Ask HN: Who reads the "newest" feed, and what do you look for there?

Most people browse Hacker News through the front page (top / hot), since it's already filtered for quality by the community.

But the "newest" feed feels very different: it's raw, unfiltered, and often low-quality. Yet I notice some users clearly dig into it, upvote good posts, and bring hidden gems to the front page.

I'm curious: - Who here regularly reads the "newest" feed? - What kind of content are you looking for (early projects, research papers, niche blogs, etc.)? - Do you see yourselves as "content scouts" for the rest of the community, or just looking for things you personally enjoy? - How do you filter signal from noise?

I think this is an interesting part of HN culture that doesn't get discussed much.

16 points | by rand_num_gen 1 day ago

14 comments

vunderba 1 day ago
As a user who has submitted the occasional Show HN and felt the sting of indifference as they gathered tumbleweeds, once a week I'll spend a few minutes going through the "New" posts and upvote anything that catches my eye.
It's a bit like donating to a charity for a illness that you or your relatives have been personally impacted by - equal parts altruism and selfishness.
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- fzwang 4 hours ago
  This. For me, it was a few students/junior folks I know mentioned that they posted on here and reddit, but got no responses. So now I make an effort to comment/respond to new posts, esp AskHN.
zappb 4 hours ago
I run out of things to read on the main page and check new for what’s up. It’s easier to do here due to a low submission volume.
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- rand_num_gen 46 minutes ago
  Since nowadays we have many input sources, e.g. Twitter, newsletters, blog RSS feeds, etc. They're already overwhelming for me. Browsing the "newest" feed has a very low signal-to-noise ratio.
PaulHoule 1 day ago
This kind of thing. Particularly good “Ask HN”s fall through the cracks.
A few weeks back I was upvoting anything on the new page that wasn’t low quality posts about AI like “I vibe coded that almost works”, “Show HN: My me-too startup that’s just a Chat GPT” wrapper but that onslaught either stopped or I don’t care about it anymore.
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- the__alchemist 8 hours ago
  This is a great idea! I will make an effort to do this from time-to-time.
andyjohnson0 14 hours ago
New and Ask often feel like different sites to the front page. I try to upvote things on New if they are likely to stimulate interesting discussions (which is what I come to HN for, even if I don't participate), or if I find them personally interesting, in that order.
shayway 1 day ago
HN has great discussions but what shows up on the front page can be kinda samey. Newest has a lot more variety in topics.
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- PaulHoule 1 day ago
  If you look at the top sites that have articles submitted it is totally unlike the front page, a lot of nytimes.com articles are submitted for instance and get ignored. I post a lot of articles about science, engineering and diverse topics that aren’t in the word of usual front page material and only front page a few times a week for about 20 submissions a day.
gus_massa 22 hours ago
There is too much noise in /newest, but I like personal projects and niche blogs. Also, I like better small discussions when there are 10 comments than 100+ comments.
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- rand_num_gen 21 hours ago
  true. when there are 100+ comments, it's a little overwhelming for me. especially, for the current ui
austin-cheney 15 hours ago
I typically read the new page more than the front page. It’s more diverse in its content and has less nonsense related to AI. I really don’t want to read about AI.
pwg 1 day ago
> Yet I notice some users clearly dig into it, upvote good posts, and bring hidden gems to the front page.
That is how almost all of the front page items get to the front page to begin with.
> just looking for things you personally enjoy?
Mostly, plus the new feed has more variety (and more noise too) than the front page. So you'll find items you enjoy but that don't actually ever garner enough upvotes to make it to the front page.
Forgret 12 hours ago
I'm looking for interesting computer science articles that aren't in Show HN and Ask HN
wryoak 1 day ago
I almost exclusively read newest posts. I’ll check front page weekly or monthly but it updates so infrequently, the dialogue is saturated, and only highly popular (not necessarily high quality) things make it there. I prefer to act as my own filter.
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- comprev 1 day ago
  Opposite of this, I enjoy reading the HN discussions about the submissions which have risen to the top.
  The vast knowledge in the collective HN community never fails to amaze me.
mmphosis 20 hours ago
I skim through the first two pages of new. If I read a full article it gets an upvote.
MontgomeryPy 1 day ago
I'm here. The Front Page doesn't seem to change much intraday (to me) and feels heavily moderated.
carlosjobim 1 day ago
I read the "New" feed to read and upvote interesting posts or posts which could lead to interesting discussions if more people saw them. There's always something good there, even if signal to noise ratio is low.
Every time I have to use the "vouch" feature to save posts on new, because some psychotic users here or perhaps a psychotic auto-moderator, insists on marking perfectly good submissions as [flagged] or [dead].
More people should check out the "New" tab.
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- PaulHoule 23 hours ago
  The main reason things end up is dead is because the system automatically does that for anyone who posts links to one website over and over again and doesn't post links to other websites. If you post a lot of links from various sites so there's no problem promoting your own blog. What I do is probably a bit of excessive for that purpose.
card_zero 23 hours ago
Good point, why am I looking at that? I'll stop.