HN Explorer

Ask HN: Do you ever click on the "ask" link?

21 points by ColinWright ↗ HN
Submissions without URLs are penalised in the rankings, so don't reach the Front Page as often, and don't stay as long even if they do. To offset this there is the "ask" link in the header.

http://news.ycombinator.com/ask

Do you ever click on it?

21 comments

[ 82.0 ms ] story [ 506 ms ] thread
bartonfink
Quite frequently - I'd say it's about 50/50 for me between general browsing and ask-specific browsing.
jparishy
Same; when I've read whatever looked interesting on the front page, I generally go over to see what's new in ask.
koopajah
Same here! Read ask at least once a day! Maybe a survey would be better for this "Ask" than everyone replying separately?
breadbox
I'm not even sure I even realized it was there.
helen842000
Yes, I'm most interested in the 'ask' section as opposed to the mainstream news articles that feature on the main page.
iambrakes
I did for the first time today.
craze3
Maybe a couple times a month?

I don't think Ask posts should be penalized in the rankings. They contain great information & original content, plus they hint at the overall climate of the community.

gjulianm
I clicked today on it for second time, thanks to the "Why I now hate HN" post. And I plan to click it more times.
1123581321
I click on it frequently; I enjoy answering questions and seeing what regular people outside of YC are working on.

The tab I find nearly useless is Comments as it provides no context (unlike New where submissions do not need context.) I assume the purpose of Comments is to give moderators a way to spot check for obvious spam and other poor behaviors.

jamesjguthrie
I read questions in the Ask section more then I read the main news topics.
tonyarkles
I'd never noticed it before, but I'll be clicking on it now...
tokenadult
Yes, I look at the ask link from time to time to see what is posted here. Just now, I followed the ask link to see where my latest submission is. In that submission I ask Hacker News participants what they like about the Hacker News community. I'd be glad to hear your thoughts about that in that thread.

AFTER EDIT: I still don't understand, at all, the posting order here on the ask page. I can see new "ask" postings on the new page that appear nowhere here. I'm not sure what the ordering rule actually is for posts on the ask page.

DevAccount
I don't understand the order either.

I've resigned myself to using the search for posts with "Ask HN:" ordered by date, not 100% I know but better than the alternative.

Clicky: http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=Ask...

And a Clicky for "Show HN" http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=Sho...

stfu
My ratio is somewhat 60% front, 20% new and 20% ask.
anujkk
Always. It is the first thing I check on HN. Then I check top 2 pages, new posts, comments, threads in the given sequence.
daimyoyo
No. I've never clicked on it, and have no plans to.
knes
Yes, they are probably my favorite links to clicks nowadays. It's original content and I like to see what the community has created or what problem they have and how the community is trying to help out.
polyfractal
Funny story: For about the first two-three months of my using Hacker News, I didn't realize the front page existed. For whatever reason I never clicked "Hacker News" on the navbar, so I thought "New" and "Ask" were the only places to read stories.

It was actually rather nice. Lots of fresh stories on the new page (albeit a lot of spam too), and honest discussion on the Ask page.

debacle
Yes, every day. I often come very close to submitting an ask link, as well, but decide not to.