I see "classic" as more of a check to see if HN is seeing substantial drift from what its early cohort's interests are. Largely ... it seems to jibe reasonably well with the main site.
Another interesting variant is to hit Algolia with a blank search and a date-range set. What you'll get are top-voted comments for that period (past day, week, month, year, or custom interval). I occasionally use that to see if I've missed anything particularly good recently, or to filter what I see as excessive cruft.
I see "classic" as more of a check to see if HN is seeing substantial drift from what its early cohort's interests are. Largely ... it seems to jibe reasonably well with the main site.
Another interesting variant is to hit Algolia with a blank search and a date-range set. What you'll get are top-voted comments for that period (past day, week, month, year, or custom interval). I occasionally use that to see if I've missed anything particularly good recently, or to filter what I see as excessive cruft.
So, e.g., top votes past month: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=fa...>
"Top voted" need not mean "best" Because Reasons, but it's an interesting and different slice of the site.