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As I’m reading this, this post is #1 on HN with a mere 9 points and zero comments. This is frustrating me because I cannot conceive how this can possibly rank

As I’m reading this, this post is #1 on HN with a mere 9 points and zero comments. This is frustrating me because I cannot conceive how this can possibly rank higher than other articles with such weak data points . Can anyone here shed some light on this ?

widforss 8y ago
The poster has a karma of 35285.
- Tomte 8y ago
  As far as I know, karma doesn't help submissions.
ryanlol 8y ago
Fast upvotes. Doesn’t seem like a very weak datapoint.
Tomte 8y ago
Why does it frustrate you? If it had stayed at zero comments and few points, it would have dropped from the front page quickly, probably within minutes.
gus_massa 8y ago
From http://hnrankings.info/ http://hnrankings.info/ it looks like the #2 submission was "Detecting the use of "curl | bash" server-side" (324 points, 10 hours ago, 105 comments) Now your comments has 35 minutes and the OP has 56 minutes. So with some approximations, lets say that at the time you wrote this the OP has an age of 0.5 hour and the #2 post has 9.5 hours. Roughly the order of the HN post is: upvotes/age^1.5 * lot-of-penalites [There are many post that discuss the details of the order in HN that are more accurate, I don't remember if the gravity factor is 1.5 or 1.6 or whatever, and it may change from time to time. It's part of the secret sauce, but let's use this version as an approximation.] The weight of the articles half a hour ago was: This post -> 9/(.5)^1.5 = 25 Curl/bash post -> 324/(9.5)^1.5 = 11 So it's expected that this post was in front of the curl/bash post. Not surprising. As far as I know, the post don't get a better position because they have comments. [It's part of the secret sauce, ...] I personally prefer post with few comments. There are many penalties, some are automatic, some are added by the mods and some are caused by the flags of the users. [It's part of the secret sauce, ...] One penalty that is surprising for many users is the "flamewar" detector, that applies a penalty when an article has too much comments (something like "comments > upvotes + 40"???) So too many comments is usually bad for the article. In this case, I think that neither of the articles has activated the "flamewar" detector or other penalty. I think the problem is that if you don't have a rough idea of the order algorithm it is sometimes surprising.
Jerry2 8y ago
It was explained to me that admins can manually push certain stories to the front page. Maybe this is what happened in this case?

widforss 8y ago

The poster has a karma of 35285.

Tomte 8y ago
As far as I know, karma doesn't help submissions.

ryanlol 8y ago

Fast upvotes. Doesn’t seem like a very weak datapoint.

Tomte 8y ago

Why does it frustrate you? If it had stayed at zero comments and few points, it would have dropped from the front page quickly, probably within minutes.

gus_massa 8y ago

From http://hnrankings.info/ http://hnrankings.info/ it looks like the #2 submission was "Detecting the use of "curl | bash" server-side" (324 points, 10 hours ago, 105 comments) Now your comments has 35 minutes and the OP has 56 minutes. So with some approximations, lets say that at the time you wrote this the OP has an age of 0.5 hour and the #2 post has 9.5 hours. Roughly the order of the HN post is: upvotes/age^1.5 * lot-of-penalites [There are many post that discuss the details of the order in HN that are more accurate, I don't remember if the gravity factor is 1.5 or 1.6 or whatever, and it may change from time to time. It's part of the secret sauce, but let's use this version as an approximation.] The weight of the articles half a hour ago was: This post -> 9/(.5)^1.5 = 25 Curl/bash post -> 324/(9.5)^1.5 = 11 So it's expected that this post was in front of the curl/bash post. Not surprising. As far as I know, the post don't get a better position because they have comments. [It's part of the secret sauce, ...] I personally prefer post with few comments. There are many penalties, some are automatic, some are added by the mods and some are caused by the flags of the users. [It's part of the secret sauce, ...] One penalty that is surprising for many users is the "flamewar" detector, that applies a penalty when an article has too much comments (something like "comments > upvotes + 40"???) So too many comments is usually bad for the article. In this case, I think that neither of the articles has activated the "flamewar" detector or other penalty. I think the problem is that if you don't have a rough idea of the order algorithm it is sometimes surprising.

Jerry2 8y ago

It was explained to me that admins can manually push certain stories to the front page. Maybe this is what happened in this case?