Has_not_been_viewed_much

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Scope of the “has_not_been_viewed_much” flag

  • API query shows ~113k artworks labeled as rarely viewed; the count visibly drops as people use the site.
  • The flag appears to mean “fewer than ~200 views since 2010,” but implementation details are unclear.
  • Unclear whether views via third-party sites count, and whether bots/crawlers are excluded.

Impact of the site on the metric

  • Some worry the site “ruins” the metric by pushing low-view works over the threshold, eventually emptying the pool.
  • Others argue that real human views are not “inflation” and that drawing attention is the point.
  • Concern that if the cutoff date and threshold are hard-coded, the list may eventually return nothing.

Technical and UX issues

  • Users report “failed to load” images while API calls succeed, likely due to Cloudflare anti-bot/Turnstile behavior, especially with VPNs.
  • Complaints about not being able to expand images to full size and about losing the currently shown work when navigating away and back.
  • Curiosity about backend design: cron job vs triggers vs heavy joins used to derive the flag.
  • Discussion about how views are tracked (client-side vs server-side, app vs web) and why aggressive crawlers haven’t pushed counts higher.

Boolean naming and API design

  • Debate over naming: some prefer a positive flag like has_been_viewed_much; others like the explicit negative as the “interesting” property.
  • Alternatives like rarely_viewed and the idea of exposing a numeric view count with range filters are suggested.
  • General warning that negative boolean names tend to cause confusing double negations in code.

Cultural responses and analogies

  • Many find the site addictive, like a slot machine of obscure art, and share favorite discoveries.
  • Strong appreciation for sketches, studies, and underloved works; comparison to least-viewed Wikipedia articles and zero-play songs/videos (Spotify, YouTube).
  • Parallel drawn to libraries deciding which “unloved” books to cull: tension between efficient curation and rescuing forgotten works.
  • Some skepticism about whether the world needs more attention on long-tail content, versus the romantic appeal of resurrecting it.