Ask HN: How many of you look at http://news.ycombinator.com/newest?

Your findings are completely consistent with what people have been saying many, many times over the past few months. If something doesn't get noticed quickly on "newest" then it can sink without trace, regardless of its inherent value. Unless you get some friends to check your submissions and upvote them if appropriate, it's very hit-n-miss.<p>It's mostly because of this that I have <i>always</i> visited "newest" which then also means that I recognise things when seeing them second time around. Recently I've stopped bothering marking repeats and duplications, in part because some people find it deeply irritating, in part because it seems unvalued, and, yes, in part because it drags down my average karma. If one of the metrics PG has put in place gives me a poor grade because of some activity, I'll think twice about continuing.<p>So certainly your hypothesis "a" seems true. Not sure about "b" because it depends on what you mean by "small fraction," but I would agree with that too.

I always read /newest first. I figure there's a pretty good incentive.<p>Early votes have the greatest impact. So at the cost of a little bit more time spent foraging, you can promote more stuff you're interested so it will get talked about by lots of smart people. I think I get a better collection of saved links too, but that's subjective.

Here's an idea...<p>Make the first 5 listings on the HN frontpage be the 'newest' entries, followed by the top rated entries.<p>This would force people to scan past new items and give them their "30-seconds" of fame. Plus it would keep the front page very fresh feeling.<p>It's like singing in front of Simon Cowell for American Idol tryouts.

Hmm, I'm surprised that the suspicious vote detector didn't catch this case. I'll have to tighten it up a bit.

I like to scan the newest page for Ask HN: Review my startup ______ posts. They don't seem to make it to the front as often and I find them immensely interesting.<p>I also scan the newest page after I'd digested all the stuff I find interesting on the main page. I'm on the site a lot so I go to newest to get more of my fix.

I like to get comments in on good articles early, they seem to get more responses that way, before the thread has grown old.

It seems a few people use the kick-starting strategy. I've seen articles get a bunch of points right after being submitted and making their way to the frontpage, while my submissions of the same content that have been made a bit earlier never got any upvotes whatsoever.<p>Personally, I haven't done it and don't intend to. On the other hand, I'm guilty of checking the newest articles only after I submitted something myself.

Every time I visit HN (which is several times a day), I read the main page first, and then immediately go to the newest page. I upvote submissions that satisfy intellectual curiosity, come from sources I trust, and don't duplicate something recently posted here.<p>I also go to the noobs views<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/noobstories" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/noobstories</a><p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/noobcomments" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/noobcomments</a><p>from time to time, especially right after I have seen what appears to be a noob story that deserves a flag on the newest page.

I usually look at it instead of going to page 2.

I only check it out sometimes, when I am very desperately in need to procrastinate. At times it will be several times a day, at other times I don't look at it for weeks.

I check newest when waiting for a compile. Thanks to the speed of today's computers and languages, that check is not a very long one.<p>Also, when I submit something, i check down the resulting page for interesting items.<p>I occasionally have a browser open on another computer on the newest and refresh that if i am out of HN stuff to read.<p>And while I don't ask friends to vote, it is very time-of-day sensitive. If it gets a few votes in the first hour (just guessing here) then it is quite possible for it to land on the front page. Once it lands on the front page, it is going to see a secondary effect, which is more likely to be on the merits as judged by a larger audience.<p>Beyond that threshold (hour? two?) no votes means it will be off the "newest" page, likely to never be seen again.<p>Except if someone else posts the same article, RiderOfGirafefes will find the dup.

I submitted a Ask HN post about our service (Personal Trending Topics) and didn't get a response - <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1118331" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1118331</a><p>I posted it at a time when there was a lot of other stuff getting posted so it got buried really quickly. And now I feel discouraged to post it again...

I look at it a few times a week and I consider myself a pretty active member. If there were a "better" (and I can't define what that is) way to monitor new entries without having to keep going back to the page, I probably would.

People like me who subscribe to the RSS feed get almost every story, which is equivalent to newest I think. As a sidenote, maybe there should be a "hourly / daily new good stuff" feed rather than a dump of everything.

Never.<p>I use a RSS reader rarely browse the site. I also don't see a RSS feed for <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/newest" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/newest</a> .

I will usually scan newest once I'm done reading through the top 1-60. Everyone has differing tastes and so the stuff that I like to read doesn't always end up on the front page.

I read the 'new' page (and new page #2) first, then after that maybe I'll read the main page.

Didn't even know about /newest. I am going to checking it now.

I rarely read newest. I go to /classic usually.

Rarely, thanks for the reminder!