Instead of interference and preferential treatment, think of it as curation. There are many times that interesting stories are submitted but never happen to hi

Instead of interference and preferential treatment, think of it as curation. There are many times that interesting stories are submitted but never happen to hit the right window on /new to get upvoted onto the front page. One of the things the mods look for is interesting articles that have been submitted by multiple people and still never made it to the front page. That is a sign that there may be community interest. My guess is that they have a script to find these articles, and then review them manually. Then they email the first person to have submitted it and ask them to re-submit. Daniel (dang) explained this in more detail on another "second chance" article earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21852627 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21852627