Ask HN: How does HN actually work?

I hang out on /newest a fair bit. Interestingly, it sometimes doesn't take all that many votes for an article to hit the front page - I've seen it happen with as few as 3 if it's a slow time of day. That gives people on the New page a disproportionate voice in the site.

It's also great for karma, as often you can get in the first comment, and if it's halfway decent, everyone will see it and hopefully upvote it.

Older hands are encouraged to scan the "new" page to upvote those that are "in sync" and "on topic," and flag those that are completely unsuitable. Lately, though, it seems that the older hands are simply overwhelmed, and there's a wider and wider spread of material getting upvoted.

I spend most of my time on new, very little on the page. What bubbles up to the main page is sometimes interesting to me, but not often. Most of the stuff I find interesting never gets more than 2-4 votes; /newest is the place for me.

Yeah, I got news.ycombinator.com stuck on "new", refreshing it from time to time, about once or twice a day. Since the front page stories make it to @newsycombinator on Twitter, I only check that page when I have more free time than I can handle, or when it feels like a story might have interesting comments.

how does people vote up or down? do you need a minimum karma or what?

Anyway, i spend most of my time on new.