so just thinking about this and had a look at Pool.
An example, to my first point, is like some old cyphernomicon txtfile from 1994 that's been submitted every few years for like 10 years and never really gotten many upvotes nor discussion, now gets submitted a day ago, I'm assuming not much traction again, and then submitted to Pool and now has 74 upvotes. It's weird. Never got much attn before, over and over and now all of a sudden all these things are getting large amount of upvotes. It shouldn't really get that much more attention and my gripe is that it shouldn't be on my radar as something new/interesting for the day because overall it really isn't. It's old and never warranted much interest repeatedly over time. Changing audience (a decline imo) or like something else driving more HN votes in recent year...hmm
Oh, I think we just disagree then. Obscure old stories that never got attention before are some of the best candidates for the second-chance pool in my view—as long as they're good, for some definition of 'good' that works for HN. It's not uncommon for good articles to get posted many times and yet not get traction. That's the nature of /newest—it's sort of a lottery, and even with multiple tickets it's easy to lose.
I agree with you that it's weird for some old file from 1994 to suddenly get traction, but I think it's good for HN to be weird. I wish it were weirder.
An example, to my first point, is like some old cyphernomicon txtfile from 1994 that's been submitted every few years for like 10 years and never really gotten many upvotes nor discussion, now gets submitted a day ago, I'm assuming not much traction again, and then submitted to Pool and now has 74 upvotes. It's weird. Never got much attn before, over and over and now all of a sudden all these things are getting large amount of upvotes. It shouldn't really get that much more attention and my gripe is that it shouldn't be on my radar as something new/interesting for the day because overall it really isn't. It's old and never warranted much interest repeatedly over time. Changing audience (a decline imo) or like something else driving more HN votes in recent year...hmm