It's relatively new. Before we used upvotes. Actually I still don't use it and keep using upvotes to favourite stories. I'm sorry for that and even worse: sometimes I upvote a story without following the link, just using the upvote as a "read later" bookmark because I found the title intriguing. Not so bad is when I upvote because there's a very interesting comment, even though the article itself is crappy.
Time ago someone posted a script that collects upvoted stories, but I can't find it now, it's in one of those upvoted stories O:) I guess I could make a conversion... but there are probably more than a thousand upvoted stories, I don't know.
Actually I still don't use it and keep using upvotes to favourite stories. I'm sorry for that
So do I, but I'm not going to apologize for it. Upvoting is the fastest and more convenient way to save a story as "read later", so it's what I do. If they would add the "favorite" link to the front-page items, I'd use it instead of upvoting.
It's not the most used function because browsers already have a 'favorite' function, bookmarks. I used a scrapbook extension in FireFox for years so even though I know it existed I've never used it. But this post actually serves to shine some light on it and I'll give it a shot for a few weeks to see how well it works for me. HN has some amazing threads every now and then and it is really worth remembering those.
HN's minimalist UI designed to make elements unobtrusive and sometimes difficult to see, and new features being mentioned only in a single thread means most users will just not notice. It also doesn't help that HN is a conservative culture generally antagonistic towards any change to the layout, and people wouldn't want to notice those changes to begin with.
I've seen people not notice thread folding or the hide feature despite those also being "in plain sight." People don't know threads can span multiple pages - dang has to go out of his way to point that out because despite the UI being exactly the same as on the list pages, a "more" link at the bottom of the page, no one ever reads past the first thirty links on those pages to begin with.
