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Life & fun · April 30, 2021

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Second-Chance Pool

HN's second-chance pool is a way to give links a second chance at the front page. Moderators and a small number of reviewers go through old submissions looking for articles that are in the spirit of the site—gratifying intellectual curiosity—and which seem like they might interest the community. These get put into a hopper from which software randomly picks one every so often and lobs it randomly onto the lower part of the front page. If it interests the community, it gets upvoted and discussed; if not, it falls off. We started doing this in late 2014. There's an explanation at…

Second-Chance Pool launched on April 30, 2021 with 543 votes, #9 of 3,754 launches that month and more than 99% of that year's launches.

Visit news.ycombinator.com ↗Second-Chance Pool alternativestop 1% of April 2021

In plain words

Second-Chance Pool is a system for Hacker News that resurfaces previously submitted articles that may have been overlooked. Moderators and reviewers curate older submissions aligned with the site's goal of gratifying intellectual curiosity, placing worthy ones into a pool. Software randomly selects articles from this pool and posts them to the lower part of the front page. If the community finds them interesting, they receive upvotes and discussion; otherwise they fade away. The system has operated since late 2014.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

In the maker’s words, at launch

HN's second-chance pool is a way to give links a second chance at the front page. Moderators and a small number of reviewers go through old submissions looking for articles that are in the spirit of the site—gratifying intellectual curiosity—and which seem like they might interest the community. These get put into a…

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