[ryandrake]

> The ranking scheme seems to penalize posts that have a lot of comments on the theory that flamebait topics will draw a lot of comments. That sometimes prematurely buries stories with good discussion, but much more often, it buries stories that draw pointless flamewars.

If you like stories that generate robust discussion, use: https://news.ycombinator.com/active

This 'hidden' view of HN tends to allow high-discussion topics to stay at the top, and not get insta-buried because they're controversial. I use it as my default now. In my opinion, it's much better than the main sorting algorithm.

[krapp]

Conversely, if you like stories that could generate good discussion but never got traction, the second chance pool is now open to the public. [0,1]

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/pool

[dang]

That is a bad sign. Someone who's only interested in the most overheated discussions and doesn't want to look at the front page is not using HN in the intended spirit of curiosity.

The intended use of HN is to run across things that one isn't already familiar with, not to argue about the same small number of hot topics over and over. People who want to do that should find a site that wants them to do that.

[ryandrake]

Different strokes for different folks. I'm glad HN offers both views! I personally think the flamewar-detector, while useful for keeping a good signal-to-noise ratio, is too sensitive and browsing /active lets you find things you would have only seen if you are one of those readers who refresh / every 5 minutes. Plus, there are only so many "Obscure Tool Rewritten In Rust" articles I can take :)

[dang]

> there are only so many "Obscure Tool Rewritten In Rust" articles I can take

Yup, that's an issue for sure.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

[nickthemagicman]

Thanks for this! Awesome tip!