Umm...not sure on a specific "algorithm", but.... I would say just do something which takes into account how quickly items are getting voted on and how many co

Umm...not sure on a specific "algorithm", but.... I would say just do something which takes into account how quickly items are getting voted on and how many comments vs. votes it has. Also take into account sometimes there will be more people on site than others; If you get a swarm of people around the same time (i.e. launch), some items submitted around that time will get tons more votes than things submitted an hour ago - those stories may not have been exactly "less popular", just had less users to make the votes count.