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…
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 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380, with links back to others. We've talked about it in comments and whatnot (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que..., https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), and have intended to publish the list, but only did so recently. We're slow. If you see a submission that didn't get attention and which you think is particularly good for HN, please tell us at [email protected]! We love getting those requests and usually add them to the pool. It's fine if it's your own article, but we like it better when it's just something you ran across and recognized as good. That's more the kind of interest that HN is for. A related list is https://news.ycombinator.com/invited. Those are old submissions that we ran across and thought deserved attention, so we emailed and asked the submitter to repost it. Yesterday's top story was one of these (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26982286). They all go into the second-chance pool, but maybe it's interesting to see them broken out as a subset too. (If you don't have an email address in your profile, please put one in so we can send you repost invites!) If you read the old explanations I linked to, you'll see that the original plan was to turn this system into software that anyone can participate in, likely as a new way to earn karma: users who discover second-chance links that hit the jackpot (that is, which interest the community) would get karma along with the original submitter. That is still the plan! We're just slow. I think that's about everything there is to say about the second-chance pool. Questions, feedback, ideas, and views are welcome as ever. And please, everybody keep an eye out for obscure, out-of-the-way stories that got overlooked and let us know when you run across them. It's one of the best things you can do to help make this place more interesting. Best of all are the kind that can't be predicted from any existing sequence: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....
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