Re:A two column hacker news?
by polyfractal on Friday March 23, 2012 @06:56AM
(#3744579)
There's an option C: most everyone ignores the new ones (because most people don't click the 'new' page and upvote articles), but pg generally does not change anything on HN.
So we are relatively stuck. No algorithm change, no UI change, increasing volume of submissions and few people upvoting - means most articles that bubble up are link-baity.
Yes, I've noticed this quite a lot recently, that somebody posts an article that become popular, soon after there appear 'secondary' articles which seem to be trying to ride the same wave. It could be genuine, but I also suspect people just quickly knock up 'follow up' articles to get the traffic. This almost always seems to happen when a new PG essay is posted.
How could the quality of HN be measured? (very Robert Persig!)
An extra column clutters the homepage and adds no functionality to what a simple click on 'new' (which is the most important link, right next to the brand name) would also do.
If it is the case that too few good articles arrive on the homepage, since everyone is ignoring the new ones, then the algorithm should be changed. But I don't think that is the case at all.
As an extra, I like reading HN on my mobile phone. And with the current one column design this works very neatly. An extra column would complicate that. You might handle that with CSS media queries, but I still think it wouldn't be elegant.