Ask HN: Why doesn't HN keep all the questions in the “ask” section?

I find some really good questions (and great answers) on HN. But HN only keeps the last 64 ones.

Why is that? How can we access older quedtions/answers?

  • There's a search box on the bottom of the page. If you select 'all time' and sort by date you get a list of all 66.000 Ask HN ever submitted. - https://hn.algolia.com/?query=ask%20hn&sort=byDate&prefix&pa...

  • I second what @mtmail said. You can use Algolia [1] to access older questions/answers. But, if you want to make it more accessible I would recommend to upvote or favorite the question/answer. This way will save your up-voted or favorite questions/answers into your HN account. You can use bookmarking tools for tagging questions/answers. It will help you to organize.

    As mentioned on FAQ [2], HN limits the number of showed threads because its ranking algorithm. It depends on thread points and submitted time.

    I remember, there is a website which provided weekly top Ask HN threads [3]. This website is useful if you miss threads on previous week.

    [1]: https://hn.algolia.com

    [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

    [3]: http://www.daemonology.net/hn-weekly-ask/

  • I'm seeing 66 right now. Poking around it looks like maybe the threshold is asked within the past 7 days + at least 1 comment?

  • I remember emailing Dang about it two years ago. At the time it was barely showing a page worth of stories. They got it to improve a bit, but since then I don't think it's ever paged on and on like top does.

  • Even this question will be kept. But it won't be found....