Ask HN: How does a post become an Ask HN?

1 pointsolardev4 comments

If you go to the official Ask page (https://news.ycombinator.com/ask), you see a collection of Ask HN posts.

But there's many more Ask HN submissions if you use the search: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=fal...

Most of those never actually end up in the "real" Ask HN section and die quiet, lonely deaths.

What determines if a submission actually becomes a real Ask HN?

View on HN

This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html:

Why hasn't my submission appeared on Ask HN or Show HN?

All Ask HNs appear on /newest and /asknew, and all Show HNs on /newest and /shownew, but there is a small points threshold before a post makes it to /ask or /show.

Ah, thank you! I missed that there

Upvotes

That can't be the only criterion.

There are 2-upvote posts like this one in the official section: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41427814

But posts with 5 upvotes that never make it to the section, like: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41449007 or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41437736

Is there some additional curation going on?

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