Poll: How often do you check "newest"?

Submissions rely on early upvotes to get to the main page, and I was wondering how many people actually visit "newest" to give those submissions a chance.

It would be nice to correlate this with people who have "Show Dead" turned on, but this is a start. Polls suffer from selection bias, but it might be interesting.

Pick whichever is closest ...

36 points | by ColinWright 3 hours ago

23 comments

  • saratogacx 1 minute ago
    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.

  • saltcured 20 minutes ago
    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...

  • happytoexplain 17 minutes ago
    I consume the RSS firehose exclusively, so I guess the answer is "constantly". I have no idea which submissions are highly voted.
  • sph 18 minutes ago
    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.

  • PowerElectronix 58 minutes ago
    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.

  • binaryturtle 14 minutes ago
    I only have "new" here, and not "newest". Am I missing something?
    • happytoexplain 7 minutes ago
      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.

      • zamadatix 5 minutes ago
        HN is infamous for having extra hidden functionality you're just supposed to know exists if you want to use/unlock it.
        • happytoexplain 3 minutes ago
          Oh? Like what? I am actually ignorant here.
    • Jtsummers 7 minutes ago
      The URL is:

        https://news.ycombinator.com/newest
  • chistev 36 minutes ago
    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.
  • cortesoft 20 minutes ago
    I go to newest when I want to check if there is an outage with GitHub or AWS or something
  • 1over137 47 minutes ago
    Where/what is newest? I see a “new” on the top page, is that what is meant?
  • s_dev 50 minutes ago
    Usually when I've submitted something myself.
  • techteach00 48 minutes ago
    If I get past page 3 without seeing anything interesting I will generally try new.
  • theandrewbailey 2 hours ago
    Every time I come to HN, I go to newest first before really looking at the main page.
  • econ 46 minutes ago
    Change the link text from new to newest. Use the big word.
  • hluska 20 minutes ago
    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.

  • keybored 20 minutes ago
    Sometimes I want to see what kinds of submissions are dead and one minute old.
  • GaryBluto 40 minutes ago
    Very rarely, showdead on
  • Imustaskforhelp 24 minutes ago
    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.
  • mhitza 1 hour ago
    Couple of times a year.
  • abcd_f 51 minutes ago
    Twice a year
  • SanjayMehta 48 minutes ago
    I don't even know how to check newest except by accident.
  • manfromchina1 2 hours ago
    I rarely go to the front page.
  • josefritzishere 47 minutes ago
    I use https://hckrnews.com/ . I prefer new over upvoted.
  • CamperBob2 57 minutes ago
    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.