I'm a little confused by there being multiple people in the comments who are confused by this. They're basically the same word, and even if they weren't, you only have to look at the URL bar to see "newest". I know it's an unimportant phenomenon for me to be commenting on, but it strikes me as unusual.
"new", just means "new entries" (in no specific order), but "newest" suggest some sorting/ ranking. If it's the very same why would it need two different words? :) It's like people often confusing the words "art" and "artwork".
Anyway… the URL first becomes visible once you hover over the link (assuming a browser that shows the link target)/ or click on the "New" entry. If you don't know beforehand that the "New" link turns into a "newest" URL… one only can make an educated guess. Sure, I assumed it may be the same, but could have been there's some actual more obscure "Newest" somewhere too… the way the question / poll was asked it didn't feel like this was about the first top most link on the site. Hence my query for proper clarification.
To be fair, links at the top of the site header aren't exactly hidden.
I've seen comments where people haven't noticed for years that the site has a footer with links as well. The mods added thread folding and people just never even bothered to try clicking the new link to see what it did, so they never realized that was possible and kept asking for the feature. All of this "hidden" functionality is literally just a link or two away, but it might as well be buried under desert sand as far as this community is concerned.
Downvoting/flagging kind of just "appear" for most before they get a chance to read about it being a thing.
Even when someone unlocks flagging they often don't know you can flag comments instead of just downvote them because you have to load the direct link (most easily, the timestamp link) to see it.
I actually don't remember how you're supposed to know about https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc. I'm pretty sure it's not linked on the main page and the input box doesn't make mention of it.
There are some lists out there (probably easiest to just ask AI or check the lists page) of special URLs like /bestcomments or /classic. There are also some query paramters available for certain URLs. Keep in mind the lists page is not exhaustive, e.g. /over
Many never poke around their settings enough to understand showdead or noprocrast exist/how they work.
I bet a good number learned that polls were a thing from this post :D.
That's what comes to mind but it can be hard to remember some of the things because you get ao used to them being there personally (I'm continually surprised users often reach the karma threshold for downvoting before understanding they can flag/vouch comments). I'm sure others can fill in some good ones :).
> I actually don't remember how you're supposed to know about https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc. I'm pretty sure it's not linked on the main page and the input box doesn't make mention of it.
It's in the FAQ, linked at the bottom of (almost) every page along with the guidelines.
I'm a little confused by there being multiple people in the comments who are confused by this. They're basically the same word, and even if they weren't, you only have to look at the URL bar to see "newest". I know it's an unimportant phenomenon for me to be commenting on, but it strikes me as unusual.