If more people spent time on /new looking for awesome stuff and vouching for dead items, HN would be a better place.

Has anyone tried to make some sort of algorithm to find cool stuff on HN or sort by upvotes etc? I know it's cool and intended that such things don't exist, but has anyone tried?

There's that one side that tracks were a post ranks overtime and you can see things drop off quickly when they get flagged for being flame bait and there's a lot of cool stuff on/new that other people kill cool stuff makes it to the front page but a lot of cool stuff doesn't. There's a second chance pool, but maybe there should be a third and fourth one as well.

Thanks, it was my first ever post here as well, would you look at that