Comment by afavour
1 hour ago
I’m grateful for those who do visit /newest because it’s a cesspit of spam and uninteresting links that, justifiably, never make their way to the home page.
/active, on the other hand, is the real insiders tip. It shows the most active submissions, irrespective of whether they’ve been flagged off the homepage by users who want to avoid “controversial” topics or by an algorithm trying to avoid the same.
You don’t want it to replace the homepage as the arguing will drive you mad over time but it’s worth checking in with to see what conversation is being hidden from you.
I've been wondering, why isn't /active in the top nav bar?
It's been under /lists practically since the site started, when /lists was just a dump of interesting rollups 'pg could think of. There's probably less thought put into its placement than you think.
HN is tries (and mostly succeeds) to discourage controversial topics.
Does it? The rules seem to suggest that the intent is to discourage arguments and grandstanding in favor of discussions, and many controversial topics and posts tend to end up as shouting matches in the comments.
18 replies →
Indeed, /active, https://hn.algolia.com/ and similar are good to see submissions unfairly flagged off the main page by dishonest groups.
s/dishonest groups/other points of view/
No, I mean dishonest. When people gang up to push each other's blogs/startups/whatever, it's dishonest. When political groups organize to mass upvote/flag, it's dishonest. They are purposefully sabotaging the wider community for their niche interests. They are cheaters. And IME, more often than not, they are immoral and/or anti-social.