is something you were looking for? A more direct question?

jmillerinc
I primarily read the HN RSS feed, and also try to look at every headline that comes across the feed to make sure I don't miss any godo stuff. I became curious about how much in the minority I am in doing this.
sayhello
I used to have this OCDish behavior with HN & twitter, but then it took too much of my life.

Since I stopped both, I sleep more and consequently code better.

Some gems don't get upvoted, and that's ok; I'll discover it eventually somehow. In twitter's case, the signal to noise ratio just doesn't cut it for me at this moment.

avk
I feel you on the signal:noise - I'd love your take on how I'm trying to solve that very problem: http://slipstre.am/
kennu
I also follow the RSS feed headlines nearly realtime in Google Reader. I was surprised to see that Hacker News has four times the amount of submissions/day than other feeds I follow:

  109.8 Hacker News
  25.7 Joystiq
  25.4 Digg Offbeat
  23.6 Slashdot
  22.6 Mashable!
  22.5 Digg Technology
  18.3 Lifehacker
Surprised, because I have no problem keeping up with HN, while I often have to skip other feeds a lot. (That's the top 7 of total 116 feeds in my reader.)
tbeseda
Open news.yc.

Cmd + click all interesting titles.

Return to read interesting comment threads.

Absorb knowledge.

Rinse.

Repeat.

kentosi
I always Cmd+Click on the comment threads. This way I have a way of then opening the article, and then going "back" to the comments.
chasingsparks
The proportions of this sample fit my expectations given the "referal" traffic show by analytics when I have blog posts.
gvb
Obsessively.
dca
Tried RSS feeds but it sucks. There needs to be an RSS feed that only shows items that make it at least to the front page. Or maybe beyond some configurable vote threshold.
Ixiaus
I like the RSS feed because even though it's a lot to consume, there's always a gem or two hidden inside the depths of HN that never reaches the front page...
mx12
I use the RSS feed. If you use Safari there is a way to drag a feed to your address bar and have it automatically update. This can also aggregate all your feeds into a single bookmark bar item, but I don't know how many people know/use this feature in Safari. I tried using the RSS read in mail, but I get enough stuff in my mailbox.
eldila
I just use RSS. I agree that there are way too many articles to go through. However, I just skim the titles every once in awhile and click only on things that jump out at me. I have had years of experience filtering google search results, so I'm quite good at it :D
catch404
I'm honestly thinking of starting to use it as Richard Stallman would. Voted for HNsite, which I also check on my phone.