In case anyone is wondering, what motivated me to submit this was simply the fact that while I've known about this section forever, a quick poll of people I know who visit HN revealed that it wasn't common knowledge.
I have no idea why this and other sections (https://news.ycombinator.com/lists) aren't linked from the main page in a prominent visible manner - especially /best which is great for people like me who check in every few days.
Also, I have a simple site that tries to take a snapshot of the HN front page every hour so that I can catch up if I'm away for a few days: http://hackerslide.com/
Neat - I completely forgot about this. If anyone's interested in these different views on top of HN I created http://yahnr.com/ a while ago that just shows the top stories by vote from the past 24 hours, updated every 15 minutes.
I mostly did it as a way to generate a "pseudo-static" site that is entirely hosted on S3 with a job that just dumps JSON files to it every 15 mins.
From memory it's the first year. I think I missed the cut off by a couple of weeks. I'm New Coke, but that still has more HN street cred than Coke Zero.
Notice how it's almost entirely headlines from large news sites posted evenly pretty much every single day.
This isn't an accusation as such but I'd suspect it's (semi)-automated or it's someone who is amazingly diligent and consistent in posting interesting news.
They're on Reddit too, same general technique and username.
I'm leaning toward the 'amazingly diligent and consistent' theory myself. After all I have like no submissions and tons of comments, so who am I to judge? ;)
I believe you, but I don't know how anyone could miss the "best" page. It's one of only six links across the top banner of the HN site. Often it's more fun to peruse "new", though. https://news.ycombinator.com/newest
The home page has a complicated algorithm that seems to take many variables into account to determine the 'hottest' / 'best new' stories (including measures to punish cheating etc.).
As far as I can see the 'best' page seems to simply take all articles submitted in the past ~3 days or so, sort them according to the number of points, and show the top 30 in that order.
Of course, the 'best' page works only thanks to the upvotes articles get (mainly) on the home page.
Time degrades points more slowly on /best, so it will usually show the top stories from the past 3(ish) days rather than the past 12-24 hours. Perfect for when you've been away for a few days and looking to invest some time in reading.
I have no idea why this and other sections (https://news.ycombinator.com/lists) aren't linked from the main page in a prominent visible manner - especially /best which is great for people like me who check in every few days.