(OP is not asking about the frontpage, but rather about https://news.ycombinator.com/ask, which shows text posts, mostly questions that usually begin with "Ask HN".)

The answer is that not enough posts are getting upvoted on https://news.ycombinator.com/asknew (or https://news.ycombinator.com/newest) to clear the small threshold necessary to make it to /ask.

This has been happening for a while. Not sure what the solution is. Sometimes I go to /asknew myself and upvote the ones that seem good enough to make it to /ask, if not the frontpage, but that's a manual operation and I rarely have time.

I suppose we could fill in the empty slots with posts from /asknew but then not sure how we would pick them...

Hey dang, I didn't know asknew existed and I've been using it for a while. I kept going to ask. I think it would be helpful if it was a tab on its own next to new on the top bar. I want to engage with other people's projects; I just didn't know where or how.

is there any place to find a full list of HN's lists? obviously there's the "lists" link at the bottom of the page but that is missing some, e.g. the above /ask (but /asknew is there?) and some others i've heard of but don't remember the link for e.g. a list of comments detected to be anti-ai

edit: just noticed /ask probably isn't there because it's in the navbar, lol. but still

I've thought about submitting a "What are you listening to" question to get conversation about music and podcasts going, would that be an acceptable question to ask?

> Not sure what the solution is

Is it a growing pattern or cyclical in some way? Does it need a solution or will it work itself out in time?

[dead]